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"Through long dark corridors, secret doors, one-way doors, ever aware that deadly monsters can attack at any time, MAZE MASTER is the adventurer's path to fun and peril." - Intro from the Manual I'm playing my second Commodore 64 game for the blog by request - a good friend of mine watched his father play it and there's nothing like reliving those memories. Is it a good sign when 'play the game' is main menu option 5? Maze Master is a Commodore 64 game by a single developer, Michael Cranford, who would go on to work on other RPGs, including the more famous Bard's Tale games - then, having spent his career giving people the opportunity to pretend to slaughter living things , he moved on to teaching and became an ethics professor. My first task was just to figure out if I COULD play Maze Master, so just starting this one required a bit of research. I've found an online emulator of the game which took a bit of muddling to figure out, and after playing around with it for a bit I realized that I could really use the manual - which I ALSO now have , thanks to the Museum of Computer Adventure Game History . As you can see from the menu, this is not a complicated game - you can have three characters at a time, each of which can be either a Warrior or a Wizard (so any semblance of 'party balance' is already out of the question here). There's also a 'code' system whereby you can save a character, and from testing I figured out that death happens immediately when a character falls to 0 HP and it is permanent, but the manual also encourages you to make use of the codes - I'm going to initially try playing this by treating dead characters as dead but if that proves too difficult I'll be resurrecting my people via the code system. We have two objectives - one is to defeat the BALROG somewhere down in the maze, and the other is to solve a riddle - once both are accomplished, victory will be at hand! On to character creation! It is suggested that the first character be the party leader. It is wise to make this character a warrior, since he will absorb the brunt of any attacks. Great advice from the manual but Dalton doesn't seem like the warrior type... We're off to a cracking start. Dead-man-Dalton up in front has pretty much gotta be a wizard with those stats, I don't think there's a way to re-order my characters. Sure, I could just delete and re-roll, but that would deny Dalton his chance at glory. I'm not just gonna send him back home to his village empty handed! Ok, so the party is: Dalton, Hera, and Timmy. ALL of them rolled 6 Strength so they're all wizards. Hera has good Dexterity and Constitution but only average Intelligence whereas Dalton and Timmy at least have something going in the brains department (aside from the fact that they're all about to walk into the dungeon with no fighter to protect them). Before we do that however, we're going shopping! As an example of why you need the manual, this is the shop screen: Nothing like the Mystery Shop for all your adventuring gear The actual list of items and their prices (though not exactly what they do) can ONLY be found in the manual, so I'll be referring to it a LOT. I have no idea what a 'Hawk blazon' is but I hope it does something great You characters start with some supply of gold so I'm getting the best armor I can (Wizards at least don't appear to be restricted from wearing protective equipment) and if we can afford a sword after that we'll get that too. To find out how much gold I actually have I have to examine each character individually - this was not an era of great user interfaces and kids these days don't know how hard we had it. Timmy apparently comes from a wealthy family and has over 200 gold whereas Hera and Dalton have scraped enough together to afford Leather armor and nothing else. That's all the preparation we can do, so we're heading into the dungeon - 3 wizards with one sword between them and hoping our spells see us through. The dungeon ain't much to look at. The impressive thing here to me is that we've got a very early first-person perspective of what the maze looks like. Unfortunately it doesn't look like much - the walls are completely featureless aside from the 'door' visible above, so I have no landmarks or other visual references to go on - and I'm already prone to getting lost in games. Getting lost here could easily get me killed as the monsters wander around in real time, so I really need to be making my own maps of the place. I need to remember to pause the game when I screenshot something, because this FEELS turn based - so when I went to grab a screenshot of the first clue I found.... Thanks Voice! Much appreciated. I had gotten jumped by a pair of goblins by the time I alt-tabbed back to the game. Thankfully there IS a pause key, I just have to remember to use it. This ought to be an easy fight, right? At least combat IS turn based. The Monsters got to go first - our armor proved ineffective as Hera took 12 damage (out of 16!) followed by Dalton immediately being killed before he was able to do anything. Hera and Timmy launch Fireballs and manage to kill one goblin. The remaining monster killed Hera, and Timmy miraculously survived a hit with 2 HP left before bringing the second goblin down. Timmy immediately turned and ran back for the stairs where he can heal and find new companions, but right when he reached the stairs he ran into a pirate. I tried to flee, got caught, and our first excursion ends in a total party wipe. All I have to show for my efforts is a partial map of the first floor. Well, surely there is no shortage of brave adventurers, is there? Let's meet our next three great heroes! Stiglord the Mig: He was supposed to be 'the Mighty' but I ran into a character limit - and when you do the name is entered so he'll have to live with it. On the plus side Stiglord rolled a phenomenal 18 strength so he would have lived up to the name. On the other hand he has only 6 HP so I fear he won't live long, but at least we have a Warrior in front now. Albrecht: Decent strength and HP, so we'll go with another Warrior here. Joe: Poor Joe. He's got merely average strength but dumb as a post and really shouldn't be risking his life in a dungeon at all. I guess this is the Warrior party. The warrior's foray into the dungeon is more successful than the Wizard party, by which I mean they ran into a pair of scavengers that killed Stiglord the Mig in round 2 (Low HP characters are extremely fragile!), but Albrecht and Joe made it back to the stairs to lick their wounds and recruit another party member. Another apt name but with both offensive stats in the crapper she can't do anything useful! I guess we make Mrs. Invincible is a really dumb Wizard, to balance out the two Warriors? After our first successful no-casualty foray into the maze and out again after killing a Berserker, the party runs into four rogues and I take a crack at fighting them - I should have tried to run. You can't run after a battle starts. Ok, I'm not really making progress this way - these early characters are much too fragile and you can easily get locked into combats that will kill you. Even the first maze level isn't at all safe for new adventurers to fight enemies and gain some levels / gold, I need to rethink my approach. It's time to institute some stricter standards of who's allowed into this maze - we're going to send weaklings away (by deleting them) before they get themselves killed and just re-roll characters until we've got a good looking party, and then we're going to write down the character codes and 'resurrect' them if they die so they can actually get more powerful over time. Ok, I've spent a lot of time re-rolling and now I've got a pretty solid party stat-wise. If anyone dies I'll 'resurrect' them by re-making them with character codes that need to be re-typed (which makes the death penalty in this game a personal annoyance for me). Meet the heroes who are going to conquer this maze: Tonk the warrior is strong and fast and has decent toughness, he'll hopefully be taking most of the hits and living long enough to protect the big guns. Blubbo is a Wizard who actually is a fair bit tougher than Tonk based on his phenomenal Con score while still being respectable in the intelligence department. Finally, Marlin is a top-tier spellcaster, but also the most fragile member of the party (though not by a lot). Hopefully being in the back will protect him. I'm going with two wizards and one warrior because the spells in the manual appear to be very powerful, and I think I can cast any of them right from the start so long as I have the spell points. There's one called Mind Fist which deals 1-32 damage to EVERY enemy and Marlin can cast it (once) right away, so the plan is to venture into the dungeon, smash an enemy encounter, and then run right back out to recharge spell points - then repeat until we get some gold / XP and improve our survivability. I won but Tonk almost died from a single hit. Using this party I pulled off a single excursion into the dungeon without anyone dying. The second attempt ended in disaster and another party wipe. These guys were just hanging out at the stairs back to safety - tried to flee, no dice. I'm hopeful that we won't die so much if we can ever level up but this game does not make it easy. Fortunately we've got extra Tonks, Blubbos and Marlins ready to get in there and avenge their former selves. Subsequent attempts meet with more success and while I haven't gotten any levels yet, I've now outfitted the party with at least basic gear and improved their armor. Since there's no gear restrictions on the Wizards they're carrying swords and shields just like Tonk is, so if we run into weak single enemies we can conserve spell points. Scratch that idea - trying to actually have these bozos stab a foe to death to conserve spell points ended in an incompetent flailing of swords and Tonk is dead. Again. I even had to re-enter ALL of the party's character codes just to put Tonk 3 back in the front. I feel like I've got about half of the first level mapped - I try to visit somewhere new on each outing, and I've actually found the stairs to the second level but I don't dare go down there yet with the enemies here being as difficult as they are. This room has a nasty surprise - I entered it via a one-way door. I can't go back the way I came. With no known path back to the start, I picked a door and hoped for the best, attempting to flee from every encounter (I don't think there's a downside to being 'caught' versus choosing to fight). My map ended up saving me because I knew where I was and had a good idea of where I was supposed to get back to, though I just about had a heart attack when I thought that my map was a single square off somewhere because I found a door where I didn't expect one. Turned out it was another one-way door back into the maze I had already mapped. The game has several non-combat spells as well, since I don't have many spell points I haven't played with them too much but 'Light' lets you see farther, which helps a lot with mapping the larger rooms. It also lets you detect secret doors, but it's hard to tell which doors are secret when it's on because they all look the same. Normal vision just lets you see into the square ahead of you. 'Light' doubles what you can see, and lasts 15 minutes in real time. Unfortunately, all you can see is walls and doors - important things like monsters, clues to the riddle, and the stairway to the next level are only revealed when you enter the same square as them. That means in order to find the clues to this riddle I suspect I'll have to fully map each level and take care to ensure that I've stepped on every square, at least until I find all three of the clues. I haven't found treasure or traps so there's not much reason for exploring this maze beyond the clues and the stairway. Sweet Jimminy Christmas I've been ambushed at the exit stairs - again! First by a group of Pirates who I blew my spells on to kill, immediately followed up by a group of Bladesman (I guess multiple monster groups can hang out in the same square?) - you actually have to step away from the stair square and re-enter it if you fought a battle there to escape, so I did that after the pirates and had to fight again. I initially ran away from the Bladesmen but they were still camping the stairs when I again tried to leave. Even Blubbo having the maximum possible starting health isn't always enough to save him from being one-shot. If I ever gain a level I will find these guys and end them. Consulting the manual, I find out why it's taking so long to attain that first level - I need a whopping 1024 experience points to level up, and after many battles the three stooges are in the 200-300 XP range. That means getting to level 2 is going to be an absolute slog, but the good news is that EVERY 1024 XP will net me another level - so unlike most RPGs the first level is going to take the longest and when things get going I'm going to get later levels relatively quickly (I hope). On the plus side I've gotten everyone's armor down to +1 or 0 from buying equipment (this is old D&D style 'armor class' so lower is better) and that's been very helpful in keeping my characters alive. Dance, fat man, dance! I'm enjoying the pixel art of the monsters - the skeletons in particular are pretty great so I'll try to remember to screenshot them next time I run into them. Almost all of them so far are some sort of humanoid - even ones that probably shouldn't be. That is... an interesting looking wolf. The map of the first floor is really coming along, and I noticed that I had found two nearly-identical sections of the maze which seemed pretty odd - re-reading the manual carefully I found that the maze levels are 20x20 in size, but the game allows you to cross from one side to the other so they repeat - I'd actually mapped the same structure twice: The mapping inconsistencies in the repeated rooms are as much a product of both only mapping what I can see plus my inconsistent early mapping behavior where I went through an area by first outlining rooms but not yet marking doors, and then dying before finishing the room layout. You know how I got ambushed by monsters at the stairs before? That's now happened three more times and it's always the same - a group of Pirates is waiting for me, and if I still happen to have enough juice to kill a group of Bladesmen show up to finish the job and wipe the party. I'm beginning to suspect there's a limited number of arrangements of monsters in the maze and this one just feels designed to slaughter your party. Alternately, they might show up after I've killed a certain number of monster groups on the floor as a sort of sadistic punishment for doing well. Either way I don't think I'll be able to handle them until I hit level 2. One non-combat spell that's been very useful (especially in conjunction with the map) is Orient, which lets me know my current coordinates. Particularly handy if I forget where I am on the map after a combat. I'm about 3/4ths of the way through level 1 and I'm making a pretty good amount of gold - Tonk was able to upgrade to a magic sword and Marlin is now carrying the second best shield in the game. If it weren't for the exit stair ambush party I'd only be suffering the occasional death from a lucky hit - as it is I survive most forays into the dungeon except for the occasional exit stair massacre... and also things like having a pair of Ogres go first and immediately kill both mages, leaving poor Tonk to die one round later. I don't have a 'game play time' handy to know exactly how long this has taken - my guess is 6, maybe 7 hours - but Blubbo and Marlin are high-fiving each other back at the base because they just gained a level. Tonk got left behind a bit in the XP department for dying slightly more often. There was no celebratory screen for this, and the stat gains aren't as massive as I hoped, but it's an improvement nonetheless. The HP gains are minimal - Blubbo went from 18 to 19, and Marlin is now equal with Tonk at 14. The real prize is a single spell point each - Blubbo now has 3 which lets him cast an attack spell that's twice as strong as the one he's been throwing, and Marlin can now cast a whole new class of 5-cost spells - including Teleport: This spell can be used to move the party to nearly any spot in the maze. Use the joystick controls to indicate the number of squares north to move (a negative value moves you south), the number of squares east (a negative value moves you west), and the number of levels to go down (a negative value moves you up). Teleporting to the bottom level "bounces" you up to the top level. So long as Marlin stays alive and doesn't cast any other magic I should be able to warp directly back to the exit stairs from anywhere - I'm curious if it can actually warp me past the exit and directly back to safety, in which case I could bypass any stair ambush party. Speaking of which - I've been mulling over the stair ambush party and the nature of enemies in this game. When I first start up the game I think that all enemy groups respawn (and it's actually the same groups each time, there's always a group of Dwarves inside the first door on the right), and when you venture into the maze and kill a group it seems to stay dead - the longer I play in a single session the emptier the first level gets until I reset the game. I've also encountered the same type of groups that ambush me at the stairs - Pirates and Bladesmen - near each other in the series of three single rooms in the upper-right section of the maze. This would be a level of sophistication I wouldn't have assumed for this game, but I'm starting to think that maybe those specific groups are moving to the exit stairs to ambush me there - as I finish mapping out the first level, I'll be testing this by specifically not killing those groups, then check whether they're still in their rooms if and when the ambush party shows up. I'm really excited to test this idea, in part because the rest of the game is pretty tedious But before I figure that out.... my first attempt at teleportation was probably the greatest simulation of a wizard trying out a spell that they don't know how to cast for the first time that I've ever seen in a game, because the interface for casting teleport is an absolute mystery to me (and bad, that's a bad interface!). At first I figured that since the game wants numbers (for number of levels down, squares moved, etc) I should type numbers - nope. Then maybe the movement keys adjust the numbers? No. What's left? Banging on random keys and hoping. I DID end up changing the numbers somehow and successfully casting teleport and I wasn't paying close attention I managed to teleport to a random location and have no idea where I ended up - thankfully Blubbo can throw out an Orient spell to figure it out and get us back to the stairs. My second attempt went much better. I figured it out: The left-right arrow keys adjust each number up and down, and spacebar enters them in. These controls are not used for any other portion of the game, this is not described in the manual, and the person responsible for this is teaching ethics to college students. This spell allows you to teleport up to 20 levels down, which gave me another heart attack when I believed I was in for 19 more levels of this, but I checked the manual and it claims there are only five levels in the maze - for the sake of my sanity I'm going to believe the manual here until proven otherwise. Sadly you cannot teleport past the stairs directly to safety, but it does appear that you can indeed teleport just about anywhere in the maze - I expect to use Teleport extensively as we go deeper. Back to clearing the maze - I think gaining levels has also increased the number of monsters in these groups. Before they seemed to cap out at 4, now I'm seeing groups of 5 and occasionally 6. Since I'm blowing them away with area spells and then running back to the stairs, so far this is actually a plus for me because I'm getting more XP and gold from each encounter. BURN THEM ALL, FAT MAN Oh hey - Tonk also hit level 2 and gained 3 HP. We're off to the races. Incidentally, I don't ever move forward anymore. Moving forward doesn't open doors, but the 'kick door' button DOES move you forward even if there isn't a door there, so all I do now is turn left and right and kick doors / air to make my way around the place. The extra spell points from being level 2 are a game changer, and I'm pretty reliably nuking every group I run into on this floor, with a follow-up spell from Marlin available in the unlikely event that the initial blasts don't get the job done. Mapping and killing is proceeding well and the stair ambush party apparently don't dare to show their faces anymore, and before I'm done mapping out the first level everyone hits level 3 thanks to the larger groups. Since we're more survivable now I've been saving up money on each character to buy the highest tier shield, 1500 gold apiece and we'll have maxed out one type of protective equipment. Tonk is hitting more often - and harder - but since he can't damage multiple opponents the mages are really the star of the show and I feel vindicated in the 1 Warror / 2 Wizard class split (Although I suspect I might do even better with 3 Wizards). We're even feeling brave enough to occasionally take on two enemy groups before fleeing for our lives. Now that we've found our sea legs, finishing the map of level 1 wasn't all that difficult. I didn't confirm my stair ambush theory but it doesn't hurt to kill the suspects whether I'm right or not. It's time to venture down to the second level of the maze. I'm feeling pretty confident that the most difficult part of the game - that initial brutal slog to gear up and get that first level up - is behind us. Entering level 2 gives the player a glorious cinematic experience of having their face against a wall. A quick Orient spell ensures there's no shenanigans going on with transitioning down the stairwell. I.... was not expecting this. I was expecting something similar to the first level where there's a mix of large and small rooms and it's very maze-like. This is very different - Level 2 is a series of criss-crossing infinite hallways. I was able to map all this without encountering a single monster. I'm honestly delighted by this level, it's very cleverly designed to make you lose track of where you are - if I lost track of where I happened to be on Level 1 I could usually just examine my surroundings and compare it to my map and figure out what room I must be in. In the infinite hallways you can see this exact screen facing either east or west in more than a dozen different locations. Exploring the rooms off of the hallway doors led to monster encounters, but so far I haven't run into anything I didn't already meet on the first level so things weren't too difficult. I may have been overconfident, because I ran into a group of Lurkers which I'd previously blown away with the highest level AoE spell I could muster, and I admit I pulled my punch a bit on these guys so that I'd be able to take on a second group on this excursion, figuring that my -2 and -4 armor and increased HP would keep me safe if any survived. Two Lurkers survived the initial round. They made the party pay for my arrogance by one-shotting both Tonk and Marlin. The difference between this and the usual party wipe is that with more spell points Blubbo still had enough juice to finish the job. Blubbo learned a lot by being the sole survivor Interestingly, some of Blubbo's other stats have increased - he started at a respectable Strength 14, now he's at the max of 18, making him as strong as Tonk. I don't regret re-rolling characters until I had good stats at the start because I was stuck with the party as-is for so long, but I suspect that once you start gaining levels then 'normal' characters would eventually see their stats boosted up over time. New monsters are starting to show up - I fought a group of Trolls that fell easily enough and then ran into these guys: They got Tonk - 29 damage in one hit The Maze Shadows seem almost impossible to hit with melee weapons, I think you just need spells to deal with them. I've found the next stairway down to level 3 (behind a secret door, as it turns out!) as well as the first clue! Ok.... I got nothin'. Maybe a mythological reference? I was just playing Hades... Given that there's five levels and three clues I suspect there's one clue each on levels 2, 3, and 4 but I need to level up characters anyway so I intend to finish mapping each floor before moving on. Oh, wow! I was genuinely beginning wondering if every single enemy in this game was some form of humanoid, because thus far after dozens of different enemies every single one has been. I just found one that isn't! OH SHI- Yep, we're gonna need another replacement party. They took me by surprise but in my defense I was not expecting to find four fire dragons in a single-square room which the manual claims is a 10-foot square space. On re-entering characters I was checking them and noticed that Blubbo has an item I'm pretty sure I didn't buy - it's a fairly expensive one, Magic Armor is the 3rd tier armor and costs 2K gold. Heyyyy buddy... where'd you get those fancy duds? Looking back through my screenshots, I suspect that somewhere in the sixth to ninth iteration of Blubbo I mistyped a character in the codes and possibly gave it to him that way (Unless leveling up can also upgrade your equipment? Surely not.) I'm just going to pretend that Blubbo 7 or 8 robbed the store and can't be punished anymore because they're already dead - I can't easily un-do the error because I haven't cracked the character code system (and am not trying to). My friend's father apparently beat the game originally by doing so (and given how hard Maze Master is at the beginning I don't blame him one bit for such desperate measures - and reverse engineering the code system is a pretty solid accomplishment in and of itself). Just through casual observation I can tell that the third character of the third code sequence being 6 or 5 indicates whether a character is a Wizard or a Warrior. I probably could engage in a lot of testing the character code entry system to eventually understand all of it and grant my characters additional XP, gold, stats, equipment, etc. Blubbo's thievery notwithstanding, I don't plan to resort to that level of chicanery to beat this - but I will be sharing the final codes for the three stooges so anyone else who wants to take a crack at this can do so with some hardened veterans. Despite the pain of entering codes, I do see some appeal in being able to hand your buddy a piece of paper and say 'Hey, go ahead and use my character when you play the game'. Encounters with some of the creatures down here are significantly more rewarding - I defeated a pack of 7 Trolls that granted everyone 120 XP, so everyone is leveling up much faster than in the beginning. All my characters now have 20 HP or more and while that still isn't enough to always save them from insta-death (RIP Tonk 15), it definitely helps. Tonk died this time simply because the monsters went first. Whether everyone in my party survives combat or not often comes down to whether or not the monsters go first, which is either entirely random or possibly based on my dexterity scores. If the monsters go first I have 6 or 7 attacks coming my way and just have to I hope that the character's armor is good enough to avoid damage entirely, but if I go first then the monsters get nuked twice by the most powerful spell in the game and that generally either does the trick or at most leaves one injured survivor - the 'Fire Fury' spells does 1-64 damage against every monster so if the virtual dice crap out I'm not guaranteed to kill everything. By the end of mapping the second level everyone had 2000+ gold, so Tonk and Marlin bought Magic Armor to get their armor class down further and Blubbo 11 was made to make restitution for his great-great grandfather's theft by re-buying a Magic Armor set for himself, thus paying the shop back without actually improving his equipment. Level 2: The Infinite Hallways, map complete! The interior rooms of level 2 continued with the repeating motif, but because the hallways are monster free I'm not sure how much of a challenge getting lost here actually adds - if you stay in the hallways and wander around you'll find the exit eventually because it's in a distinctive location. Also I'm pretty pleased that the stairways so far are all relatively close to each other on a straightforward path - even when restarting the game that means there aren't that many monster encounters you have to fight to get down to level 3 - and it's high time I began exploring down there. I think Tonk is level 7 (You only get told you character's XP value) and the mages are level 8. Blubbo has actually maxed out all of his non-Constitution stats to 18. Level 3 starts off a bit more picturesque than Level 2. I'm curious to find out if there's an interesting theme to this level as well. The hallways are not safe this time, right away we're running into enemies I've never seen before. There's no way to tell how strong something is other than by fighting it, so the first time I run into a new enemy type the 'Nuke' dial gets turned up to 11. Over 200 XP for frying this group to a crisp. At 1024 XP per level we're going to be gaining power rapidly. In a first for this game I stumble across a warning, perhaps letting me know about some sort of trap. I need to step on every square to find clues and stairways so I'll hit it at some point. Being dropped a level doesn't actually sound all that inconvenient so long as I save enough spell points to cast Teleport - I haven't actually used it as much as I assumed I would but until I figure out what this is I'm going to conserve enough to cast it if needed. I guess the theme of Level 3 is 'secret doors that suck', because the first secret room I found had absolutely nothing in it. The second secret room was far worse Although I suppose I can sympathize with the dragons, if I were cooped up with four other dragons in a small closet I too would be ready to massacre anyone else that tried to squeeze in with us. Tonk appears to be attacking twice every round now, so Warriors may not be as non-viable as I first believed. He's got a long way to go to hold a candle to what the Wizards can do. I'm very unclear about what circumstances cause monsters to 'wander' in this game but something DOES cause it. Most of the enemies seem to be stuck in specific rooms at any given time, but there was the stair ambush party at the beginning and on various occasions I have encountered groups out in the hallways where I didn't expect any (I actually just ran into a group of Lurkers in the Level 2 hallways where I'm confident no monsters initially start). Saving enough SP to cast Teleport nicely handles being trapped by a one-way door - instead of having to find my way back to a mapped area I can pop back to safety after killing the first group I run into. I have yet to buy any of the 'Miscellaneous Magic Items' because they're very expensive, and Tonk acquires the first one - a Ring of accuracy. The manual has no details on what these items do aside from their names: Staff of light - I assume it casts a persistent Light spell. That would save me all of 2 Spell Points for the low low price of 5,000 gold. Ring of accuracy - 1,500 gold. Tonk still misses quite a lot so I'm hoping for a significant hit rate improvement. I probably shouldn't bother and just save up for the best armor because Tonk is best utilized as a meat shield but additional damage doesn't hurt. Amulet of healing - Another 5K item, normally in an RPG I'm all for an item that will likely give me some sort of HP regeneration, but I'm less enthusiastic about it in this game because combats tend to last one, maybe two rounds at most, and I go back outside the maze to refresh my spell points. Unless this heals me to full every round of combat I doubt it will be all that useful. Hawk blazon - At 10,000 gold (Which is about how much all of my characters combined have earned to date), this had better do something great but I'm unsure of what it's function is. A 'Blazon' is apparently a 'formal description of a coat of arms', so technically this item is a piece of paper with a paragraph or two that goes on and on about what some Hawk-themed coat of arms looks like, though I doubt that's what Cranford had in mind when he created the item. I really love the art for Skeletons, which is also the art for just about every Undead - Zombies, Wights, and several others are all depicted as skeletons wearing pants. An interesting feature of the third level is a room that is just packed full of monsters - prior to this I'd only ever seen at most two groups of monsters in a room and the vast majority have 1. The lower-left room on level 3 is stuffed full of foes - I've killed over half a dozen groups and there are still monsters in there. I've started entering the maze and immediately teleporting directly into that room (it's directly below the level 1 entrance stairs), killing one group, then teleporting back to safety. Marlin emerges as the sole badly wounded survivor of a battle (every hitpoint matters!) against 8 Green Dragons and gains an entire level's worth of XP. The Ring of Accuracy is definitely helpful for Tonk, sometimes he'll actually hit and kill two things with his two attacks. I've fully mapped out level 3: At first I thought it might be symmetrical but that didn't pan out. I have no idea what that cryptic 'Ware the stop' message was referring to - I was so sure there was a pit trap of some sort and I tried to hit every single square. I'm actually enjoying this experience, but only because I'm blogging it. The act of making these maps has a zen-like quality to it and I'm enjoying writing about it. The game itself was a terrible slog at first and now has settled into an 'enter maze' - 'teleport' - 'fight' - 'teleport' - 'exit maze' pattern which is pretty repetitive. Marlin surviving two huge combats as the sole survivor has resulted in him shooting ahead of everyone else in HP - I sigh every time I look at our 'Tank' Tonk and know that he's the least survivable of the bunch. On to level 4! Hey bro I heard you like doors The enemies ramp up right away, and in some cases it's a party wipe if they enemies go first. It's not long before Tonk is dead again... and I have an idea. 'Tough fighter in the front, squishy spellcaster in the back' is so deeply ingrained into my psyche that Tonk has now died half a dozen more times than the mages and the XP loss from that has made him measurably more fragile than either of them. Something deep in the core of my gamer heart is screaming that what I'm about to do is just plain wrong, a strange sort of blasphemy, but it's time to change our formation: Big fat wizards to the front! Warrior, cower behind the spellcasters! With the highest HP total, Marlin takes the lead. We're also down to -8 AC since I have the spell points to regularly cast a -2 AC buff on every excursion, and if I feel the need I could throw an additional -6 AC spell in battle, but in nearly every case I think smashing the enemy with the first spell is a better option. Not only is the new formation better defensively, it's better offensively too - the characters take their turns in numeric order, so what happened before would be Tonk hitting either the first enemy or a random enemy - it's hard to tell - followed by the mage spells hitting everything. Now the spells hit everything first, leaving just a few survivors - and Tonk follows up to specifically target only the ones that survived the spells, because the rest are already dead. Tonk is up to three attacks so chances are good he'll hit at least once. Tonk finishes off the enemy group in the first round. This level also has a 'monster party' square in the lower left - I'm starting to wonder if the wandering monsters just tend to congregate on that square and stay there. I rarely encounter them wandering around and that would explain the 'stair ambush party' as well since the initial stairway into the maze is on that square on level 1. Samurai with triangle shields bearing the cross, these are the rarely seen Samurai Templars I did some testing and temporarily bought the Staff of Light and Amulet of Healing to see what they do - the Staff is a permanent Light spell as predicted, and the Amulet of Healing restores 1 HP every 20-30 seconds or so. Since my main impetus for returning to the surface is to recover my spell points that's not a very helpful item, so I reloaded the characters to undo making those purchases. If I carried a Staff of Light around I'd never be able to tell which doors are secret and which aren't! Instead of those, I get Tonk a Wrathblade, the best weapon in the game. It takes his damage into the 60's and 70's, with three attacks he can now out-damage the wizards against single targets. Marlin the Wizard Tank gets the best armor, a Mithril Coat, and Blubbo is going to try to save up for the Hawk Blazon so I can figure out what it does. The game is getting a lot easier and I'm gaining a level every 3-4 encounters. Switching up the order of the characters was really a turning point and it's actually been awhile since the last character death. Maze Master actually has an inverse difficulty curve - it's incredibly difficult at the start but gets easier as your party's capabilities and toughness outmatch the monster groups. The mages have more than 30 spell points each - enough to teleport down to the lowest level, nuke three or four monster groups, and teleport back home. This is making mapping go much faster. The whole party actually survives 8 Black Dragons getting the first turn. Only Tonk is hit and he finally has enough HP to survive the strike. The Dragons are wiped in one round by two Fire Fury spells followed by an angry Tonk. Oh, I haven't mentioned the game sound because there's hardly any - the sound design in the other C64 game I've played, Impossible Mission, was miles better. There's a 'beep' for finding text and a 'boop' for bumping into a door, a horrible RRRRRRRRRR when you start the game up, and a less horrible rrrrrrr when you run into monsters. That's about the whole soundtrack. The fourth level had a surprise feature - one-way walls. From one direction, a normal corridor - but if you try to backtrack you'll find the way blocked. I was very confused the first time I encountered one and spent some time believing that I'd incorrectly mapped something, so kudos to Mr. Ethics for thinking that one up. Ok, now THIS clue I can get behind. Good thing I've been making maps since the beginning! I see it! The structure that initially made me think that there was some symmetry in level 3... I'm pretty sure I know the answer to the riddle now. I've actually hit a point where my characters aren't dying anymore, and mapping the 4th floor doesn't take all that long. That's a pretty prominent Times New Roman 'T' ya got there. I enjoyed how I needed to find both a secret door behind the entry stairs to get out of the starting area and then again to find the stairs down to the fifth floor. I actually didn't find the stairs down until almost the very end of mapping the level, it was the second to last square I checked. Blubbo has finally earned enough to buy the Hawk Blazon, which appears to just set your AC to a flat -10 no matter what other armor you're wearing. I guess descriptions of a coat of arms have powerful protective properties in the Maze Master expanded universe. That was expensive for -2 AC but I'm running out of things to spend money on, and it's a better upgrade than my other magic item options. Ok, we're ready to face whatever's at the bottom. Time to descend to the final floor. As the battle-hardened party of grizzled veterans makes their way down to the Lair of the Balrog, they lay their eyes upon a sight few humans have ever dared to witness. Behold! The cinematography is breathtaking The fifth level doesn't allow you to teleport directly into it so to get there I'm Teleporting directly to the downward stairway on the fourth floor. Teleporting out works fine, which I think is a missed opportunity - getting lost / trapped somewhere in the maze and running out of spell points over repeated combats would be one of the few remaining actual dangers to my party. I haven't run into any monsters on this floor that I didn't hit on the fourth floor... but inexplicably the enemy groups are smaller. I'd run into 6, 7 Fire Giants before, and I just hit a group of 3 now. That's making this final floor even easier than the last one. I found the riddle to be solved very early in the mapping process - it's actually adjacent to the room with the stairs behind a secret door. I'm going to hold off on answering it because I feel like it would be a disservice to finish the game now and not map out the final floor. Answering incorrectly moves you a square backwards The first new enemies I run into still don't survive a round of combat against the party. Maze Ogres?! I got a Maze Ogre slaying knife, it's +9 against Maze Ogres! But a little later I hit a group of Storm Giants and they're no joke, turns out there are still some groups that pose a serious threat. I was starting to think I might get through the whole floor without having to type in more character codes. There were only three of them but they went first - gonna need another Tonk / Blubbo, sorry guys. I'm now very grateful to have Tonk - with these smaller groups of tougher enemies, he's out-damaging a Wizard now. So much of this game is topsy-turvy compared to a conventional RPG - my fighter started out weak but has ended the game stronger than the mages who were much more powerful than him for most of this. It's taken me awhile to realize this but I think there's some sort of intelligence or level bonus to the damage a spell does - the manual claims Flame Fury does 1-64 damage to all foes but I've never actually seen it do just 1 damage and have seen it do more than 64. Ok, level 5 is mapped out. Really can't miss the letter on Level 5. I never figured out what the "Ware the stop" message meant nor did I find a third clue - maybe it's on a square that had a monster on it or maybe I just missed stepping on it. Either way, I was able to correctly answer the riddle, and Marlin 16, Blubbo 17, and Tonk 23 step through the door to face their final foe. I'm disappointed that the final boss is a palette swap, I was hoping he'd have his own art. You know, it occurs to me that I'm not actually sure why I'm down here. The manual says something about my liege lord being safe again? He'll probably be fine if he doesn't ever enter the maze, it's not like the Balrog comes out of his lair. Maybe we can just talk... SWEET LORD HE HITS HARD Ok, well, let's do this. Blubbo grits his teeth and throws the most powerful spell he's got, singing the beast. Then it's Tonk's turn. Tonk grips the Wrathblade, passed down from his father. He's here to avenge that father, who fell in the maze. And his gandfather. Also his great grandfather, as well as his great great.... Tonk strikes true, and drives the blade through the Balrog's beating heart! To reward the victorious, our friendly neighborhood ethics professor invites us to play the sequel. I'm good, thanks! In one last bit of strangeness, you can then continue walking around the room the Balrog was in but you can't actually leave - the poor guy was probably trapped in here and this was a mercy killing. Had Blubbo also died then Tonk would be trapped in here too, but we can still teleport out and tell everyone except Mrs. Marlin 16 the good news. I'm glad I got through that initial slog and got to see this one through to the end - I can't in good conscience recommend that anyone else play it outside of historical curiosity, so I hope that I've conveyed what it's like to play this without actually making any of you suffer through the initial parts. If you DO want to give it a whirl, feel free to make things easier on yourself by using the maps here - and if you really want an easy time of it, feel free to invite Marlin 17, Blubbo 17 and Tonk 23 onto your computer. Marlin 17: 0873f1a 265d230 e06a5f9 Blubbo 17: 0b73f13 2578a30 9f6a6ff Tonk 23: 0d73f12 213ec30 e45a6fc They'll be happy to head down there and smash the Balrog in your capable hands. That jerk needs to pay for killing Marlin 17's dad.

The developer Supergaint Games has made five games, and four of them - Bastion, Transistor, Hades, and now Hades II - are isometric combat action games. It's clear that Supergiant loves making this type of game, and they've had a lot of experience doing so. The original Hades distinguished itself to become one of my favorite roguelites of all time, in part because it cleverly incorporated all of the mechanics of a roguelite - explicitly including your inevitable death and rebirth - into a plausible narrative. Your various power-ups on a run are boons granted to you by the Gods of Olympus, and as Zagreus your initial goal was to break out of the Underworld (nobody escapes!) - with the ultimate opposition being your own father Hades, who would have conversations with you after your failures and served as the game's final boss. Only he wasn't all that final - because after 'winning' the first time, you meet your mother Persephone, and after just a few moments find out that Zagreus cannot sustain himself outside the Underworld. To truly see the full story play out requires beating it multiple times, increasing the difficulty against yourself further and further. The story is excellent, there are a ton of wonderful characters to meet, and there is a staggering amount of dialogue - as in, I googled 'How much dialogue is there in Hades' because there seemed to be no end to it, which is astonishing for the roguelite genre - these games often don't get much further than 'Retrieve the Amulet of Yendor' and call it a day. All of which is to say that I have high hopes for this game, and while I try to avoid reviews and spoilers for games I haven't played yet I've heard great things - the original Hades has a well deserved reputation and I'm far from the only person to eagerly await its sequel. Looks like old Hades had a bad time after we finished the last game. Run 1: In an action rogue lite , you make repeated attempts (runs) to finish the game but generally begin so weak that only near-perfect play will actually let you succeed. After you fail, you've generally acquired some form of either currency or bonus that carries over into future runs and makes you stronger - as long as you're obtaining these, you're making progress through the game, and eventually a combination of your own improving skills and the permanent bonuses to your character accumulate to the point where you can beat the game. This differs from full rogue like in which you don't acquire these permanent bonuses, and every new run begins with your character in the same state as it was before, and beating the game is entirely reliant on your own skills. Instead of Zagreus, we're playing as Melinoë, who I don't recognize from the first game. I note that she has different colored eyes, which Zagreus also had. The name Melinoë slightly annoys me because now I have to figure out how to type ë The gameplay is instantly familiar to me - they haven't changed much from how Hades feels combat-wise which to my mind is a good thing, as it's got one of the most fun combat systems around. I've been thrown directly into Erebus and we're battling lost souls. In this game Erebus is the first area, long in shadow and decay - I think in myth Erebus is a God unto itself but Hades doesn't pretend to be an exact retelling of Greek mythology, they put their own interpretation on things. Melinoë appears hell-bent (sorry) on killing the Titan Chronos. Melinoë's starting weapon, the Witch Staff, has great range. What mainly distinguishes runs from each other in Hades I and II is that you get different boons from the Olympian Gods - each one offers a selection of powers that can alter and enhance one of your attack types, your dodge, or a number of passive or triggered effects. The first God you meet is Apollo, a newcomer to the Hades games. The abilities are themed to the God - Poseidon, for instance, has a lot of water-based attacks that tend to shove enemies around. Charon reprises his role as an incomprehensible shopkeeper Combat takes place within a single room, and for the majority of them the objective is simple - kill everything that isn't you. In addition to your own variety of attacks, you can use the room's terrain and traps to harm foes, which makes for a fun and vibrant battles. After clearing a room, you get whatever the reward for that is, and then you get to pick the next room's rewards. I don't recognize either of these symbols. The initial enemies in Erebus aren't all that challenging, in part because this game is so mechanically similar to its predecessor that it already feels familiar to me. In no time I've reached the first area's boss. That would be Hecate, who is apparently my tutor and headmistress. I'd thank her but she's about to follow up this compliment by beating me up Between my pitiful starting health pool and being wholly unfamiliar with her attacks, I die. Not a bad first attempt at all - I think it took me a couple runs in Hades before I reached the first boss. I hope Melinoë likes this resurrection spot, we'll be returning here often. Wherever this between-runs area is, it's where we'll get to meet some other characters, enhance our abilities, and learn more about what's going on. It looks like Persephone had an affair with a potato. All right, so there's Hades acting as a moody background, with his wife Persephone on the right and their son / Hades I hero Zagreus on the left, and little baby Melinoë being enjoyed by everyone (except Hades, he's just that kind of Dad). There's another departure from the traditional myth - Zagreus and Melinoë are children of Hades here rather than of Zeus. I don't have the full story of what happened yet but as near as I can surmise, the Titan Chronos has kidnapped everyone in the family except me. No idea why, but this is enough for everyone around me to be down with killing the guy - so Death to Chronos! Hecate is here, offering encouragement - she didn't expect me to succeed on the first attempt. Nor did anyone else. Nemesis, I'd say 'Ye of little faith' but I didn't expect to win on the first attempt either. I find an altar where I can use my accumulated ashes (The gray symbol from earlier) to unlock Arcana cards, which are permanent upgrades - though it looks like there are only nine of them, which seems low. It looks like I have a limited number of 'Arcana' slots so when I unlock more of these I have to decide which ones should be active for a given run. Just before setting out on another attempt, there's a training room complete with one of my favorite characters from Hades - Schelemeus. He's a living skeleton who serves as a training dummy that you can practice your attacks on - it's fine, he'll come right back if you kill him. I want to know where and how he got a beard And with that, it's time to try again. Run 2: The Gods you run into and the abilities they offer can greatly affect your build and ensuing playstyle for a run. Sometimes you end up with an interesting mix of abilities, and sometimes you can enhance one particular type of attack to such a degree that it becomes your weapon of choice. Grandma Demeter is incensed by Chronos and offers attacks that freeze foes. In this case, Demeter's enhancement to my special attack lets me freeze enemies a good distance away, holding them in place and letting me pick them off safely. I've taken hardly any damage by the time I clear Erebus and reach Hecate again, and this time I've picked up some additional health along the way so I can afford to make some mistakes in this battle. I didn't anticipate being turned into a goofy sheep but I survived the experience. I hope Hecate teaches me the sheep transmogrification thing, that would come in handy! This time I defeat Hecate and she allows me to continue to the next area. In the original Hades you were always trying to proceed upward to escape - this time I'm trying to head deep into the bowels of the Underworld to where Chronos resides. Right at the start I meet Eris, who I think  is on my side, but she leaves me with a "blessing" that makes me more vulnerable to damage. I guess that's what I get for having an incarnation of strife try to 'help'. Ahead looms the second area, Oceanus, an aquatic-themed mess of pipes and waterfalls. Did I mention that the art in these games is excellent? The fish-themed enemies here are notably tougher and faster, and I'm feeling underpowered. Despite that, I make good progress and don't take too much damage - at first. A horde of tiny fish prompts me to use area-of-effect magic to deal with them. Sometimes in the room selection you'll see a skull appear above a door. This indicates that a particularly difficult room lies beyond, but if you can do them then you're in for a better reward than you ordinarily get. If you want to have a particularly powerful build, it's a good idea to complete these rooms - assuming they don't kill or cripple you, you'll be better off in the long run. So I tried the first skull room that I saw. It was a giant jellyfish accompanied by a whole swarm of friends and it hurt real bad. I won, but just barely - I was down to 10 life. Thanks to my upgrades I currently heal 3 health per room, but that's not sufficient to fix the situation - low health means no room for mistakes, and healing items are few and far between in Hades II. A new addition to the game - you can fight a few more enemies to get an alternate choice for the next room. All of the Witch Staff's attacks have an alternate 'Omega' version that happens by holding down the attack button, it both uses up your magic and does a lot more damage. And in this case looks cool as hell. I recovered some health from a shop but I still wasn't back to full strength by the time I encountered the second boss - the Sirens. There was a line of lost souls waiting outside the club but they just let me in, VIP status! This is amazing, Scylla and the Sirens are a full-on band and they're playing the boss music themselves for this fight! I am beside myself on this one, the song is just great. Being killed by them does nothing to diminish my joy at this boss music. After resurrection, you can confide in a large frog nearby and share your woes. You can also kiss the frog, but doing so merely turns it into a kissed frog. There are already some significant upgrades here at camp - first and foremost Hecate has finished purifying the Cauldron, which can be used to unlock further camp upgrades. I can already afford to get a shopkeeper and mining tools. The Arcana cards expand much more than the initial nine I was presented with, there are a lot more than nine and I don't know how many there are at this point. I also have my first trinket - I can take one of these per run, which will provide some form of bonus. You level up the trinkets by using them. I got Apollo's trinket by giving him Ambrosia, which can be found as a room reward Nemesis in camp is not at all impressed with me. I mean she's twice my size and has badass armor, maybe SHE should be killing Chronos. Run 3: Thanks to mining tools, I can now harvest silver from resource nodes. There's a greater variety of resources to collect and spend in Hades II My third attempt begins with encountering a new Goddess: Hestia grants me a fire attack which burns enemies after they've been whacked I particularly like the way the UI for these flames works - the enemy's health bar gets an orange chunk inside it, which helpfully indicates whether the fire is going to finish them off or not if the entire health bar is orange. A couple rooms in, I see an upgrade that I always sought in Hades - a Daedalus hammer, which grants you powers based on the weapon you have equipped. Many of these upgrades are significant and can help immensely. Vampiric Cataclysm restores life, which will give me staying power. At this point in the game my ability to recover hit points is pretty limited, so being able to restore 5 HP by killing an enemy in the correct way is huge - it's not uncommon to be able to kill multiple enemies in a room this way and recover a whole lot if I need to. We're still on our 'meet the cast' tour of the many characters we'll encounter - Artemis pops into an encounter to help me kill everything and then chat afterwards. It's nice to have a friend along the way. The burning plus life recovery is proving to be a very effective combination, and even Hecate spawns in monsters a couple times that just serve to let me recover hits. Despite being turned into a sheep again (I have to learn to avoid that!) I defeat Hecate and move on. Entering Oceanus, a mysterious figure is waiting for me. He makes a time reference, is this Chronos or one of his minions? He slinks off after Melinoë rebukes him, guess I'll find out later. Oceanus features those large schools of fish, which have now become a huge pile of HP recovery with Vampiric Cataclysm - even when I take hits I'm back to full by the time the room is over. I also ran into a self-absorbed guy. I mean, with a name like that he was doomed from the start. At least he gave me a present! If this plays out like Hades I then I assume Narcissus lives here in Oceanus, and I'll find him regularly here to both play out his story and get help from him. Initially the limiting factor for recovering life is that the attack I need to use costs magic, so I can only do it so many times - but there are abilities that let you recover your magic, and I pull a great one. Now regular attacks restore magic, and Omega attacks restore my health (if they kill things) I ran into a different mid-boss, this angry seahorse. He might have been having an off day. He was utterly trivial compared to the jellyfish. So I'm still at full life when I reach Scylla, and not only that - I've improved my base hit points a lot by picking up life increase hearts frequently. The more HP I have, the more mistakes I can afford to make. I still don't know the fight that well and Melinoë and the Sirens trade hits over and over until both sides are on the ragged edge of death. And then... Scylla summons a huge school of fish to help. Big mistake with this build. Once the fish minions appear, it's a smorgasbord - I recover all my health and finish her off for my first victory over the Sirens. As a nice touch, the area just past the stage is the Siren's dressing room. Beyond Oceanus, the bleak and wide fields of Mourning. Let's see if this build is good enough to carry me past this Eris is waiting for me here, and gives me another 'Blessing' - I wonder if she's here intentionally to prevent me from beating the game too quickly, as this build is proving extremely robust and I'm wondering if it could go all the way. Eris' curse will help ensure that doesn't happen as enemy damage ramps up against me for every encounter going forward. The Fields of Mourning have a different structure than the prior areas - instead of discrete rooms we have much larger open areas with multiple rewards scattered around, and taking the main ones prompts enemies to appear and attack you. I could see this being a place that will attrit me most times, but the Vampire can take it all and keep going strong. I'm still at full health when I get to the end. The boss here is an old friend, and it pains me to see him like this. Cerberus, buddy! What did they do to you?! Hades I Cerberus casually lounges around the throne room and you can pet him because he's a good boy. He's supposed to help flight Zagreus and prevent his escape from the Underworld but instead he just lets Zagreus walk by him in exchange for a doggie treat. Melinoë is going to have a much harder time with the three-headed guardian. I've got a lot of health but... I mean, look at this. How in the hell do I dodge this madness? It's too much, and Eris' curse doesn't help. Run 3 ends in the jaws of Cerberus. I don't resurrect right away. Instead we get a picture of young Melinoë growing up, playing hide and seek with Hecate. Melinoë never got to know her family, Hecate raised her. There's more things to unlock back at camp, including a farm plot where I plant some poisonous berries. Since she was raised by a witch it seems Melinoë follows after her foster mother's example. I also unlocked a new weapon, the Sister Blades. Run 4: Did I mention there are a lot of characters to meet? Selene shows up with various Hexes, which I can use in a room after I burn through an amount of mana. The horse's helmet make it look like it has goofy pale eyes Also, I ran into someone who lives in Erebus. Normally spiders are scary but you're about to see a counterexample. SHE. IS. ADORABLE. Arachne's benefits are neat, you can pick an item of clothing that grants you temporary armor, and so long as that armor lasts you also get a unique ability, such as regenerating magic. Oh, and I got my wish - the hex I took from Selene lets you turn enemies into sheep! The sheep are sized based on their original form I'm not immediately enamored with these Sister Blades, but I expect the weapons in Hades II will eventually become quite a bit more powerful and distinct than their original forms, plus I'm still getting used to them. I enjoy shorter ranged weapons because fighting toe to toe is a blast, but it does tend to hurt. As an example of the detailed dialogue that's gone into this game, Hecate has her own line - multiple lines, in fact - for when she gets hit with the hex that turns her into a sheep. I didn't really think it would work but I had to try. As a reward for beating her, Hecate hands me the Book of Shadows. It's the game's codex, with entries about all the characters, enemies, areas and so forth and each page will reveal more information in time. Early in Oceanus, that creepy guy from before shoes up - it was indeed Chronos, and he decides to interfere directly in my efforts by sending me to Asphodel. I had your number early, Titan. Asphodel is a fiery place that I fought through many times as Zagreus from the first game - this time you only have to beat one hard room in it to escape, but I'm pretty hurt afterward. The enemies are the same as well, what's new is having to remain in the circle to escape. I'm not in great shape by the time I reach the Sirens, but to my surprise after having been beaten once, they've got a whole new song to play! In fact, Oceanus itself has been playing a different soundtrack since I got here. How much music did they write for this band? If it's all the same to you I'd prefer to suffer through drowning first Asphodel left me weak, and I couldn't beat the band this time. After I die, but before I resurrect, a servant of the three Fates contacts me. You think they spent hours drawing you for us to meet once? I'm pretty confident we'll meet again. Moros brings me the Fated List of Minor Prophecies, which is a fancy way of saying 'Here's a list of quests we'll reward you for'. Interesting that this doesn't say it'll be against Chronos. Run 5: This time the first god I run into is Zeus, the big man himself. Did I mention this game has a large cast? Now I've got an ability that makes a thunder cloud appear over foes, and then when I deal enough damage to them it hits them with a lightning bolt, thus piling on the damage to a single target. Aside from being turned into a sheep yet again, I'm getting much better at the Hecate fight and get past it while only suffering a single hit. Chronos is waiting between the worlds again to taunt me. I take a swipe at him but he just laughs and departs. All of the voice acting in the game is great, but I want to give special recognition to the guy playing Narcissus, he really manages to hit a perfect note here. Voiced by Darren Korb who I assume must have some degree of self-absorption to pull this off I'm not great at the Siren battle yet but I've gotten good enough to pull through it again this time and reach the Fields of Mourning. Eris is here again to hurt my chances of making it through this place. I'm very curious as to what causes her to appear - and it's not all bad, in addition to her 'blessing' she also leaves behind a significant amount of between-run upgrade materials. I've gotten an armor-destroying ability so now's as good a time as any to discuss one of Hades' combat mechanics. Normal run-of-the mill enemies and even mid-bosses will get briefly stunned when you damage them, so with most weapons you can be aggressive and throw yourself into attacking your foes and stun lock them until they're dead - the main threat then comes from other enemies and traps that can hit you while you're beating the crap out of your target, so you need to balance your crap-beating with frequent dodging and running around. 'Elite' enemies spawn with a yellow armor bar, but besides simply having more health the real problem is that you don't stun armored enemies when you hit them and interrupt their attacks, so they'll hit you right back if you try it - you need to be much more careful engaging such foes as your target remains a serious threat until that armor breaks, which is all the more problematic when your weapon is a short ranged as these blades are. I picked up a 'Duo' ability - these can appear when you have powers from two particular gods, and in this case Zeus and Poseidon team up to give me a 'splash ball' which forms when I run around for a bit to charge it up and then unleash into a large, damaging splash attack. Behold my sploosh of death I also meet the NPC of the Fields, and this is a strange one. She speaks in echoes and little else Despite not being a great conversationalist she gives me a dodge ability that saves me several times and almost gets me through the battle against Cerberus. Almost. Back at camp, I get a couple major upgrades from the Cauldron - a specific weapon each night will have a 'grave thirst' which means it generates bones for that run - bones can be traded at a local shop for other mid-run currencies. I also obtain a lifespring in Erebus which will give me some mid-area healing. I don't need a lifespring for Erebus but eventually I should be able to get them for Oceanus and the Fields and I'll be damn glad to have them. I don't think I've mentioned a couple characters in camp - there's Dora the schizophrenic ghost who offers encouragement or attempts to frighten me, and there's also the ancient hero of old, Odysseus. Here he reminisces about his own encounters with the siren. Napoleon said it is better to be lucky than good. Odysseus was not lucky. In Hades I, Hypnos, the god of sleep would usually greet Zagreus after his many deaths. Ever since Melinoë was a child Hypnos has been locked in a deep sleep, but on a whim I try giving him a gift of Nectar and he actually responds by mumbling something. I'm going to prioritize giving stuff to Hypnos and see if I can wake him. Before setting out I unlock the Umbral Flames. They're a bit strange to wield - you can move (slowly) while firing slow projectiles. These will take some getting used to. I do like the orbiting special attack, it sticks around awhile and you can fire and forget it. Lastly, there's a stop in camp where you can look up and see the moon. I initially assumed it was a static picture but it just struck me that the moon phases are probably important - Hecate even mentioned that she didn't expect me to succeed on a New Moon on my first run. I don't know what it does but it does something! Run 6: Hermes shows up to greet me right away. He says I'm needed in Olympus? This conversation feels pretty important, and it's followed up with Hecate telling me to stay on the task I've been assigned - I'm curious how and when I might try to get to Olympus, that would be a pretty cool addition to the game. Hephaestus also appears for the first time and grants me a pretty great alpha-strike ability. He makes my main attack really whomp foes but it has a long cooldown. Did I mention I didn't need a lifespring for Erebus? Karma heard me - this time I take a lot of damage trying to get used to wielding the Flames - it's actually my worst run so far through the area. Between Hephaestus and Selene I get a big whomping attack and a death-star laser beam, tempered by the fact that I move like a snail during the former and not at all during the latter. I have great damage and terrible survivability. The battle against the Sirens couldn't be closer as I get down to 5 health. At least Eris isn't waiting for me in the Fields this time. Behold the power of this fully armed and operational Melinoë! I honestly didn't expect to reach Cerberus this run but the fields goes exceptionally well as I gain a better handle on this weapon and my capabilities - I get a big life increase and also pick up the dodge ability again from Echo. This run has come a long way from almost dying in Erebus. SIT DOWN Good boy! A cured Cerberus happily bounds away into the Fields, likely to be re-evilified by the time I return here. I enjoy the moment of triumph - Chronos had better watch out because I'm making great progress. Melinoë unseals the way into Tartarus. Tartarus was the first area in Hades so of course it's been made much more difficult. You can choose either a direct route to Chronos or you can take detours, fighting through additional rooms for significant upgrades. I am seldom inclined to pass on the acquisition of power. The enemies here are a mix of enhanced foes from the original plus some time-themed foes, and... uh... angry bags. Melinoë: I am NOT losing to a bag! Chronos: What about... a LOT of bags? Run 7: I had a plan where I'd try a cast-based build this time and leave giant flaming circles in my wake, and I died at Hecate. I did meet Chaos though, a familiar risk / reward option from the previous game. Chaos first curses you, but if you survive the experience the curse changes to a nice benefit. Which one is Chaos? All of them. Thanks to a semi-combative discussion about the matter with Hecate, I now have a recipe (but not the ingredients) for something that will break the ward that leads upward towards Olympus. Other characters are starting to weigh in on the matter. Odysseus thinks it may improve my chances against Chronos, though I'm unclear how exactly it's supposed to help. Selene on the other hand sees it as a distraction from my main task. Sorry Selene, I'm very easily distracted. Run 8: I really did like the idea of having a large fiery casting circle so I grab Hestia's trinket to help encounter her early and try it again. You never have full control over your build in Hades but if you want a particular ability that's often in the cards, especially if you stack the deck a bit. I run into Nemesis disobeying orders and trying to go slay Chronos. Personally I'm in favor of this. This time I pick up some synergies for it - by the time I beat Hecate my attack and special are still basic attacks, but my casting circle now burns enemies inside it, slowly expands and gets larger while it exists, and if I use the Omega version it finishes off with a burst of extra damage a couple seconds after it collapses. This build may be a one-trick pony, but that's perfectly fine when it's a good trick. That trick is one big beautiful boom It works particularly well against the Sirens - since there's three of them I can simultaneously damage two or even all three while focusing my energy on dodging. It's even good enough to get through the Fields and take down Cerberus. Unfortunately Eris is waiting at the entrance to Tartarus to put the kibosh on a highly successful run. What's her deal anyway? I'm noticing more of Chronos' changes to Tartarus, he's build large clock-like mechanisms around the place, and notably the blood of the river Styx has been replaced by the Sands of Time. I too would like a fancy clock as my floor Ok Hermes I'd love to help but I can't break the ward yet This time I'm lucky enough to stumble across a prisoner... the big man himself! He's alive! Despite being chained Hades has still found enough gel to keep the beard rockin' Hades sends me on my way with some life restoration, and being a little more judicious about which upgrades to pursue leaves me in good shape when I reach the House of Hades - currently occupied by our villain. Unfortunately for Chronos I'm just as deathless. Kill me and I'll be back later. The battle actually doesn't strike me as being quite as nasty as Hades was to fight in the original, at least initially. That said I haven't done it before, and thanks to Eris, Chronos hits like a truck. Plus he moves around enough that my cast circles tend not to have their full effect. Despite my defeat I'm pretty happy to have gotten this far so quickly. Difficulty-wise this feels close to where Hades I is. Hecate agrees with that assessment. I start brewing a shadow potion that should be the last ingredient I need to break the ward heading for Olympus, but it needs time (in the form of fighting encounters on runs) to finish, so it's back to the depths for now. I'm very excited to try heading upward and see what's going on with this alternate path. Run 9: I've unlocked the Axe but have yet to use it - since the weapons have Grave Thirst I'm using whichever weapon has it in order to get extra bones, and tonight it's back to the Witch Staff. I've still got Hestia's trinket and I get a really neat ability from her this time - another Cast modification, but this time it's a full-on fireball spell! Yer a wizard, Melinoë It's great against groups but the boss-killing power is lacking. I end up making up for that in the Fields with a nice attack ability from Zeus. By the time I reach Chronos I have plenty of life and some damage mitigation. It's probably my best, most well-rounded build to date, and there's no Eris to hinder me this time. He killed me anyway. The build was there but the skills were lacking. After my death (Technically these aren't 'deaths', I think Melinoë is casting a spell to save herself and return to camp), I have a vision of Hades giving baby Melinoë to Hecate for safekeeping. Hecate kept Melinoë secret from everyone, including the Olympians. In this scene we get some insight into what Chronos wants - in addition to taking over the House of Hades and trapping everyone in a moment of time (except Hades, for whom he opted to go with the 'large shackles and despair' imprisonment.), Chronos is after the three Fates. Villains have it rough, they can't even secretly reveal their plan in a flashback Talking to Moros in camp reveals much more - Chronos has indeed captured the three Fates, and is somehow using them to give him the upper hand over the Olympians as he assaults Olympus itself. Knowing that Olympus is under attack with the aid of the Fates inclines me to help sooner rather than later... Incantation-wise, good news on that front. Olympus, here I come. Run 10 (Olympus): Zeus didn't get the memo that I was headed up here. Right, I'd forgotten that the whole reason Zagreus has to beat Hades a dozen or more times is because he expires about 30 seconds after getting to his mom's house. I immediately start taking damage from being a Chthonic entity just breathing the air up here. Looks like a zombie horde? Did Chronos raise the dead to attack Olympus? I only get through a couple rooms before the air brings me down and it's over. I simply can't survive up here for long. Could you have told me about this before I suffocated myself? Moros reveals that an incantation should help me survive up there. I check the ingredients, and there's two that I don't have - one is Moss which grows on the surface, the other is Thalamus which is a plant the grows in the realm of Chaos. I'll have to make more short-lived excursions to the surface for the moss and then keep making runs downward for the Thalamus before I can really attempt the path to Olympus. I also lucked out and managed to gather a bit of bronze to obtain the fishing pole back home. Run 11 (Olympus): Got moss, choked to death - great success! Run 12 (Underworld): Trying the Moonstone Axe for the first time, it's simultaneously ponderously slow but compensates for it with amazing range. I feel like the Omega moves on this thing are especially important since it's basic strikes aren't particularly fast. Why yes, I WOULD like to hit half the screen, thank you. In Hades I, your 'ultimate' attacks were all granted by a variety of the Gods, with each on granting a separate ultimate. In Hades II, only Selene grants it to you as your Hex (and it's the only type of boon she offers). For the first time this run I encounter Selene a second time to find out how that works. The Path of Stars: Your Hex benefits from a mini skill tree selection. Anyway, the axe is slow and I got hurt by running into Chaos as much as I could to get the incantation ingredients. Sirens got me (and clawed out my eyes and drowned me to death per their hit single). Fun bit about the Sirens battle - when you kill a band member their part of the song stops playing. I don't yet have what I need for the survive-on-the-surface incantation but I do have all the seeds required, so getting up there is now just a matter of farming. Also, some good news: Eris visits the crossroads and promises to stop 'Blessing' me. Hey, pretty sure I recognize that weapon from Hades I. Run 13 (Underworld): This will probably not be an all-time successful adventure because I've disabled all of my arcana cards in order to fulfill a prophecy. I think the Fates have such a good track record because they reward you for making their predictions come true. Aspiring prophets take note. If Hades II follows the path of Hades I, at some point these boss battles will get tougher - potentially a LOT tougher, so it'll be easier for me to do this now while I'm facing normal Hecate than if I wait for her to get scarier. Also, I'm trying out the the Argent Skull as my main weapon this time. It's a bit of a weird weapon in that you fire off skulls that you then need to retrieve, but I immediately take a liking to it - it feels versatile. Like ripples in the sea but they hurt things I take an Onion trinket this run which gives me limited healing to keep my health full for the Hecate fight, and I know the battle well enough by this point that I achieve this run's objective. The amount of context-sensitive dialogue really is impressive. And all voice acted! The lack of Arcana really does hurt, and it shows when I can't beat the Sirens for the second time in a row. Run 14 (Underworld): Early on this run I encounter this strange white bird for the second time. Hecate starts talking about animal familiars and I get an incantation that I presume will let me acquire one - I assume it'll be either this bird or maybe we'll bring Frinos the Frog with us. Frinos doesn't strike me as being a particularly useful combatant. This build gets off to a weird start when I start getting and enhancing the sheepifying Hex - initially it becomes a very Hex-based build where my attacks do very little except let me use the hex, which then turns all my foes into sheep, and if they die while being sheep they explode. Pop goes the Sheeple Also sometimes it turns my enemies into food, which resulted in this very strange battle where I ate a Naga. I get Volcanic Flourish from Hephaestus again and I level it up enough so that it'll trigger every 2 seconds - I smashed through the Sirens and Cerberus with it easily. I don't have a lot of other abilities, but the ones have are excellent. Time for another crack at Chronos. On the way I grab as much health and self-healing as I can - I've got the damage, now I need to be durable. The power of Hephaestus lands a killing blow on the Titan! Yes! Death to Chronos! Or I guess... that was Death to Chronos Phase 1... What followed was a messy blow-for-blow slugfest that killed me. In fact, it killed me twice... but I had two death defiances thanks to upgrading my Arcana, and on my final life I laid the Titan low. Victory! Neurotic Soul (from Chaos) gave me just enough health to make this work. Now in many roguelikes, defeating the final boss would simply be the end of the game. In Hades, it is merely the end of the beginning - Chronos is only temporarily inconvenienced, and we have much more to accomplish before we truly win. Melinoë gets started on her plan right away - she heads for Zagreus' bedroom, and casts an incantation upon the Mirror of Night there to contact her brother (to be precise, Zagreus in the past), who she's never met. This is a very odd family reunion since from Zagreus' perspective Melinoë doesn't exist yet. It's probably going to take several discussions through the mirror to get Zagreus to do anything useful, hence the need to defeat Chronos several times. After trying as hard as she can (and making at least some initial progress), Melinoë sends herself back to the Crossroads before Chronos finds out what she's up to. In the training area, I've now unlocked the Oath of the Unseen, which is a fancy way of saying 'We'll reward you if you voluntarily make the game harder on yourself.' I'm not actually doing this right now but things can get a LOT harder. My farming efforts have come to fruition, and I've now performed incantation that should let me survive on the surface - the Oath can wait for now while I give Olympus another shot. Upward, ho! Run 15 (Olympus): Now that I can be on the surface for more than 30 seconds, I can take my time and look around a bit. The City of Ephyra has seen better days. With a few exceptions the enemies here aren't too bad, though for some rooms the zombies just keep coming and it takes awhile to defeat them. The most notable thing about the city is that the structure of the level is a city square and you can choose your rewards from among all of your options at once. This gives you a lot of flexibility for your initial build. I clear the rooms out without too much difficulty and proceed to annoy a shepherd just outside the city. I would love to turn him into a one-eyed sheep. Unlike the mythical heroes of old, Melinoë isn't one to resort to trickery and employs the tried and tested methodology of excessive violence. In a nod to mythology and perhaps an inability to explain why he might resurrect after being killed, the Cyclops just goes to sleep when you beat him. Melinoë reaches the city docks, and sees a procession of ghostly ships headed for Olympus at the Rift of Thessaly. Looks like Chronos' plan is indeed 'Raise the Undead and overwhelm Olympus.' The battles here take place on the decks of a series of lost ships, and the undead sailors give me a lot of trouble and I get worn down by a nasty Captain with hand cannon that shoots bouncing explosive shots - a weapon I could really use, by the way. By the time I reach the boss I'm on my last legs. Damnit Eris I thought you'd decided to be cool! I gave a good account of myself but when there's no room for error, death ensues. At the crossroads I perform the incantation to obtain Familiars - Frinos will be joining me on the next run. Reviewing what I need for a whole host of future incantations, my future decisions for whether to attempt an Underworld or an Olympus run will be entirely based on where I can obtain the materials, as the surface has a list of things not found in the Underworld and vice-versa. Right now I'd like to build a tavern at the crossroads which requires Nectar and Garlic - I currently have a Garlic seed planted from my last run, and I didn't see Nectar on the surface so I'm heading back down. Run 16 (Underworld): Ok, I wasn't expecting Frinos to be the be-all-end-all of Combat Frogs, but I was hoping he'd be at least a bit more helpful than simply jumping around every so often. His benefits are mostly passive, and I guess that's better than nothing. If you assumed we were done meeting new characters now that I've beaten the main baddie once, I have a bridge to sell you in San Francisco. The Goddess Hera makes her first appearance. Lots of characters make Frinos-related comments, but my favorite reaction is poor Arachne's terror at my having brought a natural predator into her lair. She needn't worry - despite my hopes Frinos wouldn't hurt a fly. Hera's ability is neat, she puts a condition on enemies that causes them to share damage with each other, so it works best if I can put it on a lot of enemies at once - I happen to be using the Moonstone axe which has a massive Omega special, and with that plus a few other enhancements I've got a decent build cooking. It cooks up damage numbers, lots of them. And to put a cherry on top, I pick up a really great Hera / Aphrodite combination power that automatically charms one of my enemies until there's only one left. I've suddenly got a reliable ally in combat, and it's not Frinos. I'm regretting that I forgot to turn on the Oath of the Unseen for this run - the sooner I start making runs with it the sooner I'll benefit from its effects, and at least initially I suspect I'll be able to find settings that don't change the game's difficulty all that much. During the second Chronos phase some hourglasses appear that shoot healing beams at him - except for the one that I charmed, which shoots ME with its healing beam - nice work programming the charm effect there. This hourglass better skip town before Chronos resurrects. Chronos falls again and Melinoë starts explaining the overall situation to Zagreus in their brief time together. At the Cauldron, a new incantation is revealed that will prevent Chronos from resurrecting, but unlike the others I don't know the full recipe for it yet. I suspect performing this and then killing Chronos is how one wins the game, or at least accomplishes major story progression. Killing Time itself forever probably won't have any unforeseen side effects. Run 17 (Olympus): I turn on the Oath of the Unseen for the first time and give Olympus another whirl. If I can defeat Eris I'll get an extra reward for doing so. This time around Heracles is here to warn me away from a city that I've managed to clear before. I briefly thought he was a Centaur from the artwork here. Aphrodite's powers generally let you do bonus damage to enemies that are close (I guess that's the power of love?), but that restriction is removed when I pick up a boon that has all her abilities treat enemies as being close. Hey, the Cyclops is actually wearing a living sheep on his cloak. At the docks before entering Thessaly I encounter a cat for the second time, and since I have pet treats we hit it off and I've acquired a second familiar. My daughter will like this one. Battling my way through the ships I get unexpected aid in the form of someone helpfully dropping bombs on the deck from above. Hold up a sec, I need to warn you about sun exposure. I reach Eris in better shape than I did last time, and Icarus' gift was armor that when destroyed hits enemies (once) for a massive 4,000 damage - it chops Eris' health by almost a third, and I'm able to win the fight. For my efforts: A delicious golden apple and some purple muck. Having defeated Strife, grandiose music plays as Melinoë reaches the gates of Olympus itself. The place isn't looking so hot. Good lord that's a lot of enemies. These levels are stuffed to the brim with minions of Chronos as well as automatons that fight against them. I know this game plays fast and loose with mythology but I'm pretty sure it's the Illiad that describes the killer robots that the Gods use to keep their home safe. Spoiler: Talos is indeed as dumb as the other automatons and also tries to kill me. Not everyone here is hostile - Athena shows up and smashes a whole room full of foes by way of introduction. If you wouldn't mind taking a break every so often and killing Chronos in your spare time it would be appreciated. And Charon's... cardboard cutout is here too. These battles are tough, and I wasn't exactly in great shape after Eris, but I limp all the way to the end where I run into Prometheus, who absolutely slaughters me in tandem with his Eagle. Also, I really don't blame Prometheus for wanting to get a little (or a lot) of payback against the Gods. Frinos, you see that bird? I need you to be a lot more like that bird. I haven't written much about the main appeal of the game, for which I apologize for getting so far into before remarking on directly - combat is just plain fun as hell, and the sheer variety of builds you can make and then adapt your tactics to means that even though you're replaying the same levels over and over, it's pure concentrated joy. The levels may repeat, but every run is different - so much so that each time I'm considering what abilities to pick, how they'll mesh with what I've got, and how best to use them to win. Run 18 (Underworld): Toula the cat is what I was hoping for in an animal familiar - she fights AND has passive bonuses, like auto-catching fish. Frinos is going to enjoy the rest of his comfortable life in the crossroads unless I need him to fulfill a prophecy or something. Get 'em kitty! For the first time I'm seeing 'God conflict' rooms where you have boons from two Gods and you can get both, but the one you pick second gets pissed off at you and you have to clear the room while the God is throwing an additional complication your way. These rooms appeared much earlier in Hades I and I'm not sure why their appearance here is so delayed (possibly because they're extremely dangerous and ended many of my early Hades I runs). To illustrate what I was talking about with builds, this time I've got the Sister Blades with Aphrodite's close-up damage plus a large backstab bonus, so the run starts with me darting in and out of combat trying to hit foes in the rear and darting away. Later on I get Hera's curse on my sprint, which means that enemies share damage once I run by them - and all of a sudden the main tactic I use changes from hit and run attacks to running around the entire room linking all of the enemies together and then smashing the toughest one, which causes all of the others to be hurt or killed. It clears whole rooms quickly. Chronos falls a third time, and Melinoë starts getting into specifics of how we're going to beat Chronos for good. This seems overly complicated, could we build a magic stopwatch? Worse than complexity, Melinoë's plan to 'Undo the harm' Chronos has caused seems likely to create a paradox - if Chronos doesn't imprison Hades and time-freeze the family then Melinoë won't have been raised by Hecate to fight Chronos. At camp I've unlocked the Aspects of weapons, giving each one two additional 'forms' that change their bonuses and characteristics. This one looks fun, I could just send Toula into battle and channel spells through her while I remain at a safer distance. Run 19 (Olympus): Using the Axe I get a Daedalus hammer that gives me one giant slow axe attack. This ends up pairing in a fun way with the sheep hex where I can turn foes into sheep, summon them into a group, and then hit them all with a massive attack. I've determined that each area has a singular NPC 'room encounter' in it, and on this run I meet a pair of witches in Ephyra and Thessaly. Perhaps on the surface there be Witches Three? I'm getting a goth 'everything sucks' vibe from Medea. Circe made me larger, which made the axe whomp harder but also made me a bigger target. Big, chonky and slow isn't my preferred playstyle, and especially not in this game where the enemies and their attacks need constant avoidance. This build is too slow for me to avoid taking damage and I almost lose to Eris, then find my end shortly afterward in Olympus. Between runs I try making a potion that should revive Hypnos. It backfires - all it does is bring me into Hypnos' dream. Hypnos is asleep EVEN IN HIS DREAMS, dude is hardcore. I also unlock Chaos trials, which are runs that set you up with a less randomized build for you to try the game with. These don't seem to advance the story. The first trial gives you a thousand health, which makes it easier than the main game. I cleared the available Chaos trials which the game regards as runs so I'm going to keep my numbering system consistent - since they don't advance the story I'm not going to record them and run gaps are attempts at the various trials. Run 25 (Olympus): Another attempt with the axe, I ran into several of new foes this time. First, I tried the Rivals oath which enhances the bosses, resulting in the Cyclops getting some help from Medea. You cannot in fact pretend that she is not there. Then, apparently sensing that I was up for trying new things, the game threw Charybid... Charbi.. Charybdis at me in Thessaly. I'm gonna need a bigger boat. And finally I end up fighting a straight-up dragon that I didn't catch the name of, but it was real nasty and ended the run. This fight went so badly that I decided to quickly snag resources just before death. Run 26 (Olympus): I've been wondering where Dionysus has been - in Hades he's one of the main Gods that offers you boons. Not this time! Dionysus has decided to just throw a party instead. Can't let the end of the world ruin a good time! I have one hell of a build going here, it's using a Hex that turns me into an invincible incarnate and I have magic that regenerates quickly so I can spend a good portion of a fight being immune to damage. Prometheus is cast here as the Titan of Foresight - so he saw it coming but couldn't stop me this time. Invincibility IS a neat trick that can take you far. For whatever reason in my head I was thinking that Prometheus was the final boss of the ascent to Olympus (and I'm not sure why, the Underworld path has four areas and so does Olympus). I'm still in relatively good shape when I reach the summit. Things feel pretty grim up here. The feeling turns out to be justified - the enemies up here are insane. I'm doing great damage but this thing doesn't go down easily. These foes are just brutal, and while I'm sure part of that is that I haven't been here before, I figured that I still had enough juice to reach whatever's at the end of the Summit. They hit fast, they hit like trucks, and some can't possibly even fit on the screen. Implausible as it seems, the owner of this hand snuck up on me. I end up battling against a huge creature's tail and lose. Attempts on Olympus are significantly harder than the Underworld, this build would have absolutely wiped the floor with Chronos and wouldn't have broken a sweat getting to him. Run 29 (Underworld): I returned underground to obtain some plants I need for various cauldron recipes as well as hopefully obtain the white bird I saw earlier as a new familiar. Found a black dog instead of the bird but I'll take it. I made it to Zagreus and Melinoë elaborates on her plan - we need to find a weapon that exists both in Zagreus' time and Melinoë's. Maybe the Rail of Adamant would work, if I could steal it from Eris.... I've been mulling over why Hades is one of a very few roguelites that goes about telling a story, and part of it is that the structure of such a game makes it challenging - in terms of gameplay you are playing through the same areas and fighting the same bosses over and over, so where a 'normal' game could just tell you the story as you encounter characters and make steady progress over the course of the game, a rogue derivative has to tell a 'meta' story that doesn't quite follow the gameplay. Instead, your 'best' progress in the game marks an inflection point where the overall story can advance. One clear example was defeating Chronos for the first time was an event that everyone reacted to and began discussing. The characters in camp like Hecate that you will reliably meet and talk to are the ones that help advance the plot the most since the devs can rely on players encountering them. The other characters like the Gods that provide boons are essentially random encounters that you may or may not meet on any given run, so what happens there is that they will have comments from their own perspective about whatever is currently happening in the story - for instance when I was trying to get the materials to survive on the surface, as lot of gods made that the subject of their discussion. I say 'discussion' but Hades when it comes to mid-run conversations with Gods that you get boons from, they can talk to you but there's no way for you to respond back to them (You CAN deliver them a bottle of nectar which they react to, so it's unclear to me why I can't tie a note to it). I'm enjoying the story of Hades II but I think the premise of Hades I where it's a family affair and you're directly interacting with the same father that just killed you was just a bit more compelling. I think part of what I enjoyed about it was that it wasn't a 'save the world' story - it was about Zagreus' independence and getting to meet his mother. This time with Chronos' forces knocking on the gates of Olympus, we're here to save the world. Run 32 (Olympus): I'm using the Black Coat for the first time - as in the first game they've given us a very anachronistic weapon. The Rail of Adamant let Zagreus basically run around with an assault rifle. If you think that's futuristic, how about guided missiles? I quite like the power and especially the range of this weapon, and I get all the way to the end of the Summit to encounter Typhon, Father of Monsters. Thanks to Dionysus I didn't know my own life total, nor do I know Typhon's, so during the fight I have no idea who's winning the battle until the end. Sadly, it was my end. It felt like I gave him a thrashing but I have no idea how close I got to victory. Run 34 (Olympus): I had almost assumed by this point that Ares was no longer a boon-granting God, because his Hades I ability appears to now be something Zeus grants. Not so! Are we not done meeting people? I feel like I'm pretty close to the end here. The Daedalus hammer turns a very mediocre run into a powerful offense, and it's good enough to take me to Typhon again - but not yet good enough to beat him. At least I picked up another familiar (I now have both of Hecate's pets at my disposal) and every run is still making me stronger. I've unlocked all the Arcana cards but I'm a long way from fully upgrading them. Run 35 (Underworld): I was hoping to find the bird again - I think it's the last familiar I don't have yet - but no luck there. I killed Chronos again and Zagreus proposed using Hades' spear Gigaros against Chronos, if we can somehow let Melinoë access it. Run 36 (Olympus): I'm using the Black Coat, this time with the Aspect of Selene which gives me a unique Hex. The Sky Fall Hex is powerful enough for me to try to build around using it, but the star of the show begins with Demeter's icy missiles that freeze enemies in place from a safe distance. I haven't given Demeter the credit she deserves, even armored foes freeze. One thing that I've been wondering was how Chronos learned where the Fates were - we know he interrogated Hades but Hades claims that he had no idea where they were and thus couldn't reveal the information. When Melinoë brings it up during a conversation with Chaos, the mystery is solved. Turns out Chaos is pretty gullible. I've changed the way I set up Arcana for the last few runs. Instead of picking a full set, I'm only activating three other cards (Death defiance and extra health, because durability is king) in order to activate the Judgement card. Judgement activates three other random Arcana cards when you defeat a boss, and now that it's fully upgraded it activates five - so by the time I've beaten three bosses, I'm a fair bit more powerful than I would be without it. I also just plain enjoy randomly getting stronger. I get a really nice synergy when I pick up an ability that sets my minimum damage to 50 - that turns insignificant abilities like Demeter's whirlwind, which normally does 4 damage per hit, into devastating attacks. My survivability goes through the roof by picking up both the 'get lots more health but you can't see it' boon from Dionysus and a once-per-location death defiance from Athena. I come face to face with part of Typhon's face before facing him. I've got great offense and defense approaching Typhon for the third time, but most important: I feel good about this run. I took a moment to record the battle. That Sky Fall Hex really does an incredible job of clearing up the monsters Typhon throws out during the fight. This build had a lot of great things going on but Air Quality + Arctic Gale was my favorite With Typhon (temporarily) defeated, Melinoë at last finds a nice neighborhood in Olympus where she gets to meet her relatives in person. I suspect Zagreus would have liked to see this. Now that Typhon has been defeated, I suspect I need to keep defeating both him and Chronos to reach the end. Killing Chronos advances the planning with Zagreus, but initially I'm less clear on how repeatedly defeating Typhon helps advance Melinoë's goal - that's remedied when I beat him again a few runs later, and another incantation is revealed that can get rid of Typhon for good. I'm going to need to obtain Gigaros by defeating Chronos enough for Zagreus to obtain it and somehow deliver it to me - it's an ingredient in Typhon's demise - along with several of Typhon's flesh samples, so Typhon needs to die a couple more times before I can get rid of him for good. Once defeated, I think Typhon will drop the last ingredient I need to defeat Chronos once and for all. Incidentally, there still appears to be no way to revive Hypnos yet - I'm starting to suspect I'll need to fully defeat both Typhon and Chronos and then wake him up. I'm currently on Run 44, and there's been an intriguing story development. Zagreus has expressed some reluctance to help with the plan to kill a relative he's never met, and now Hades too doesn't seem particularly driven by a thirst for bloody vengeance. This is not how I expected Hades to feel about the situation. I'm still on a path to permanently vanquish both Typhon and Chronos, but I'm starting to wonder if a more peaceful reconciliation could be in the cards here. I'm also enjoying the side stories that are playing out - Echo is apparently lost in the field of mourning because of her unrequited love for Narcissus, and the latter is actually making a minor effort to help out. Curiously (And I suspect I know where this is going), my spirit-friend and area-decorator Dora once associated with Prometheus, though she's struggling to remember anything about it and Prometheus isn't forthcoming. I'm so happy they have such an extensive repertoire. Bagging Typhon for the fourth time on run 46, I've reached the requirements for the ritual that will get rid of him for good (once I slay him again) - and doing so will drop what I need for the ritual to do the same to Chronos. Run 47 (Olympus): Typhon falls, and stays dead. We will not be peacefully reconciling with this particular monster. Run 48 (Underworld): With the final ritual complete it's time to take one last crack at Chronos. Chronos has his own surprise in store - this time he finds Hecate before she can fight me and captures her. Joke's on you Chronos, you just made this run easier and saved me a boss fight. I've unlocked a hidden Aspect of the Sister Blades for this run, Aspect of the Morrigan, which encourages you to perform a variety of attacks that trigger a big hit on your opponent. It also has blades that boomerang slowly back to you, so you can throw them and then run around being followed by deadly razors. Chronos has one final trick up his sleeve - after his normal two-phase boss fight he has one last bid for survival by giving Melinoë a glimpse of a world without time, and launching into a third phase. I think the game just lets you win this last phase on this endgame run - I think I got an 'infinite' death defiance out of nowhere. With Chronos defeated here, we then see Zagreus encounter Chronos in the past and offer him a chance to surrender quietly rather than die. Chronos doesn't take the offer, and Zagreus tries to stab him with Gigaros - and then what exactly happens is a bit unclear, but I think Chronos, Zagreus, Melinoë, and the rest of the trapped members of the House of Hades experience a possible timeline of what would have happened if Chronos had simply tried to talk things out rather than taking over. This never happened but they REMEMBER it happening. Turns out that alternate possible timeline was pretty great for everyone, Chronos included. Chronos is deeply affected by this vision of the path not taken, and the experience changes him - he surrenders to Melinoë and submits himself to her judgement. Thus, there is peaceful reconciliation in the end, with Chronos trying to atone for his errors - and help clean up the mess he caused. Not everything is fixed - Hypnos is still asleep, the underworld and overworld are still teeming with foes, the three Fates are still missing (Chronos forgot where he put them...) and there is much more to be done, but as this blog post is now possibly my longest ever, I'm going to end it here at this ending, where Melinoë has achieved what she set out to do: She saved her family - All of her family. I'd heartily recommend both of the Hades games to anyone, they're a ton of fun and both feature a 'God mode' in the options that gradually makes the game easier to the point where anyone can beat it. Whatever Supergiant wants to make next, I'm in.

Videogames can be a uniquely frustrating experience for people. You've been drawn in to being that tiny hero with a sword fighting against all odds, and suddenly you encounter a challenge that feels unfair or excessively punishing, and you might spend hours repeating attempts at overcoming it only to fail, over and over. The nature of the challenge can be anything - a difficult boss, tricky moving platforms, a matter of blind luck, or even other players - but the feeling it produces is the same. Rage. Pure anger directed at the challenge, the game, and at yourself for not being good enough to overcome the difficulty. Occasionally this rage manifests itself as real-world violence - not necessarily against people, but against peripherals. In the only study I'm aware of on the subject , one in four gamers admitted to having destroyed or damaged their own equipment in a fit of rage. With such a statistic, a responsible game developer might ask how they could make their games less frustrating. Enter Bennett Foddy, who is not a responsible game developer, because HE wondered if he could make games intended to evoke frustration and suffering, and proceeded to do just that. I have beaten two of his prior games: QWOP in which you directly control the leg muscles of an athlete trying to run a sprint and Getting Over It where you play as a man stuck in a pot trying to climb a mountain using a sledgehammer and somehow that is even more difficult than it sounds. Lest you think I am exaggerating about Bennett Foddy's personal motivations for these games, let me put that to rest by noting that his own description of Getting Over It is " A game I made for a certain kind of person. To hurt them." Foddy is not the sole developer for Baby Steps but it bears Foddy's signature style - the game is a 'walking simulator' in the sense that you have very direct control over your walking motion and you are intended to use these unusual controls to successfully overcome obstacles. Challenge accepted. Our hero is Nate. He's 35, lives at home, and his parents are calling him down for a 'family meeting'. Shout-out to One Piece For absolutely no reason whatsoever he is teleported out of his depressing circumstances into a pretty good looking forest! I immediately fell down. This is going to happen a lot. Suddenly a man pops out and initiates a very awkward conversation. Uhhh... cave-drawing number 3 seems well endowed Jim is a bit off-putting but he does do his best to try to tell Nate what's going on and to try to get him some shoes, but Nate is having none of it - he isn't terribly concerned about having been transported here and mostly just wants Jim to leave him the hell alone. Jim shows up again just a little ways ahead for another conversation about Nate having to use the bathroom and offers a bush as an option. Nate isn't having any of that either. These are some of the most intentionally awkward conversations I've seen in any videogame, Nate is NOT someone who loves interacting with people. Ahead, the landscape opens up and in the distance I can see a light on the horizon. I suppose I'm intended to head for it? But after taking a look around I see that there's actually another way to go - it appears I have a fair bit more freedom in Baby Steps than the linear climb of Getting Over It. There's a Ferris wheel in the distance so we're going to check it out. I should take a moment to describe the process of walking here, because that's mainly what the game is about. When 3D games were first coming out, it wasn't immediately clear to game developers how you should control your character, and the problem was most pronounced in games that featured an outside view of your character in a 3D space. If you go back and play early games like Tomb Raider and Grim Fandango you'll encounter 'Tank' controls, where regardless of where the camera is (often in a fixed position) pushing 'up' on the controller causes your character move forward in the direction they are currently facing. As games came along with more of a free-moving camera, movement controls became contextualized on your viewpoint - now pushing 'up' would cause the character to first turn directly away from the camera and then start moving forward once they were facing the 'correct' direction, and this intuitive scheme is mainly what we use today to varying degrees of success. Bennett Foddy took one look at that and said that we didn't have enough fine control of our feet and made this game to solve a problem that nobody had. So, Baby Steps' game controls are as follows (For a standard controller, masochists can also use the mouse / keyboard): If you move the control stick in a direction, Nate leans in that direction and leaning too far will cause you to fall down. The L and R triggers respectively cause Nate to lift his left / right foot. Despite appearances Nate is not the definition of poise and grace, so standing on one foot for too long will cause you to fall down. When lifting a foot, the control stick switching from leaning to moving that individual foot so you can place it where desired. Stretching the foot too far from you or placing it on untenable ground or misplacing it or thinking bad thoughts about Bennett Foddy will cause you to fall down. In fact I believe that the only reason they didn't call this game 'Falling Down' is that two other obscure games have already taken that moniker. In any case, I've found it's possible to walk forward simply by tilting the control stick up and correctly timing the left / right triggers so at least on flat terrain it's not difficult to make forward progress (with the occasional tumble). The challenge comes when you try to do anything other than walk over flat ground. Like attempting to climb this rail. I did not succeed. For a game involving falling, I'm happy to report that watching Nate fall is pretty entertaining and both the physicality of it and the sound design make for good entertainment. Especially if a friend is watching and laughing at you. Deeper into this area I've found evidence that this was a long-abandoned carnival or amusement park. The horse did not push me over, I fell all by myself In the carnival area I found signs indicating that someone is missing a cup - as well as another, different light in the distance. Looks like there's multiple options for 'objectives' to find, assuming that's what those lights are. Get up Nate, we've got a cup to find! It isn't long before I locate the cup, in an abandoned carnival wagon. Or at least I assumed it was IN the wagon. Insidiously the damn thing is on TOP of the wagon. There was an attempt to obtain said cup by climbing to the top of a rock next to the wagon and then stepping over to the roof of it. I didn't even get to the top of the rock. If Nate would actually use his arms to help him climb things he might do better, but noooo, it's a feet game so all Nate does is step on things while his arms hang uselessly at his side. I gave up on the cup and decided to head back to the starting area - this is too tough for me at the moment, I need to get better at climbing and I may as well make forward progress while I'm getting the hang of this. On the way back I was immediately distracted by a treasure map. Maybe I'll find shoes! I failed to find the treasure owing to difficulties with determining the intended length of a 'step', since my own steps are highly variable I probably would have gotten off target even if I hadn't fallen over every so often. If I faceplant and slide a bit does that count as two steps? Three? As you can see, I'm getting exceptionally dirty from falling over and over. They spent some time getting the look down. This is for all the sickos that wanted a close-up Having returned to the starting point and begun the journey towards the original light source, I became immediately distracted by a nearby brick building which had a little pole on top. Climbing it rewarded me with a hat! My first reward for doing something! Insidiously, the hat doesn't just stay on your head - if you fall badly enough then you'll lose the hat and it'll roll a short distance away. Thus, trying to keep a hat is going to make the game harder as you need to retrieve it when it's lost - I'm going to try to keep one anyway for the fun of it, though I suspect I'm more at risk of losing it from forgetting to pick it back up rather than being unable to retrieve it. So far, the consequences of falling in most situations has been relatively minor - on flat ground you might even slide ahead and continue to make forward progress. Once in awhile you'll encounter an obstacle which has dire consequences should you fail. That looks like a real long way to slide, but at least here I made it across. After navigating fairly gentle slopes and switchbacks, I'm finally getting close to the mysterious glow. Almost there.... ow ow ow And.... success! The glow comes from a large waxy candle and marks the location of an empty campsite where a pot of... it honestly looks like milk... sits over a fire. Nate checks the place out Out of nowhere there's an odd vignette where you play a disturbing little sequence of events. In this my father asks me to go find firewood and then abandons me. I don't know if this is Nate's past or his fears or has nothing to do with anything and just wants to make the player feel depressed. Then Mike shows up. Jim seemed like he was something of a tour guide for this place, Mike seems like a tourist - he's geared up for hiking and is going on about equipment and having a map. The cutscene even briefly pops up a mini-map to show you they could have put one in the game Nate is still having none of this, turns down all offers of help, including (sadly) refusing a map. I would have absolutely taken a map because I have a terrible sense of direction and get lost easily. I'm getting the sense that these cutscenes are intended to taunt you, to remind you of things that many games have and you ain't getting for this one. The nature of this place has piqued my curiosity. Mike mentions heading for the Poison Swamp, and he seems like he's here voluntarily, hiking and climbing around for the fun of it. For Nate it seems like all he wants is to find a bathroom. We part ways, and I look for the next objective. That next light is very far away and very high above me Very shortly after I begin the next leg of my journey I fall victim to being easily distracted and head off the main trail towards a barn. Hey, an actual human structure! I found a couple animals here - there's a baby chick which starts following me around, maybe I can take it to it's mother? Also I found a donkey. I attempted to ride the donkey. In Mother Russia, Donkey rides You From the barn I see a watchtower in the distance. At this point in the game, if there's something interesting looking, I'm headed for it. At the bottom of the tower - the spot where I'm supposed to bring that cup if I can ever get it. Good to know. At the top of the tower - a viewfinder! Is that.... a large baby doll? With a crown on its head? Also in the distance - another campsite.  I've walked so far away from the one I was originally headed for that I may as well try for this one instead. The non-linearity of Baby Steps is almost jarring after putting myself in the mindset of the one-route Getting Over It. Part of this game is simply looking for and analyzing your possible routes - on the way to that next light I found a couple options for climbing higher, and the first one I attempted turned out to be too difficult so I gave up and eventually found an easier switchback further ahead. Realizing that I was close to that Baby thing that I'd seen earlier, I decided to go for it, thinking it might be an NPC I could talk to. Actually just a large baby doll.. but that crown is another hat if you can brave the cliffside to get it! Hail to the King Baby In many ways this place resembles the Appalachian Trail or other American hiking areas - there's are pretty clearly travelled trails (sometimes even marked by humans), and some are fairly flat with others having steep and rocky slopes. There's also litter, litter everywhere. Who is ordering a pizza out here? Who is delivering it? Approaching the summit, I end up overcoming one of the nastier obstacles I've faced so far, a rocky slope that requires a couple tricky maneuvers to navigate. You may not like it but this is what the process of succeeding looks like There's a Day / Night cycle and by the time I'm walking up to the second campsite that I've reached, the moon is high in the sky. That's an... interesting moon.... There's another little vignette, this time depicting a man going out to get a burger and then finding himself working at the burger place. Maybe these are Nate's dreams? I am rudely awakened by Ethan. Ethan is part human, part Donkey. Two parts Donkey, I think. Ethan wearing a shirt (and only a shirt) makes for a memorable scene Other than his appearance, Ethan's fairly nice and gives Nate the first thing resembling an objective, saying that if Nate reaches the 'castle' then he can have one wish. Ethan wants Nate to wish for cigarettes, since he's fresh out of them. The heart wants what the heart wants. It looked like the castle was way off on the opposite side of the valley, so I'm not going to try to head there now. Instead, I'm going for the closest light I can see. It's through a forest but at least the terrain looks pretty flat. I like how the destination shines through the fog in the distance. The going is pretty easy for the most part, and the harsh barren slopes give way to a lush forest. I think Ethan called it the poison forest but I haven't been poisoned yet. Even though the general path is easy (and I'm sticking to the marked trail where possible, I'm scared I'll lose my crown in the brush if I fall while roughing it through the trees), there are some new and unusual obstacles along the way. Did they put this sign up before or after the bear started sleeping here? Even though this is a 'difficult' game, so far it doesn't seem like you can die, so I figured I'd make an attempt to simply climb over the bear. To my relief, she was a very sound sleeper... but she did prove very difficult to climb over and I fell off the bridge entirely. Sleeping Bear: 1, Nate 0. Fortunately, I wasn't the first person to have to traverse this route, and someone had put up brightly colored climbing assistants nearby. NATE THESE ARE HANDHOLDS USE YOUR GODDAMN HANDS Probably due to limited sightlines in the forest I'm mostly not being distracted from my destination, but I did make a short detour to some nearby ruins and obtained new headwear. Embrace your inner Muppet I reach the light and find that it's practically a castle in it's own right - or at least the ruins of one. The campsite is behind an iron gate. Get used to this pose because I figured out I can use it to get Nate to face the camera for screenshots. Attempting to climb to the top in search of a lever to open the gate, I notice something incredibly helpful - foot shadows! Your feet cast a shadow straight down to help you see where you are placing them. I reached the top of the castle to find no way to open the gate, and a fence blocking my access to the campsite even from this height. Well, mostly blocking, I can't quite step over it... Nate, you're not going to like this one bit. In my first intentional fall of the game, I lean forward and tumble over the fence. Nate slams into the rocky ruins a couple times before plunging over 40 feet downward to slam hard on his back. Worst of all, my Kermit hat flew off and lodged itself somewhere about midway up - I think it's gone for good. Nate just lies there on the ground for a good 20 seconds before moving again. I don't blame him. I guess all donkey-people look the same to Nate because he mistakes Moose here for Ethan. In a first, Nate actually accepts an offer of help when Moose shares his cup so Nate can drink. Nate also finally says what HE wants, which is to go home. Ethan and another donkeyman arrive (somehow opening the gate, thanks guys) and Moose makes himself scarce. It's off to the trail again. It's not far before I spy a very strange glow in a tree. Is that another hat? Or a fruit of some kind? I haven't successfully climbed a tree yet but I give it a shot. Before I can even start climbing this one though, there's a rope swing attached to it that I have to stand on and swing to get close enough to even start climbing, which is a whole new level of insanity. Guess how that turned out. Did I mention this tree is on the edge of a cliff? At least I landed in the water. That's the same tree, way up there. But lo and behold, down here I find something Nate has been wanting for around three days now! An inconveniently located bathroom!!! Finally, finally poor Nate can relieve himself. As Nate is about to find nirvana, Mike shows up to encourage him through the door. It's an extremely frustrated Nate that stumbles away from the outhouse. His day does not get any better trying to climb out of the lake area. A huge rolling boulder? That's just mean, Foddy. Spying another watchtower, I climb it and locate another viewfinder, which shows me a hat on top of a tree. Even with the viewfinder it takes me awhile to find the right tree in the forest, but eventually I'm attempting to climb a tree without using my hands. This took many, many attempts. I'm pretty damn proud of getting this hat, it was not easy. At this point I'm not sure where the next campsite is so I'm wandering and exploring. I found an abandoned well, perhaps? At least it's easy to go down, other than watching Nate suffer there's no real consequences to falling long distances. At the bottom of this well is a cave... with some, ah, interestingly shaped mushrooms. I'm sensing subtle themes in Baby Steps. Baby Steps does a phenomenal job of setting the stakes with any given challenge - you can take a moment and look down to see just how far down you're likely to tumble if you fail. Out here past the forest I'm increasingly finding more and more dangerous 'suffer if you fail' obstacles which will send you a very long way down if you screw up. Gonna traverse this one real careful and reeeal slow I am definitely getting better at walking - noticing exactly how I'm moving Nate's legs and feet and how the balance works when shifting legs. I'm pretty confident that if I were to go back and try for that cup near the start, for instance, I could get to it now. Rather than go back all that way just yet I'm employing the 'ooh what's that over there' strategy and checking out anything that looks interesting. Often this translates into a little (or large) climbing challenge. This looks like an MC Escher house but it's too small for people. Climb to the top of it and.... Oh! It is for little people! I wish I'd gotten a tiny little hat but all I accomplished was to accidentally sit on a 14-inch tall person. He'll probably be fine, assuming he's as robust at Nate is. When I lost the green Muppet hat, it was in service of a greater good - a daring maneuver that accomplished something important. Muppet hat's sacrifice was worthy and noble. I regret to inform you that yellow tree hat has been lost to no good purpose whatsoever, I fell off a wall and ingloriously slid down the slope, leaving the hat somewhere near the top. Try as I might to scale the slope back up to where it was, I merely succeeded in falling further and further down until retrieving it was simply too much effort - especially considering that I had already spied another possible hat in a box-maze nearby. I'm sorry Yellow, this was not the goodbye I hoped for. The box-maze is fairly challenging to navigate, and perhaps the most difficult part of trying for this next hat was simply finding a route I could take that would get me to it. Once found, the climbing didn't relent on the difficulty. This is my second time being up here and I don't want to go down empty handed again I've found another helpful climbing technique - how you move your feet is depending on the camera angle you are using, so you can best climb a ladder by swinging the camera left and right as you take each step, and when the margins are small then exactly how you bend Nate's leg absolutely makes a difference as to whether you can get your foot on the next rung or not. So I very carefully made my way up the ladder, got tantalizingly close to the hat, and I reached for it... and immediately fell off the ladder, caromed off a pile of boxes, and flumped onto the floor of the box maze... BUT NOT BEFORE I HAD TIPPED THE HAT OF ITS PERCH AND IT FELL DOWN WITH ME! Papa's got a brand new hat! I spot another one of those glowing fruits, which turns out to be a bananna. This one is placed atop a much easier climb than some things I've done (aside from some insidiously placed banana peels). It's nice to see Nate experience joy for once, relishing the flavor of his accomplishment. I also found a 'Gopro' helmet that changes your camera perspective to first person view. I won't be wearing it though. I don't get motion sick from playing videogames, but I'd really be putting that to the test if I fell like this. Finding another watchtower, I locate something I didn't expect to find (possibly) - it looks like something I can actually make use of. Binoculars! Those could come in handy. Let's see, now where exactly is that located..... Goddamnit, I think they're on a cliff right below the little people apartments I was at several hours ago. Whelp, guess I'm climbing all the way back up there. Ok, I've painstakingly made my way back to the gate, across broken bridges and the collapsed ledge, and here I am, standing across from my quarry. The binoculars do not look easy to get and you can't climb back up here quickly I wish I could tell you that I made a valiant attempt and fell, but the truth is sadder than that. I dropped a crumb on my keyboard and absent-mindedly went to fish it out, accidentally pressed a key, and tumbled right over the cliff before even making the attempt. There's no checkpoints, no reloading a save, no course of action before me than to either take the long route back up there or give up and do something else. The only 'shortcut' I ever unlocked was to get the gate open. Falling has consequences, and those feel especially painful when you fall purely by accident. Initially, I took a moment to do something else and keep going in the same direction that I'd been heading to see what was over there, when to my surprise I came across a watchtower that I was sure I'd left behind me. I think the world actually repeats itself - go far enough in one direction and you will come back to where you started. I think it was actually quicker to return to the little apartments by continuing forward rather than doubling back. On returning to the apartments, I made a valiant attempt and fell. I was within a step of getting them. Time to climb back up. This time along the way I see a little grotto with a table and check it out to find the Vase, one of the items wanted at a watchtower. This is much easier to get than the Cup! The guy at the table grudgingly let me take it while grumbling that I'd probably just break it. I resolved to be extra careful and try to get it to the tower intact. I broke it anyway. The vase doesn't respawn so that's that. In better news with the binoculars, I got 'em! Third time's the charm! I can actually use them to view distant objects, for what that's worth - thinking about it now I can usually tell if there's something interesting in the distance and the binoculars may not actually help that much. Somewhere along this journey I made the foolish assumption that the binoculars would simply confer unto me the ability to zoom in on things and that would be that. The problem is that they're a carried object (Heaven forbid Nate should tie anything to his waist), and you can drop them and lose them when you fall, same as the hats. In many ways they're now another liability - I've spent more time than I care to admit retrieving various hats after bad falls. It dawns on me that at some point I'm going to lose these, one way or another. At least I'm close to the top of this particular cliffside, and I make my way upward. There's a beach... up here? The next ridge looks imposing, and beyond it, a second, taller ridge rises in the distance. Seeing a column of smoke along the shore, I find another campsite. This vignette is Nate's class reunions (including future ones) and it's very depressing. Ethan and his friends party hard! Seeing the next two huge ridgelines I realize that the further I get from the beginning of the game, the more difficult it's going to be for me to go back and do things like getting the cup to the watchtower so I drop the binoculars and box hat at this campsite for safekeeping and head back down before I go any further. A lot of the challenges in this game are optional - I haven't been required to obtain any of the hats or fruits or watchtower quests or even stop at the campsites. The main path through the game is not easy, you can feel free to skip a lot of the 'very hard' things you can do - and somewhere the masochist in me wants to do them (or at least attempt them). On my way back to the start I came across a cabin, found the set of keys in it that you're supposed to bring to a watchtower, and ended up dropping them in a river about halfway there - those are gone for good. I'm 0 for 2 on watchtowers. In better news, I managed to follow the treasure map from the start and locate it. It's a step tracker! I'll keep it and note step counts. Getting the cup was still fairly difficult but I managed it this time. Let's see if I can manage to deliver it. Unlike the vase it's not fragile, and unlike the keys it's easy to find again when dropped. With these relative handicaps, even I can get it to its destination in one piece. I'm minimally competent! Step tracker: 1692 (I wish I'd found it the first time! I'd love to know how many actual steps I'm at.) One last stop in the starting area: Free shoes! It's a shame they're too big for Nate - or any other human. Step count: 3645 I've confirmed that there was never a second campsite around here as I initially thought - the 'second' light I saw was from the same campsite and the world wrapped back to it. Climbing back out I try some different routes - there really are a lot of options, and I even come across a bucket hat and a Mike 'Just use your grappling hook!' cutscene that I missed on my first ascent. I suspect all roads eventually lead to the second campsite, but there are many ways to get there. The step-tracker has an advanced feature - when you drop it, it flashes a brightly colored light, so you can see where it is even from a distance. That way I can find it again, even though I dropped it wayyy down there. It's a conspiracy to make me take more steps. That's some fancy tech. I would have preferred a wrist strap. I reach the second campsite, the one where I met Ethan, and as an illustration of how much better I've gotten I only have one minor slip while going up the slope that took me about ten attempts the first time. Step count: 6211 I nearly lost the step tracker. It started innocently enough - I found a tower near the edge of a cliff and started to climb it. I met Mike again here, and he told me there was nothing at the top and that climbing it would be a waste of time. I believed Mike, but like mountaineers we climb things simply because it is there. Things went almost perfectly with me navigating some tough sections all the way up until just before the top when I slipped and fell down a shaft in the tower - and I let go of the step tracker and it landed on a high ledge within the shaft. I climbed the tower again - falling three times before making it up to the same spot - only to plummet down the shaft past where the tracker was. It is not easy to fall where you want to go, and every miss is another climb to the top. On my next attempt I managed to land on the ledge with the tracker and pick it up. I then tried to intentionally fall off the ledge with it, but somehow managed to literally scrape the damn thing right out of my hand onto a different ledge , and once again poor Nate slammed into the ground sans tracker. Are. You. Kidding. Me. By this point I'd probably attempted climbing this tower around a dozen times. I was contemplating giving up on the thing and moving on - after all, the game will be easier if I'm not constantly holding on to things and retrieve them. On the other hand, I'm really enjoying having a step count and posting updates to it here, even though it's completely inaccurate since it's not recording all the steps I'm having to take to pick it up again - so if there's a chance I can still get it, I'm getting it. I managed to fall onto the first ledge, and then to my surprise found that there was a narrow path of jutting stones from there down to the second ledge. One thing about Baby Steps that's impressed me is the terrain everywhere in the game feels very carefully crafted - I'm probably one of a very small number of players to intentionally go inside this shaft, and yet even in here there's carefully laid out footholds that allow me to carefully make my way to my objective. I probably should have listened to Mike. After that little nightmare, I hightailed it out of the poison forest and back up to where I left the box and binoculars - which are right where I left them. Step Count: 9,787 Yes it took me this long to figure out I could press A to look at the thing. The slopes ahead call to me, it's time to continue upward. The desert / beach (it's a bit of both) area's tower would like some ice cream. If this happens it's going to be sand-flavored by the time it gets there. I find an empty pool - because why not - and after examining it for a moment it looks to me like it's impossible to climb out of. This, of course, tempts me to go into it. Are Bennett Foddy and his accomplice developers truly that cruel, to put in an obstacle that might really trap you and force you to end the game? I honestly wouldn't put it past them.... but I have to know! Ok, yes - I think it's actually impossible to climb out of... but there's a skateboard here, perhaps I can use that to... Skateboarding with these controls is its own special hell. Fortunately after leaving me in the pool long enough to wonder if I actually am trapped here, Jim shows up and (despite Nate's idiotic insistence that he doesn't need it) gives Nate a stepladder to freedom. There's an unspoken contract between players and modern games that isn't true of older ones - and that is that the game will not allow you to get stuck somewhere that you can't extricate yourself from. There are old adventure games like the early Kings Quests where it's possible - even likely - that you will put yourself into a situation you can't actually escape and must reload an earlier save to continue. As brutal as Baby Steps is, I suspect it won't do that you. Here you go Nate. You need it. There's no such protections for the objects you're carrying. This area has a new hazard - cacti. The very first time I stepped on one and fell, I dropped the step tracker, and the thing suffered a bad physics glitch and zipped off into the unknown. That's gone for good. I think the last step count I checked was somewhere around 10,810. In short order, I dropped the binoculars over a ledge and just couldn't be bothered to go back for them after the step counter incident. This was immediately followed by sliding down a sandy slope and leaving the box hat on a ledge above me. I have chosen the Path of Pain. I will soldier on unencumbered by possessions, for now. Not having to pick up the things you drop is freeing. I really like the aesthetics of this area, the terrain features giant sandcastles that someone built. Is this THE castle? Can I get my wish now? Like the previous areas, there are climbing challenges scattered around. Actually summiting some of these obstacles generally doesn't reward you and often pisses Jim off. I knocked over a culturally significant bucket. I don't know what the hardest obstacle in the game is, I probably haven't run across it yet, but I'd like to call this one out for being a huge problem for me. It doesn't even LOOK difficult but those two cacti have knocked me into that white-sludge slide many times now. The white stuff is very slippery and sounds like a hollow plastic tub when you walk on it, I have no idea what it's supposed to be. I reach the end of the sandcastles and find a deep, dark cave. Jim shows up with lanterns to help light the way. Nate refuses a lantern - he thinks Ethan will make fun of him. I may have missed a cutscene. Fortunately for me (because the area is actually pitch-black and I have no idea if it's possible without a lantern) Moose is just ahead and he has two, and Nate accepts the help this time. I got up this escalator by using the hand-rail, which thankfully wasn't moving like the escalator was. At the end of the cave, Ethan and more donkeys than I've seen before are gathered, waiting for Nate. Nate's fears of being made fun of for the lantern are well justified. To my surprise, this turns out to be the castle - just ahead is the (shitty plastic) angel, and Nate can make his wish. Ethan again asks for cigarette. Nate clearly wants to go home - or so I thought. Nate contemplates the life he'd return to. Nate wishes... that he were dead. Damn. I haven't really been sympathetic for Nate thus far but now I feel for the guy. It doesn't work. You can't die in this place. There's nowhere to go but forward. And forward... is a door. A regular, apartment door. Well sure, of course there'd be an apartment here, why not. Nate follows a woman's voice through the apartment, which repeats and changes until everything is boxed away - and Nate tumbles back into the world he's stuck in. Imposing snow-capped mountains promise me that this isn't going to get easier. At least Nate has made one friend - Moose has been very nice to Nate and unlike everyone else, Nate is actually interested in talking with the guy. Moose somehow found ice-cream and shares it. This 'walled fields' area actually starts off pretty easy, there's a long straightforward 'sculpture walk' if you don't feel like scaling a stone wall. This only encourages me to climb on the things. I don't hate the sculptures, they're pretty interesting to look at and it's nice to find this sort of art gallery here - it's also nice to have a break from the difficulty of climbing things, you can just walk past all of these if you want to. Yeah, I climbed on top of Your Mum. Apparently someone else burned their wish on ruining this area's tower. But the easy walk must come to an end. I'm about halfway to the mountain slopes and I need to find my way up. I can't make them out very well but it looks like there might be a giant spiral staircase I can use. The columns with the red lights are actually the same staircase, you can see more than one because the world repeats. First, I had to cross a gorge. I could fall down and try to find a way back up the other side, but it would be a bit faster if I could use this zipline. I just have to reach it.... To be fair, there WAS a sign warning me not to use the Zipline. Hi it's me here at the bottom of the gorge, zipline is way up there where I fell from. Fortunately all is not lost, down here there's an abandoned rail system for mine carts, and climbing it leads me to an (I assume) abandoned salt mine. Wait... are the trails of white stuff salt? That would be a pretty damn good joke if true. Steps Taken: Who knows. A little ways inside the mine is a campsite, Moose is there once again toasting marshmallows. He tells Nate about the cabin he's built near the summit - complete with a toilet, which Nate has yet to use. I guess in addition to not dying here you also don't have to actually use the bathroom after several days - the miracle of a strange purgatory. Nate is bad at toasting marshmallows. This area features a new obstacle - giant waterwheels! The first one I encounter serves as a timer - you have to cross a narrow bridge before the next paddle knocks you off, making it one of a very few times when you have to complete an obstacle quickly. This waterwheel instead needs to be treated like an elevator - step onto a paddle and then back off again when it takes you higher. It did not go well. Nate has fallen from larger heights and probably suffered more painful falls, but I never felt more sorry for the guy than when I stumbled on the wheel and got Nate's legs caught in it, causing him to be dumped out at the apex, slammed into the hub, bounced off a spoke, and dumped prone back onto another paddle causing the entire traumatic experience to be repeated several times. Why is this sign here? You're in danger of falling in all kinds of places... Ooh, is that a hat? I made it to the spiral staircase, and I notice there's also a stone path rising up to the right of it. I guess it's an alternate route compared to... the stairs with a railing? I don't think I can properly convey just how tall this staircase is. An alternate route to it is just madness, why would I ever- Jim shows up and explain he built the stairs to help people avoid 'The Manbreaker' route. Nate's pride makes him insist he'll take the Manbreaker up. I give the Manbreaker one attempt. It ends like this. No. Nate may have insisted that he'd take the Manbreaker just to prove something, but Nate's not the one climbing it - I am. And you know what? Nate's whole damn problem is that he won't reach out to people and just accept some help. People have offered him shoes, maps, guidance, and he turns them all down, for no reason at all. No, this time Nate doesn't get to make that choice for me. I'm taking the goddamn stairs and Nate can swallow his pride and tell Jim 'Thank you.' when we get to the top. And reaching the top.. is easy. You'd have to make an effort to fall off this staircase, it's really really great. My hat is off to all those who ultimately conquered the Manbreaker - I saw all of it, once, on my way up that stairway to heaven. Looks tough! Mike is at the camp at the top of the stairs, Nate tries to get him to share his map but only manages to get Mike to burn the thing and head off on his own. In the morning, there's a giant woman nearby - I think she may be the one that built the huge sandcastles. I go to talk to her but she just cradles Nate like a baby and puts him up on a ledge. Thanks... Mom? Later on, I hear cries for help. It's Mike - he managed to get crushed by a huge rock. Nobody can die here, so this clearly fatal injury merely causes Mike immense amounts of pain. He begs me to go back down the mountain to get Jim to help (not sure if Jim can move the rock either, it's huge). I go back to the giant woman, but she's no help - she just does the motherly cradling again. I have no idea where Jim actually is - he just pops up every so often, so I turn around again and keep heading upward. The challenge up in these mountains are patches of ice, which are very difficult to traverse without slipping, and a pair of train cars that hang over the side of the slope, forcing you to climb up scattered luggage and seats to ascend. When you're halfway up the phone rings - you'll have to go back down if you want to answer it. Triumphantly reaching the top of the train cars, I look around at the landscape. How things have changed! It's pristine. There's no trash, no random 'climb me' obstacles. Just a wintry mountain slope. There is only one summit. It's still so far away that the repeating world makes it look like four as Nate trudges toward it. Keep walking Nate, we got this. And then, at the base of the summit, I see it - Moose's cabin. Please, please let me use the bathroom. Nate knocks. Moose opens the door, chats a bit about how warm it is inside, how nice the toilet is, how he's been mapping the area, and sends Nate on his way. Nate finally gets the gumption to knock again, and asks to come inside. Moose is happy to welcome him. Nate has found a home, and a friend. Nate can stop walking now. The ending screen is utterly delightful, you finally get to see a map of the whole place and watch yourself wander around everywhere. The tower (South) where I almost lost the step tracker looks like a bloody mess. The white substance was milk, according to the map. And thinking back on it I suspect a couple of the 'hills' that were producing milk were actually giant breasts. Also there was a place labeled 'Avoid this place' that I inadvertently avoided - if I ever replay Baby Steps I'll check it out. Baby Steps was a solid game - my one caveat in recommending it to people is that it is very challenging, both in it's unusual control scheme and that certain obstacles can be quite punishing, and I would completely understand anyone who became frustrated with it. That said, if you avoid various optional challenges I think it's easier than Getting Over It was, and as far as I can tell you are fairly safe from utterly catastrophic 'back to the beginning' levels of falling - plus, falling is just plain funny - this is a great game to watch your friend try to play. As difficult as this game is, it's a kinder, gentler Foddy than in the past - perhaps his fellow devs have made him kinder. Or at least talked him out of hurting people quite so much. Actual steps taken: 60972 I'm pleased the ending screen gave me the final value, even though I lost the pedometer, I appreciate it. Oh, and apologies to Mike - Nate forgot all about him when reaching Moose's cabin. He's still stuck under that rock.

Appropriately enough I'm starting Look Outside on Halloween, and it will conclude the recent series of scary games. I was actually going to play it shortly after I got it in September, but just before starting I noticed that the devs were planning a major update for the game in October, so I decided to wait for that - this is a bigger and (I hope) better version of the game, because good things come to those who wait. Edit: Fair warning - some of this game's images are grotesque, which is impressive given that it's pixel art. Look Outside is a turn-based survival-horror RPG, which is intriguing to me because almost every survival-horror game I've played thus far is in real time. Right away I'm drawn in by the music and sound effects of wind blowing outside, it's haunting. Sure thing voice in the wall, it's the name of the game after all. I went to the window I looked outside I lost the game The cutscene for our Hero on looking outside is... well, faces are not intended to do what I just saw. Let's try this again. This time I have a conversation with the eye through the wall, it's my neighbor Sybil, who immediately reconsiders their advice to look outside and recommends that I not do that. Thanks Sybil, I've figured that out already. This time around I've made it to the point where I can name my character (I suspect getting 'game over' before naming my character is a sad new record for me). We'll go with 'Patt' in honor of the blog. Sybil is perfectly nice and offers to check up on me every so often. I gather that she looked outside and isn't sure what it did to her, but she's confident that whatever is going on will end in 15 days. I assume I need to survive that long I tried using social media on my laptop, and that made me fell less alone but stressed me out (whatever is happening outside, nobody understands and people are freaked out over, and is happening all over the world). This changed my 'social' by +5 and 'calm' by -5, so there's some underlying statistical thing going on. I can't find those on the stats page, they seem to be hidden. I walk outside my bedroom and into the rest of my domicile. Pretty spacious for an apartment! Checking the clock, I note that time is passing but I'm not sure if it's passing in response to my interacting with objects or in real time. I check the fridge - it's got a frozen TV dinner and a couple other things but there's no way I'm surviving for 15 days on what's in there Brush every day, even - maybe especially! - in the apocalypse All right, I've showered - which provided a huge hygiene and morale benefit, so it matters - and it's time to venture outside the apartment. At a minimum, I need to find food to survive 15 days, and since there are combat stats we'll want to make ourselves capable of fighting. This answers the 'how time passes' question, it's based on interacting with things. Hey - this is game 33 and I live in Apartment 33, what are the odds? This may be a really bad idea but I'm going to follow the blood trail. Looks like that was a good idea! I found a baseball bat and some items... and the blood trail's source. I assumed that, like most blood trails, it represented some unfortunate innocent that had been attacked and dragged off by a monster. Nope. No innocents needed - my neighbor has gone batshit crazy I start whacking him with the bat when he turns his knife on me, and I feel even more justified in doing so when this happens. He was cutting himself so that 'he could see', I guess that makes sense now Having killed my neighbor and taken his knife, I explore the rest of the apartment that he was in. There are now lots of monsters wandering around, and they move in real time. I beat this one but it did a fair bit of damage, I can't fight everything and will try to avoid fighting too many I found a key and unlocked the safe in that room and came away with a lot of money and some coins for vending machines. I went back to the hallway, bought some snacks from the vending machine, and avoided the monsters to get back to my apartment. Oooh, this is a 'push your luck on your dangerous excursion' game! A second outing to a nearby apartment yields a bonanza of items - forks and knives that I can throw in combat, a crafting kit for my own apartment, and best of all, some food in the fridge. I take it all back home and make myself a meal, which provides some much-needed HP recovery. The game lets you save in your apartment so I can't lose too much progress if I die. Having scoured all the apartments I can get into on my own floor, I move down to the next one, and that's when things get really interesting. I meet an astronomer who suspects that what's outside is a large, possibly living, alien object Some of these people looked outside but, like Sybil, haven't become mindless monsters... they're just changed a bit. Jeanne just wants her laundry This game is good at crafting a horrifying moment, and I walk past a boarded-up door twice, listening to the screeching inside - and then when I continue down the hallway the apartment doors have disappeared, and I'm in a long, messed up, doorless hallway when the beast breaks free and comes after me. I fled in fear for my life Escaping that monstrosity, I ended up in an apartment with a photographer who's also been altered. Lyle offered me some photo paper in exchange for a kiss.. which I assume I could have turned down and obtained by paying for it, thanks to the safe earlier I have over a hundred dollars. But kisses are free, folks. On the way back to my apartment I was getting disconcerting messages about feeling an itchy sensation and something else going on. Eventually I checked my inventory, and found a stowaway! I am NOT bringing a roach back to my apartment! It's still the first day around 4:30 PM, and I feel like I've accomplished a lot. I briefly tried to access the other floors but the 1st, ground, and basement doors are all locked. I'm curious to see if sleeping will recover my HP so I spend some time in the apartment - I'm tempted to go back to the nearby rooms and kill the various monsters that were there before for the XP but I don't want to get hurt doing it and I need to know how my HP recovers. Before bed I try my hand at crafting, it's pretty intuitive as you select an item and then it gives you a list of valid things to combine it with. This made a Molotov cocktail - a choice weapon for anyone stuck inside their apartment building I also try passing the time by playing videogames. You can choose which one to play and you get a little narrative of what happens in the game as you're playing it. Sounds like my jam! After finishing I'm mentally in a better place and the game hints that if I can beat this game something good will happen, so if we have extra time in a day we'll be using it here. Before going to bed, there's a knock at the door. I have 2 HP left so I really hope it's not a monster. Thankfully it's a kind priest who gives me some food I like that there's a mix of normal, caring humans (and altered humans) as well as horrible monstrosities wandering around. Those of us who are still sane should probably all band together and work to clear out safe sections of the building but since that's not an option I accept some food from Father Andrew and give him a $20 donation so he can keep helping other tenants who are still alive. Sleeping is a partial heal, I'm back up to half health. Survival horror is all about resource management, I want to try to discover as much as possible each day while still taking care of myself. 14 Days Remain I'm going to skip showering / brushing teeth today, I only have one toothpaste / soap left and I suspect that I'll be better off if I save it to clean myself from some gory disaster than if I use it up now. I make a few meals and items and get ready to head out and explore more of the building when there's another knock at the door. It's an innocent, abandoned child! Or... so it claims.... I let her in and she doesn't sprout eyeballs and try to eat me, so I take her along with me and Sophie becomes a party member. Normally I'd never consider bringing an eight-year old child with me into combat with altered humans made of eyes and teeth but I don't want to leave her sitting alone in the apartment, she might wipe out my videogame save files. I manage to find a way down to the first floor, and it looks like the building has been altered - there's now a set of parallel crisscrossing corridors that repeat and form a sort of maze. I find a door with arrows pointing towards it, and inside I find a man named Ernest (and his pet rat Colonel Squeakers) who agrees to help me for the rest of the day in exchange for a sandwich. I'll take all the help I can get With Ernest's help (both he and Col. Squeakers can attack) the party has become pretty decent at fighting, so we clear out a mutant rat's nest and take all the food there, then proceed to do the same to a vine-infested apartment. I'm fighting most of these battles and avoiding enemies less since I have help now I even ran into a terrible monster in the first floor hallways that I felt like I was supposed to avoid, figured I'd give it a shot or die trying. Thanks to using a Molotov and other special skills I managed to kill the Rat King and got his skull Lastly for the day I ended up in an apartment with Frederic the Painter, who apparently painted a picture of the sky that he's hiding away in a back room because looking at it makes him feel uneasy. Apparently he must have painted it while whatever is outside was approaching earth, and even a depiction of it - even one the artist wasn't fully aware of - is enough to affect people. Frederic also has a problem with his other paintings. Assuming I'd have to fight paintings of things, I set off to take care of them... only to find that Frederic was painting self-portraits and they're all claiming to be the real Fred. Even when I somehow clocked him as not being the original he wanted me to kill all the other Freds anyway The next encounter with a Fred variant almost ended the party, and only Patt walked out of it still conscious. I figured that was a good time to return to the apartment for the day, I can come back here later and try to kill the remaining portraits. Back at the apartment I had another visitor. A friendly neighborhood arms dealer He had quite the selection - including a Gatling Gun for $1,600 that I doubt I'll ever be able to afford, but I bought a bunch of shuriken and some army boots - I haven't found a lot of uses for money so once the opportunity came I spent almost all I had. That evening I finished playing Myrmidon, and good things did indeed happen - Patt learned a skill! Don't worry guys, lemme patch you up, I saw it in a video game 13 Days Remain A minor annoyance with this game is that it doesn't save my full-screen setting so every time I start it up I have to go into options and set it again. Yesterday I got an inexplicably bad feeling about killing the roach. Also, there's a new roach in my apartment now - I'm going to choose to take comfort in them not being horrible monsters and be nice to them. With my last bits of bread I can make another sandwich and take Ernest with me again, having an additional party member was invaluable in combat - well worth the 40 HP or so just eating a sandwich would be worth. My neighbor / eye in the wall Sybil warns me that she thinks she heard something invisible running around in our hallway. The plan to go give Ernest a sandwich is temporarily on hold when I step outside the apartment and notice that the next-door is now open with a cryptic sign saying 'Help You'. 'Well', I say, channeling my inner idiot, 'May as well check it out.' The apartment is the home of Edwin, one of the early Astronomers that's gone missing. At first his place appears to be empty other than having a lot of helpful supplies and more food. Disconcertingly, I also find some astronomy gear and implications that Edwin has himself changed into something like a telescope, and he's wandering around unable to see his neighbors or be seen by them. The number of moons around various planets is given undue attention and hints at being necessary for puzzle solving. Saturn needs to lose weight Also of interest here, I can point the telescope outside and project an image of whatever is Outside onto the floor. It's implied that if I turn off the light I can get the image onto a blank disc that I'm carrying, the Astronomers would love that. If it doesn't drive them insane. I'm about to leave when Edwin makes his appearance, putting ectoplasm or something on the walls and indicating the light switch. He seems nice! Edwin is Not Nice. He is indeed a horrible telescope thing, and turning off the light not only lets me see him - and him see me - it also straight-up puts me into Silent Hill territory, warping the world into something more horrible than it already is. This is what MY apartment looks like with the lights off In the case of Edwin and the other creatures here, the game universally and un-subtly warns me that I 'feel a strong urge to run' when I meet them. Even worse, they all seem to know me, existing in places I can't see them but they can see me.... After running around in terror I get back into the room with the telescope, and the one thing I manage to do is get that image of the outside burned onto a disc. I'm in real bad shape by the time I make it back to the light switch, so I limp back to the apartment and fix myself up. The day gets further sidetracked as i find that the 'Ice Melt' I managed to make will let me get into the apartment that was frozen shut across the hallway. Where other games have caves and biomes and such, this frozen hell is across the hallway from where I live I raid some of the rooms and battle some creatures but Sophie takes a nasty hit in the bathroom and falls unconscious. I have a very limited supply of revival items in the form of medkits so rather than burn my last one I retreat back to my apartment and decide to play videogames for the rest of the day - I didn't even make it off of my own floor, there was so much new stuff to explore here. Playing videogames is very worthwhile, I pick up two new skills from it. Not only do you get the narrative of your gameplay but of the NPC reactions to it As the day drags on I get more knocks at the door - mostly merchants and I blew most of my cash on ninja stars. One pair, however, wants to crash at my place. Sure, why not? It's hell out there man. The two new houseguest immediately make themselves at home... and I mean they make my home their home and take over my bedroom. I guess it's my fault for not making this arrangement a little clearer. So, downside - I'm sleeping on my couch, and from my bedroom underneath the game's soundtrack they're playing punk rock music I can hear through the wall. Upside - two new party members to throw at monsters! That's worth sleeping on the couch for! 12 Days Remain Ok, THIS time I'm going down to the first floor, grabbing Ernest, and getting shit done down there with a full party. I still have the sandwich I made yesterday and I don't want it to go to waste, and the party menu holds four so Sophie can chill in the apartment for a day. Sadly Ernest isn't hungry for a day-old pork sandwich, apparently since I have party members now he won't join me (Even trying to fool him by leaving everyone in the apartment and heading down alone didn't work). I guess somebody's eating this sammich! When I started this game I was skeptical that it was going to simultaneously pull off 'survival horror' and 'turn based' - and I'm here to report that that skepticism was unwarranted. On the default difficulty level that I'm playing at, you can only save when you safely return to your apartment, and then only when 'enough time has passed', meaning you generally need to survive a full excursion and return safely to record your progress (and I have died several times, it's dangerous out there!). While combat is turn-based, getting INTO combat is not, as the monsters move in real-time and if they catch you they get a couple chances to attack you before you run away. I've got a cache of healing supplies and food - enough that I can defeat some monsters but not so much that I'm confident that I can kill anything and everything without burning through all my resources. I found a tragic case today, Charlie here did NOT look outside - but some bug flew in the window that had, and it got him. I'm really concerned that he's just going to suffer and die and I spent a few minutes trying to decide whether to kill him (as a mercy) or not. I'm concerned that my decision will end up spawning something awful I'll have to deal with later, but I'd feel terrible if I later find some way to heal him. Charlie thinks he's doomed but he didn't ask me to kill him, so he lives. For now. Back to exploring on the first floor, I come across a baby crying. Or, at least, the sound of a baby crying.... This may have been a baby that looked outside... Or a rat that looked too hard at a baby Unable to bring myself to keep the horrible creature, I walked out - only to find it following me. Guess I'm Mama Rat now. Xaria and Monty may be terrible houseguests but they're solid party members, and they each have their own unique skillset with a lot of character. Monty can craft 'special drinks' in combat and they can be used to calm the paintball-gun wielding Xaria if he freaks out too much. Sometimes Monty 'screws up' the brew and you get a useful healing item. Sometimes it explodes and harms the whole party. I've made an incredibly useful discovery. Last night one of the merchants that visited the apartment sold rings that protect from various status effects, and it turns out that just putting them on after you, say, get poisoned will cure the poison without needing to use a consumable item. Just one Lapis band and I don't need antidotes anymore I make some progress with the Painter's apartment, killing some of his more aggressive incarnations but not others - one just seemed genuinely scared and innocent, and this one just seemed happy and strange. They were nice, they gave me a blessing! I must have killed enough of them though, because the Painter gave me a canvas so I could conceal the painting of the thing and give it to Aurelius the Astronomer. I hope I gave him the right one - I had to guess based on wet paint colors which painting was correct. It... might be a painting of that, I didn't look at it! And then... I ran into a wall. N... no? I noped right out of there... into an infinite liminal hallway. There was no escaping the Mouth, I had to feed it something. It would not accept my food as a substitute. I refused to feed it the poor defenseless rat baby. That left one option. Technically two options, with dire consequences I really hope the Rat Baby appreciates today's sacrifice. On the bright side I got to name the Rat! Seemed appropriate for someone that's here because it wasn't eaten I spend the rest of the day in the apartment nursing the lost arm and playing through the videogame collection (fortunately THAT does not appear to be hampered as much as it likely would be). And then we get a wonderful visitor - Sophie's mother comes around looking for her daughter! He took great care of me Mom I only got knocked out once or twice! Well, I guess it's just me, the punk rockers and Leftover the Rat Thing now. Spending time with Leftover I'm pretty convinced it was indeed a human baby at one point. I'm really enjoying this game, it's one of the most unique and creative RPGs I've ever played - it's set entirely within a single apartment building but each day new stuff keeps happening, the themes and writing are phenomenal, and the game keeps throwing surprises my way. For people who might be on the fence about the survival-horror part of needing to survive excursions, there's a difficulty option that lets you save anytime so you can just scum your way through - you'll still have a great time. And boy, do your decisions ever have consequences. I've lost an arm and it hasn't been a week yet! And SOMEONE is feeling judgmental about it 11 Days Remain I had terrible nightmares - yesterday there was a brief encounter with a scary clown-puppet who was simultaneously very nice and polite but was also utterly and incomprehensively terrifying, and now visions of the puppet Pierre are haunting me. Also, yes, I slept on the couch again. At least with Sophie gone I have some privacy in my living room. Annnnd now there's someone - or something - new in my apartment. Xaria says Juicebox is cool and I shouldn't freak out about him. I'm not the only one having nightmares, they're getting to Sybil too. Given our actual situation, having nightmares is probably par for the course. Once again there are new apartments open on my floor - I think they're ALL open now so I might be able to focus more on making progress later! Yeah it's probably okay that the apartment is a mouth now, let's check it out. The interior of Apartment 32 Teeth is one of the more disturbing areas, culminating in the horrific incarnation of a crying, teething baby crawling out of the darkness to attack us. I didn't WANT to kill it but surely it didn't WANT to live Adjacent to that was a relatively normal apartment full of taxidermied animals in which.... nothing happened except for one Taxidermied Evil Figure appearing and disappearing. I'm sure there will be follow-up there on a future day but for today, easy source of supplies. I burned most of the day searching the two apartments and made some progress on the first floor, which I still can't find my way around in very well. I'm obtaining planetary discs which act as keys - the mouth / arm incident gave me the Earth disc, and I was able to use it to get into a room where I got the Mars Disc. The denizens of said room were not pleased to see me. I revisited some of the first-floor apartments that I hadn't fully cleared out and took a beating from some of the enemies still wandering around, so I limped back to the apartment for the day. The skills I've been getting from videogames are invaluable and while I've been treating them as a thing to do in my spare time, there's a perfectly valid approach where you'd simply want to play them as soon as you obtain them to prepare yourself better for excursions. Staying in the apartments brings visitors, and today Pierre the scary clown puppet paid me a visit. Pierre is super-nice but Patt can't stand them. Patt, it turns out, has a phobia of clowns and is more terrified of Pierre than anything else in the game (despite how utterly nice Pierre has been.) It makes for an awkward conversation. 10 Days Remain Leftover the Rat Thing is now old enough to join the party! They grow up so fast! So much happened today. I started by summoning up the courage to visit Pierre and engage in some exposure therapy to try to lessen my fear of clowns. Then I figured out how to use a projector in a nearby apartment to get an image of the Visitor outside onto a piece of photo paper, and asked Lyle to develop it for me. I'd have done it myself but Lyle won't let me into the darkroom. I visited one of the second floor residents who has opened up a shop. I've been building up my cash reserves and now have a lot of ways to spend the money. Straight outta Nethack for you OG folks Now having the Mars and Earth discs I was able to unlock the ground floor and explore it. I finally retrieved Jeanne's laundry, she's been waiting for days. I went to check out the entrance and a bus slammed through the door, spilling out monsters. Things outside must be insane I visited Sophie and her mother in their apartment, they're doing just fine except for Jeanne having broken through their walls. Jeanne turned into a hydra with killer heads Jeanne can't stand that she's grown lethal heads and asks me to kill her body to end it all, but instead I kill off each and every other head that isn't being nice to me and leave her alive. I forgot to give Jeanne her laundry but I don't think it would fit now in any case. And then... I had had enough of my houseguests, and I don't mean the roaches. Xaria got pissed at nothing and kicked Leftover. Monty and Xaria may be powerful characters, but damnit, they can get the hell out of my room and out of my apartment! I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore! I have Leftover and I can still ask Sophie to tag along if needed (her mother will be thrilled), I think I still have a viable party without those two. Just going to sleep in my own damn bed feels like a big damn accomplishment. 9 Days Remain I was getting ready for the day ahead, showering and considering how bad the loss of Monty and Xaria are to the party's combat capabilities when there's a knock at the door. She may LOOK like an axe-murderer but Hellen is very polite. Hellen needs a place to crash, I invite her in, and she doesn't immediately commandeer my room. Welcome to the party Hellen! Incidentally, despite the ominous nature of the visitors to my apartment, to date none of them have been outright hostile to me - opening the door and chatting with the visiting figures has never been a bad thing (so far) regardless of how frightening they may appear. The one thing about Hellen that gives me pause is that she said she looked outside, and it was beautiful.... Eh, it's probably fine. We've established that some portion of people retain their minds even if their bodies get warped into unconscionable horrors. Speaking of which, I've finally given Jeanne back her laundry. She can't wear any of it of course but at least she feels better. I stopped by Lyle's place to pick up the developed photo and gave it to the Astronomers. Then Lyle invited himself over to my place to join in the fun. This would be a lot less awkward if you'd just asked while we were in your apartment five minutes ago Having gotten more ice-melt I cleared out the frozen apartment and found another planetary disc (for, as it happens, the hottest planet - Mercury). Revisiting the taxidermied apartment, I end up fighting a really nasty patched-together creature there that sends me scurrying for home with one surviving party member. Guess that's all the adventure I'm up to today! This guy kicked my ass. He's especially nasty because when he drops one of your party members the taxidermy wires come out and control their unconscious bodies, which is both thematically awesome and a real pain in the ass to deal with. 8 Days Remain Something huge strikes the apartment and shakes the building, but before I figure out what that was, I have revenge on the brain and take a second crack at RhinoMooseBear, barely beating him with only Hellen still standing at the end. Returning to the apartment and resting, Hellen and Leftover are getting along very well after an initially fraught first interaction. Leftover draws Hellen's face after seeing it and Hellen is so touched that she starts wearing the drawing instead of the hockey mask. Also Leftover picks up a couple stalker-ish skills from Hellen! It's a very sweet scene but Leftover sucks at drawing Returning to the ground floor, the source of the rumbling appears to be that creatures from the bus have busted through the landlord's door and entered his apartment. Mr. Henderson is a wheelchair-bound veteran Together we fight them off but not before a horrible wriggling hand forces itself down the landlord's throat. By the time I run to the bathroom and back with some medication (This situation warrants somethings lightly stronger than Tylenol) the landlord has gone missing and the Landlord's apartment has expanded into a liminal space featuring an entire warzone. Currently regretting not picking up the basement key when I first saw it on the table Battling through twisted soldiers and explosives I eventually find the basement key and hightail it back home just before nightfall. There's an interesting element to this where the Landlord blocks your way forward, demanding progressively higher amounts of 'rent' money to proceed. 7 Days Remain Hellen takes me aside and says that she's noticed me taking good care of my houseplant, and since she's a gardener, there's another plant she wants me to help take care of. Hellen's been a good houseguest and a good party member so I'm happy to help. I'm sad to report that sometime in the days between when we last saw Ernest and Col. Squeakers and now, something bad happened to them. I hope that Col. Squeakers got away Hellen leads me through a foliage-themed apartment that I had partially cleared before meeting her, and unlocks a new room that holds the plant she's caring for. Hellen is adamant that we continue caring for this plant in the days ahead Having done that, I explore the basement now that I have the basement key. There's an apartment down here with an anime Otaku that has to be murdered, and access to a whole sewer system filled with dead bodies. And, tragically, a school bus full of transformed children. I accidentally release a powerful, horrible creature that chases me around constantly so exploring down here isn't easy. While exploring I find there are living ducts to a furnace-creature that I try to clear ticks off of, but one tick strikes up a conversation instead of attacking me. I want it off the duct so in my 'embrace all the things' motif I let Tickle use me as a host instead So far there isn't much of a downside to having a tick ride around on me - it actually gives me a couple extra combat options. The sewers are extensive and use up the majority of my day until the party is battered and beat up, and I make my way home. 6 Days Remain Leftover went through a growth spurt! He's come into his own as a strong party member. Adorably he's got a skill called 'Copy Dad' which lets him repeat Patt's actions for several turns. I've settled into a morning routine - first, we water our houseplant and make food for the party BEFORE we talk with Sybil and save the game, so if anything bad happens those tasks are already in the bank and we can set out again from that point. Sybil thinks the world is doomed, it's been over a week and things are not getting better. After that, it's clown exposure therapy with Pierre followed by plant-tending with Hellen. NO I DON'T WANT TO With that out of the way, I decide to try to take care of unfinished business - I head back to the Landlord's war zone with a bunch of money. The rent here is too damn high Something I've noticed in this game is that in many places you can obtain what you need to progress forward early - such as the basement key here- but if you stick around you can find something important later, such as the planetary disc for Saturn that I located after stomping this mole-man soldier freak. He was blocking the way to the Big and Tall Helmet store The whole party is very powerful now, and I have plenty of items to spare as crafting can produce lots of bandages, plus judiciously returning to the apartment and cooking food can stretch your supplies quite a bit. Back in the basement, I find my way forward past the sewers to meet a group of nice people / monsters that appear to be refugees from a nearby soup kitchen. They're all very polite and happy to share their food. One of them is perhaps generous to a fault. Like me, they were drawn in by the conversational, polite ticks. I'm gonna stop at one. Hard stop there. Eventually I make my way into the parking garage, which has some pretty nasty monsters. I finally get the opportunity to use a car key I found days ago and loot one of the trunks, finding a shotgun and some ammo. Some of these cars have fused with their drivers and will come after you This is the first day I actually spent exploring all the way until nightfall. Things in the building do seem like they're getting worse, these dark ghostlike monsters have started appearing and attacking me. They were really weak at first but they seem to be getting stronger 5 Days Remain Exposure therapy with Pierre went right off the rails. Never, ever getting over my fear of clowns now Hellen's comments about the plant we've been caring for have grown increasingly ominous. As in 'bearing the fruit of a new world' ominous. I found a man's feet sticking out of the ceiling in the basement, so I went back to the ground floor to try to find his upper half. I didn't find it but I did find a whole new cafe / shop full of monsters and exotic items. There's great stuff for sale here, I wish I'd found it earlier. I also found the last Astronomer, Jasper. I suspect one ending for the game involves trying to get all of their various Visitor-related observational items to these guys wherein they conduct a ritual on the roof to try to communicate with it, for better or for worse. Unfortunately I appear to have messed up that possibility because I think I gave the wrong painting to one of them, and even though the game will let me take the painting back from the Astronomer it won't then let me swap the painting with another option in the painter's studio. No dice, Jasper - I don't think that's happening on this playthrough. Back at the apartment around midday, I manage to combine materials I got from the ghosts and some weird mushrooms in the basement to make a 'Catalyst'. No idea if that's something incredibly useful or just another crafting ingredient. I like the crafting system, it's very simple and you get to discover things on your own. As with all time spent in the apartment, visitors continue to show up and say hello. This time a junk dealer, Morton, asks to stay at my place after I give him a bunch of junk. He's easy to please. Welcome to the party Morton! I returned to the basement and at long last finally broke through to something I'd been hoping for all this time - the building's elevator. In one of my favorite encounters of the game the elevator music builds during the elevator ride. Until the beat - and the elevator - drops Now I can travel up and down floors quickly as well as access several areas that are only accessible via elevator. Using my new transport I found the man - the building's janitor, as it happens - that I was trying to help in the ceiling, but it turns out he was merely the tongue of a very deadly monster designed to lure us in... This worm was tough even for my highly experienced and capable party I also checked out part of the 2nd floor that I couldn't access before, and even now the game continues to throw delightful surprises my way - an underwater apartment! The entire party can hold their breath for several minutes. Finally I ran into an Author who looked outside and is now constantly writing about what he saw. Unfortunately he's a bad author - so boring he put my party to sleep That was one hell of day. I still have so much that I can do in this building, with only a few days left there's no way I can do it all, not to mention whatever I missed so far. I'll just have to see what I can manage. Back at my apartment, there was one more surprise in store. Today we found some 'Wizards and Mazes' sourcebooks, and it turns out Lyle is a GM - so tonight doesn't end in videogames. It ends in a tabletop RPG. Let me tell you about my Giant Warrior named Cratt (CRush All The Things) 4 Days Remain The building power has gone out. Honestly, I expected this to happen much earlier in the apocalypse. I'd been prioritizing eating any raw/frozen food I had first and now I'm glad I did (though I still have a lot left and thankfully my gas stove still works). It's time to see what the deal is with Hellen's plant. The way Hellen has been talking about this thing I suspected this might end the game and 'birth a new world'. The 'fruit' turns out to be a sad little purple person. Hellen still wants to eat him. He turns out to be pretty tasty. Hellen gives me her personal gardening shears which are the best weapon I've found so far, except I can't use them because I've only got one arm because I let a wall eat it so I could save a rat-baby named Leftover that is now wearing a baseball cap this game is awesome. What I really wanted to do today was go back to the Aquatic apartment and try to finish it because I suspect that the Neptune disc will be in there, given the theme, but now that the power is out I can't take the elevator there. In fact a lot of routes are cut off today because of the power outage, it's a big problem. Instead, I head back into the sewers and decide to try to take on the big nasty thing down there that chases you around down here. Turns out he's not that bad (at least compared to my current strength) and now I'm free to explore the sewers. This wasn't even the chasing-thing but I forgot to screenshot the other guy I find all the school bus kids and return them to their spider-teacher (They've only been left alone down here a couple days, I'm sure they're fine), and after clearing all the ticks off of ducts I have the option of attacking the central furnace itself. This is clearly an optional fight. Somewhere down here in the basement should be generator that I can use to get building power back on, so I explore and run into a mushroom / mold filled area. You can see trippy stuff breathing the air down here Some people are trapped down here by the fungus and I free them. There's... there's a whole Collectible Card Game I can play in this now? And I can get expansions for my apartment?!? I feel like I'm finding these things pretty late in the game but such are the consequences of having the degree of freedom to explore that Look Outside features. I'd come down here earlier on a future playthrough. There's some difficult fights at the end of the fungus-area and between them and the furnace I burned through a lot of great items today, but with just a couple days left it's use 'em or lose 'em. While I didn't find a generator in the fungus area, I did stumble upon exactly what I wanted today: How is this NOT in the underwater apartment? Things really went off the rails when I ended up INSIDE a car / monster that attempted to drive me into Hell itself. I left it a bad review on Lyft And then, after much searching - success. I found my way to the generator room and got building power switched back on. There's not much time left in the day but I manage to squeeze in a little progress on the underwater apartment and another M&M session with Lyle. I really want to see how the RPG thing plays out so I think I'll set aside time for it tomorrow. 3 Days Remain I wake up late - it's already past 10 AM - to an ominous knock at the door. Thankfully it's only the Priest making his rounds - we have a nice chat, he drops off some spare supplies and I send him away with a generous donation (I've got a LOT of money now). Today, it's Mazes and Wizards until we finish!... or not. Lyle only wants to play in the evenings and needs time to prep between sessions. Damn you realism! Let's see, taking stock of my situation, it looks like I have every planetary disc (which act as keys for door puzzles) except Saturn. I'll try to find it, and my main candidate remains the underwater apartment, so we're diving back in. Yes I have a guinea pig. No, I have no idea what it's for. On my way there I suddenly remember the infested guy on the third floor who was inhabited by fly eggs. I decide to check on him to see if he's ok. He was... not ok. I put him out of his misery. I push my way through the aquatic apartment and defeat the tenant there, Summer, though I'm left wondering if there was another way to handle her situation. She didn't seem hostile, at first. The end of the apartment leads to some strange type of fleshy door requiring a key that I don't think I have. I've actually encountered a lot of such doors in various places - I'm sure I'll be playing this game again in the future, and the second time I'm going to make a list of all of these doors so I can keep track of which ones I still need to open and which keys go where. I traded in some cassettes to hand-man here for an excellent piece of armor Speaking of keys, I have one that leads to a convenience store on the first floor. I killed a horrible centipede-creature in there and looted the place. It LOOKS like there's a lot of stuff on the shelves but you can't take most of it I now have every planetary disc EXCEPT Saturn so it's time to take a crack at this door. I'm glad I wrote down the number of moons around planets. Math time! Obtaining Saturn now means that I should be able to open every planetary-locked door in the place, so I go around doing that. I find the last thing the Astronomers want from me by making a VHS tape of the security feed from outside. Do not look into the light The Astronomers are ready to go to the roof and perform their ritual. I assume this will be the end of the game so I'm going to hold off for a bit. In my explorations I found an unlabeled game cartridge, and unfortunately it's defective and I can't play it. I don't think I have enough time left to play all my games (also true in real life) In the evening, more progress on Lyle's campaign. We're ramping up to the final confrontation with the evil wizard so I have hope that I can finish this! 2 Days Remain I slept past noon. Why am I sleeping so late in these final days? I got stuff to do! Sybil is starting to lose it. I talk her out of it... for now. I'm not really sure what to do next while waiting for Lyle to be ready for roleplaying tonight, so I wander around for a bit and I find this guy in the parking garage - pretty sure he wasn't there before. He has a nasty antennae-whip that hits the whole party And just behind him, in a hole in the wall... an Iris key. Is this what I need to get past that aquatic door? Hell yes it is I step beyond and... I'm in Meat World. The amusement park we neither wanted nor deserved I explore Meat World for a bit but given how late I woke up the evening comes pretty quickly, so I hightail it back to the apartment for the most important thing in the game: Lyle's Mazes and Wizards campaign! I've had that look as a GM.... It didn't earn me anything. It used up valuable time that I probably could have used to help save the world, or at least some of the people in it - but damnit, I wanted this, and I got it. Ding dong the Wizard's dead! 1 Day Remains Time's up. I'm left with a lot of unsolved mysteries. Remember that painter? I never killed all of the other manifested paintings of him because some of them were just scared or friendly rather than hostile. Could I have fixed his brain by killing them anyway? Could I have fixed this blank game cartridge and played it? Could I have saved the guy with bug eggs in him? What lies at the end of Meat World? And where the hell do I actually find cards for that collectible card game or the materials to expand my apartment? These and other mysteries will have to remain so for now. There's so much going on in this game that I don't think it's possible to do everything in one run - and that's ok. I had an incredible time getting here and wholeheartedly recommend Look Outside to anyone who can stomach some visceral pixellated horror. I encountered a wonderful cast of characters, emotional stories of people having to deal with becoming twisted things and possibly losing parts of themselves, and others who's minds were as warped and twisted as their outward forms. I hacked my way through a jungle and soldiered through frozen halls without ever leaving my apartment building. I even (arguably) slew a dragon. What I've learned is that it may be possible to communicate with the Visitor, and if that's possible then it's worth trying. It's done untold damage to the world by now but that may never have been its intention. I'm going to go to the Astronomers and try their plan. It's better than just waiting for the end - even if one of their items isn't correct, maybe it'll still work out. I hope. I hope you guys know what you're doing. Moments later, I'm standing at the doorway to the roof. It's been weeks since I've seen the sky. It's.... beautiful. It's beautiful, and I'm all right - still human, anyway. The Astronomers are too, so I speak with them while they prepare. That was probaby the high point of my day. It went downhill from there. I knew that I'd messed up and gotten the wrong painting. What I did not know was that I had in fact screwed up nearly ALL of the ritual components. He should thank me, he's got bigger eyes to Astronomize with now In fact, only one Astronomer has what he needs and tries to conduct the ritual. He gets sucked up into the Visitor and becomes the Chorus of One, which is not much of a Chorus, and I end up having to fight it. With the Astronomer / Chorus defeated, I stumble back inside. I should have sat on my damn couch and played videogames all day. When I got back to my place, my companions stared at me, horrified. Even Leftover - you don't look so good yourself kid! Joke's on YOU universe, I was beating video games with one hand, wait till you see what I can do with seven! What a game! It feels good to end my scary game streak with an all-time banger, even if I got a 'bad' ending. As though just exploring more of it wasn't enough, now I have even more of a reason to play it again. There are many endings but this one is mine. This time.

The intensity of Golden Light has left me needing something less stressful, but it isn't Halloween yet so 'scary' games time is still on. I own Voltaire the Vegan Vampire entirely by chance - on a whim I got a '25 random games for 25 bucks deal', and this is one of them. It's got Vampires, cutesy graphics, and farming. Let us begin. The story, such as it is, is that I like broccoli and this is bad Voltaire refuses to eat vampire things like blood and intestines and instead runs away to farm veggies for himself. Offended by this, Dracula sends minions every night to destroy my crops and make me hungry enough to go back to the old ways, I think. If I can't grow enough veggies I'll go hungry By day I forage around my little graveyard cottage to get seeds and resources. Apparently sunlight is not a problem for Voltaire By night, the game changes to a tower-defense style game where enemies attack your crops. Leave the eggplants alone you fiends! Combat initially strikes me as a bit lackluster - the enemies aren't really animated, the sprites just wobble back and forth at you. And there's no direct danger to me, the enemies focus entirely on the crops so I just need to kill things fast enough to prevent that from happening. You can obtain soul stones which you can use to acquire permanent upgrades - I suspect I can 'die' if I get too hungry and will need to start over. All the upgrade are incremental boosts On the farming side, various actions increase your hunger, so what I'm able to do when building up the farm is effectively limited by the food I can grow and protect. To grow food, you need to clear fields, plant seeds and water them, each of which requires a separate hunger cost. Getting water in this game involves shaking it off of a 'droplet plant' and chasing the water around to catch it The first thing that strikes me as interesting is that plants do different things - some provide food and simply refill hunger, but others actually act as defense towers and attack or slow enemies. After a disastrous first night of combat where I failed to defend lots of plants, I note that the more plants you put down the more enemies come for you, and having the defense plants makes your life easier when it comes to protecting your crops. I need to find the right balance to keep eating vs. keeping the crops safe. After a week of farming, the first boss shows up. Mr. Skelly ran around outside the farm sending in minions, forcing me to abandon my crops to go get him After defeating him, uncles Frank and Stein showed up to let me know I should head elsewhere via portal. Unfortunately I forgot you needed soulstones to go through the portal and I spent them on upgrades so I'm stuck here for another week. After being stuck in the graveyard for another seven days and repeating my battle against the same boss, I'm starting to suspect that this may not be a great game. I've now reached the next area, which has the environmental effect of not showing me where enemies are approaching from. I have so much food leftover from the last map that I'm not sure I actually need to grow any, but I may as well. I think this could feed me for a week, especially if I didn't expend energy farming plants. My list of irritations with the game continues to grow - your special ability auto-targets enemies, but this is actually bad because the default special ability is an area effect that takes some time to fire and thus auto-targeting places it directly on a moving enemy that it won't hit. Another special ability that you can replace it with is a turret, and I'd rather place that where I want it than on an approaching foe. And whoever thought chasing water around was a good idea should be made to eat vegetables forever For this map I've decided to just consolidate all my crops around a single plot. The only way I lose crops is by trying to defend multiple separated plots, so instead I may as well just farm one - I may not earn as many plants as I could but I don't need them, especially when I'm not spending the extra hunger to maintain and re-plant lots of plants elsewhere. Four defense plants and four food crops still gets me plenty more food than I need and are easy to protect Your ranged projectiles move about as fast as you do so I don't see a lot of point to having them, I switched to melee attacks which seem to at least have an area-of-effect attack. I also got a 'melee attack trail' which seems to trigger often and did a lot of damage to the first boss very quickly. I've gotten through all the tutorial quests and now the game is giving me generic quests to do things like 'harvest seeds from wild plants' and 'craft a plank', which shows us that we've really hit the big time now. Speaking of the Big Time - how about the Big Top? One of the quest rewards is a carnival invitation, and I briefly, blissfully got to try doing something different. Oh joy, carnival games! Having tried each of them, most of them aren't that fun, are easily winnable, and generally produce more carnival tickets than you put into them. At 100 I can fight a boss, so I suppose I'll see what that's about. Special shout-out to 'Yordelus' for being a guaranteed win of at least 3 tickets Having purchased a boss fight, I get to fight this lovely fellow. Please close your cape sir nobody wants to see that Have I mentioned that the boss fights really... aren't? They tend to wander around and send minions at your crops but things in this game never hit YOU, so you're in no danger as you just walk next to them, hitting them repeatedly until they die - I suppose it's a battle between whether you can kill them faster than they kill your crops but there's no element of danger or strategy to it. The only good thing I have to say is that these battles are mercifully short. This warthog rider tried to kill the crops himself, but that really didn't make the fight any different The next area is desert. I suspect each level is a random combination of terrain and weather effect - now, what defines something as being a desert? That would be when it rains all the time, which is the weather effect I rolled for the desert, which means that I don't have to water my crops here. It may not LOOK like it's raining but hey it's hard to see raindrops in real life too At this point, I started to wonder if I could get by without planting anything at all. Sure, I'd get nothing to eat, but there should be fewer monsters if plants attract monsters, and I wouldn't be expending any hunger if I did no work, so theoretically it should work - and if it does I can just speedrun this game and get to the end of my suffering. And it IS a form of tedious suffering - at this point I've seen almost all of the plants in this game and there really doesn't seem to be anything else to it. Each zone requires that you survive 7 waves of enemies for the week to end and the boss to show up and those enemies are getting more numerous, like 80-90 come at you each night. In between nights you wander around the camp chasing water droplets (no you can't just take water from the lakes that are right there) and harvesting seeds. The minor irritations pile up, like you don't cut down a tree to get wood: Instead brushing past a tree has a chance to make it drop wood, and if it does then you have to double back to pick it up. Not planting anything was a mistake Thankfully I don't have to start the game over, so I'm not really sure it actually qualifies as a 'roguelike' in any form. I died because if you have no crops the beasties attack your main building, and without any defensive plants it's pretty hard to protect. I'll stick with the one-garden strategy, it's been working well and doesn't require a ton of effort to maintain. The game offers a couple 'classes', starting you as 'Default Vampire'. This starter class lets you choose between three different abilities each level so there's a bit of variety in how you can customize yourself. Thinking that I might see some interesting alternate options for powers and abilities I decided to unluck the most expensive class, the Pyromancer, under the assumption that most expensive = probably the most powerful. I was surprised to see that this afforded me a bit less customization than the starting class. If your skill tree does not branch, you might be a redneck. Where there were three power options per level for the basic Vampire, the most advanced class in the game just has straight power progression. It's still effective at fighting monsters (thankfully, because it made me restart from level 0), but boy does this contribute to my feeling like this game was never fully baked. The boss of the desert? That classic, though rarely seen desert creature: The Sand-Rhino. Why exactly is he helping Dracula? This is probably the worst game I've blogged so far. I might create a new 'bad games' category just for it, and for whatever future awfulness is in store for me. I'm not enjoying the act of playing it, so I am continuing more because I'm curious as to what else may dwell within this trainwreck. The boss of the snow area, 'Yeetus' (Latin for Yeti) The pattern continues - hang around farming for seven days, fight boss, run somewhere else. Since the monsters always show up anyway on the first night I'm not clear on what we've accomplished by running away, it doesn't keep us safe at all. Have I mentioned that the jokes in the game are all this good The combat / effects in this game are not bad aside from the lack of sprite animations, it'd be easy to mistake this for a fun game at a glance. This looks great but all I'm doing to win is walking in circles mashing the shoot/ability buttons The boss of the forest area is a Treant, which is at least more fitting than a Sand-Rhino or a Vampire Pervert. I guess Vampire Pervert at the circus was pretty appropriate, come to think of it. Aw hell. I did it again. I have absolutely no excuse this time, I grabbed the soul stones from the boss and spent them on upgrades - and now I can't go through the portal to get to the next level (again) and I'm stuck in the forest for another week (again) and I will need to fight the tree boss (again). 'Pay to advance' mechanic takes the top spot on the anger list, above 'chase water droplets'. On the next map I managed to make a garden that doesn't grow very much but it uses 'Nurse' plants so that it self-heals when it kills monsters, it's effectively invincible. Hooray, now I can just do nothing and wait for over a hundred monsters to walk into my garden and die woo Thus far we've faced other vampires, mythical creatures like yetis and treants, and one 'Sand Rhino'. Now we're down to a large bug. I think the creative juices have run their course. Its name - and I am not making this up - is Bugbug There is at least an attempt at making the boss fights have some variety, as in this case Bugbug flies around out of reach and occasionally lands for you to try to beat it up. Gameplay wise the problem is that your course of action remains the same no matter what the boss does - chase it around and beat it to death before it kills your garden (and thus far none of the bosses have proven capable of destroying a houseplant). One of the central tenets of good game design is to give the player choices, and Voltaire does have some. I should have specified meaningful choices The boss of this area is a Pirate. Ghost Pirate. I'm genuinely not sure how the fight works - most of the time I couldn't hurt him, but sometimes I could. Sometimes is enough, eventually. All it did was draw out the battle. Unfortunately he wasn't on his ship for the fight. For the last area we're going to... the castle grounds? We've been running away all this time and we're just going to go home now? The plan is apparently to start yet another garden here at the castle for a week until something happens I've built up so much extra food and water over the course of the game that I don't need to do actual farming here, so instead I fill every garden plot to the brim with angry killer plants. This is a fully armed and operational petunia patch With gardens this dangerous, I genuinely don't need to do anything but wait. When nighttime started I just went back inside the house. This is me battling hundreds of foes on the final level of the game After watching his son dig up the yard for an entire week, Dad has had enough and decides to personally stop his child from eating vegetables once and for all. Braham Stoker would be puzzled Dracula is a terrifying boss... in games like V-Rising and Castlevania. This is a legendary figure of fiction after all, with a degree of presence and intrigue bestowed on him from his first written incarnation to so many depictions of him in film and games. I must sadly report that Dracula's depiction in Voltaire the Vegan Vampire does not add much to Dracula's cultural significance - though I'll actually give them some credit for the boss battle itself, where Dracula focused his attacks on the house and was doing enough damage that it forced me to temporarily stop killing him to repair the house mid-battle, providing at least a hint of a challenge. Dad I live in the shed now, leave it be! After defeating Dracula and attempting (but failing) to reconcile with his father, Voltaire is ready to move on. He knows that Dad respects power, and must now give Voltaire proper respect since Voltaire defeated him. Well, I've certainly had enough with this game, time to move... I'm sorry, what? Uncles Frank and Stein just pop up and tell me I have to go fight the heretofore unmentioned Mother now? What?? Why? I thought I was done! There was pretty much an ending cutscene! It was... fine! Of all the sins committed, Voltaire teased me into believing that it was over and then just has to stick around for one more level. It has earned its rightful place as the first game in the Bad Games category. This is Play All The Things, and I'm going to finish it, but I don't have to like it. It's a 'Lava' level but the lake-creature we've been feeding is perfectly happy in said lava You know, in a way I'm glad the game has continued, because I would have missed out. I would have missed out on seeing a palette-swap of water with lava, and I would have missed out on this incredible ability in my skill tree.... er, skill trunk. I can't make Doppelgangers at all so this ability - that I must take - does absolutely nothing Hold on, we just fought Dracula! What in the world are you going to follow THAT up with? Who's the ultimate boss of this game if not the ultimate Vampire? I've been racking my brain for famous female vampires and I've got nothing in the Public Domain. Maybe Lilith? Sometimes she's the figurehead for a dark, evil mother figure. I guess they couldn't think of anything either She's not just lamer than Dracula, she's also easier, which really leaves me wondering why they tacked on a whole extra level for this. I mean, I suppose it wasn't hard to add since like the rest of the levels it's essentially a sprite / palette swap, but this game jumped the shark somewhere around the Sand Rhino. Please don't hurt the volcano, I live there I am grateful that Voltaire has run out of family members to hurt - having been defeated Mom gives him a hug and Dad shows up for a family photo. A family photo which shouldn't show anyone because we're vampires. Ah well. Dad please let me eat veggies and let Mom buy her own clothes! Somewhere along the way I was asking myself if I was unfairly disparaging this game, if perhaps I wasn't enjoying it mainly because it's a very easy game and someone less experienced might enjoy it more - perhaps, given the silly theme, it's actually a game intended for children and all of these simplistic mechanics were simply designed to appeal to a younger audience. Frank and Stein came to my rescue, unburdening me of these doubts when they dropped a 'Fifty Shades of Grey' reference. Thanks for that, guys.

Continuing in the vein of scary games for Halloween, I've chosen Golden Light , which is a wild-looking FPS roguelike. Things start off perfectly fine. I'm dating a pronoun. And that bike is rusted to hell. I go pick a rose for my paramour and She gets dragged into Hell This was a bad first date Ever the hero, I jump down after here to find myself in the 'Gut', a shifting meaty labyrinth of awful. We're sorry but the real princess is in some other godforsaken room The best way I can describe this game is 'discordant and disturbing', and that goes double for the sound. Random creepy audio while I'm wandering around is keeping me on edge. Strange nonsensical notes litter the room This game has an unusual 'innovation' - you can eat your weapons. Just what I always wanted to eat Like many roguelikes you get a choice of random upgrades for the run you're on - in this case by finding 'mementos' in the form of photographs. Let's see... do more damage or have a meat mole grab me sometimes? My first encounter with a monster is terrifying - many of the monsters in this game just look like furniture until you get close, when they reveal themselves by popping into their normal form and attacking you. This is me getting beat up by an Ottoman I ended up eating my revolver to stay alive when it was out of ammo - it both healed me and caused bleeding, so there's good and bad to putting a gun in your mouth. There's also good and bad when it comes to putting your hand in meat holes. This turned out way better than I expected it to The objective of each level is to find keys, and then use those keys to unlock the door to the next level down. I have no idea how deep I need to go to find Her. Besides weapons there are sub-items like a gold tooth or eyeballs attached to fingers. You can either eat these or throw them at enemies. Throwing the eye-fingers caused a blazing inferno and burned a monster to death. When I descended to the next level I saw Her - possibly the real Her. Our time together was all too brief. There's an interesting variety of weapons. I've found ammo for a thompson, a revolver, a knife, an axe, and.... a camera! Hitting monsters with this stuns them. Also I love the ceiling hands. I died on the second level and I found myself in a small graveyard, in a field of flowers. She's not here, I have to get back in there and find her Interestingly, I can still find ammunition and mementos to upgrade myself in this between-run area. And some of these upgrades are pretty unusual. This made me very short and very fast This outdoor area is very large! It's not your typical roguelike 'room where you spend gold for permanent upgrades' deal, I've kept the gold I had when I died but I haven't found anything to spend it on. I did find a bike that I can ride and get around this place faster with. Also the bike has a skull on it that talks to me I found my way back into the Gut, and interestingly I don't have to start over from the beginning - I'm resuming on the same level that I died on. I also found a guy in a phone booth that, for gold, will start me on an easier level - in a roguelike that may be the way to go, because the upgrades you get earlier will make you stronger and let you become strong enough to get through the harder levels below. The words on this note disappeared as I read it and then the note exploded Not everything in the dungeon is dangerous - there's a couple NPCs down here that trade gold for various favors. A horrible monster just standing around? That's a friend. You have to watch out for chairs and books. There are map stations every so often that sketch out the area for you and put up question marks where items and monsters are. Some of those question marks are the keys I need. Playing this is intense - they really nailed the atmosphere and I'm tentative about approaching any given object because it might just come alive and attack me. Actually, some of these monsters are not mimics after all. Some are just plain horrible instead of pretending to be something they're not I'm finding a lot of gases and other things that cause status effects. Some are intuitive, like poison and bleeding which hurt you. Others are... a bit unusual. I can't fight the monsters if I love them Speaking of love, one of my mementos resulted in having a little friendly mimic wander around and fight for me. I named him Kurt After dying again, I took some more time to explore the overworld. And there is some cool freaky stuff going on in this overworld customed in roguelites to getting currency that persists between runs and spending it on upgrades, but in Golden Light it appears that there are items in the overworld that can increase your overall health and damage resistance and you have to find them. I found a map which helps explore this place immensely, the overworld looks the same everywhere I also found a crazy sword that one-shots the enemies here and got a bunch of gold, which I gave to Piano guy and unlocked additional areas, earning me a couple permanent upgrades to my max health. Then I found a giant typewriter and tried to use it. Doing that caused me to end up here And then I got thrown into Gut and started pretty deep in there. I'm sorry, Floor WHAT? As you might expect, I died without completing the floor - but not before I found a badass tommy gun and slaughtered several foes with it. Toothy Dude I will miss not having you. This thing had triple barrels! The items you find like fish heads, gold teeth and such all have their effects randomized every run, so when you first find an object you won't know what it does. You can either eat them or throw them and I think they have more bad effects than good so it's probably safer to throw them if you don't know what something does. Reading some notes will identify what an item does so they're worth picking up Based on some dialogue from Her I suspect that I need to find all Her parts to win, or at least to progress to something else. I had the option to kiss her (and did) and I suspect that caused monsters to invade the floor when I picked up the last key I'm starting to learn to survive longer and some interesting tricks. I found a Pistol that causes regeneration when it shoots, so if I shoot myself with it I lose some life but over time regain more. I also got better with melee - I ran into a floating ball of arms that attacked me called Carre and managed to get the best of it with a baseball bat. After defeating Carre I found Her Head Sadly the head-bone is not connected to anything, and I don't know if it was beating Carre that caused She's Head to appear at the end of the level or if it was just random - but I have one part of Her! After retrieving her head I was immediately sent back up to the fields without dying or losing my upgrades, and I've now figured out that picking up a rose in the fields is giving me regen. One of the mementos I found on this run gave me a laser-blast out of my eyes so I'm easily able to kill the mushroom people and mimics wandering around on the surface here without expending ammo or weapon durability, and with the rose regen I think I'm in a position to explore up here indefinitely and kill everything that I happen to run into. I love this forehead laser! No ammo required! I'm also picking up mementos out here, I don't see why you can't just make yourself really powerful up in the fields before venturing down into the Gut (except for the time spent doing it when you end up dying anyway - which of course I did. I will miss that head laser.) After obtaining the Head, my entrance back into the Gut is blocked off by a woman named Rose, who encourages me to go elsewhere. She is not the subtle type I suspect that I need to go into other entrances to get into different 'biomes' of the gut - it's been hard to notice because every biome is awful and oppressive, but there are things like cages, empty corridors, somewhere had a library theme. I suspect that there's once piece of 'She' per biome, so I'm going to stop going in the initial elevator that Rose is guarding and use some of the other entrances that take you to down to different floors right away. Down in the cages I found.... a movie theatre! Is this the entertainment district? There's even a movie playing but it's distorted and unintelligible. Two stars. This band may not look good but when you hear them play you'll realize they also don't sound good. I also found a couple 'meat cults' that show up randomly, there are these piles of meat hanging out in bleed or poison areas that offer you a chance to join them and become immune to that particular status until you die. I always wanted to join a cult! I've made an important discovery - the 'Gut' is a living thing that makes life harder for you if you piss it off. Of course I discovered this by pissing it off If this happens the game spawns more monsters (and once you get the last key for a level you have to run like hell because a horde is coming after you). On the overworld I found a tree that you can give gold to in order to make the Gut happy with you again. It takes half your gold but hopefully makes my life easier. This means that I probably shouldn't be playing this like an FPS where I kill everything, I should kill only as necessary and just work on making it down to the next floor - so long as I can complete a single floor in a run that's progress in the bank. Many of my deaths are pretty much because I got lost, so I think the best weapon in the game may be the map After a couple attempts at pacificism I don't think it works as well as I'd hoped - the monsters still want to kill you, the best way to survive is to kill them first, and the Gut doesn't actually get mad at you until you've killed quite a few of them. After dying more times to another boss monster named 'Meall' that was an awful grinding machine disguised as a wall, I finally got past it with judicious use of the map and managed to acquire the second part of Her - Her hand. Her's hand? Other than being detached from Her body it's looking great. Now that I have a couple of Her pieces, it's time I tried putting Her back together. It's not going well Back to exploring the Gut, I'm finding new things as I go deeper. Some of these discoveries are entirely unpleasant, such as the first time I picked up a note and it tried to bite my face off. More like Blank Page Scared the Crap Out Of Me Other things are positively delightful and weird, like an NPC that lives in a toilet and helps you out for some cash. And incredible paintings! I'm finding more survival strategies. Joining a status-effect cult has proven very beneficial in this run which has made me immune to the all-too-frequent clouds of poison gas. I've learned that hoarding Gold is a terrible idea - there's too much chance of getting a 'gold-hunger' effect that just causes you to eat it all. I've learned that I can shoot myself with a handgun with a regeneration effect and gain back more life than I lose by shooting myself. Perhaps most importantly I've learned that the instances of 'Her' that I can find around the levels intermittently produce a regeneration effect, which means that if I find She / Her and there aren't any monsters around I can generally just stay there and heal back to full. She is a welcome respite in a bleak place I've also figured out that since the monsters go crazy and try to kill you when you pick up the last key for a level, so it behooves me to leave a key close to the exit elevator for last. Overall Golden Light is very good at what it sets out to do, which is make you feel uneasy and frightened as you explore its unpleasant interiors. There have been several times when I have made it to safety by the skin of my teeth with a horde of monsters chasing me, and several others where the monsters cut me down before I could reach the exit. And one time where a bunch of monsters all jumped me the moment I set foot in the level - I died fast I do have a couple nitpicks. One is that the maps - especially the overworld maps - are (I suspect) intentionally difficult to read, and navigation for me has been exceptionally challenging. I constantly get lost if I don't carry a map with me at all times, which uses up one of my two weapon slots - I find I really need to have it handy to find keys. Another is jumping. This game has one of the strangest jump mechanics I've ever experienced, and I'm not a fan. Jumping moves you in a way I can best describe as 'swooping' in the direction that you're moving, except if you're standing still you 'swoop' backwards. On forward jumps I've sometimes managed to clear obstacles that appear much higher than normal jump height, so it's often not clear to me at a glance if I'm able to jump over or onto something or not. Thankfully there's no platforming required and it's mainly a dodge mechanic. My last little pet peeve is after you die sometimes the game starts you next to the biome entrance for the place you last came out of so you can start again, and sometimes it puts you back to the beginning so you have to walk back to it. I suppose I should still explore the outside area some more but the gist of the overworld is that it's got a few beneficial items in it but mostly exists so you can choose your entrance into the Gut. Somehow I've gained two permanent abilities, and I have no idea how (and one is Martyr which means I don't hurt myself if I hit myself which is an excellent ability). I've got one consumable item that claims it will let me keep a memento after death so next time I get head-laser I'm going to try it on that. Rose has seen better days I wonder if Rose is trapped here looking for someone, like I am. The dialogue in this game is intentionally incoherent so it's difficult to make sense of. After many attempts, I finally succeeded at killing the third boss, Gut Divers. I ended up grabbing a camera that paralyzes and poisons and using it to freeze him so I could riddle him full of Tommy gun rounds. I've never been so happy to see a disembodied leg in my life. The bosses drop unique weapons and uh.... there's pros and cons to this one. The good news is that it's indestructible and shoots fire. The bad news is... it's a Phallus. I categorically refuse to eat this weapon, and not just because it's a good weapon. The next level set is hunting-cabin themed, with alternating hallways featuring snowy 'exteriors' and log-cabin interiors, though everything is still a maze of corridors. Some of the deer heads on the walls pop right off and attack you On rare occasions I'm finding Golden Amber, the item that lets me make an ability permanent. I used the first to get the head-laser so I always have a weak ranged weapon, and now I've used two more to lock in a nice combination of abilities - one causes me to not damage myself (much) if I hit myself, another lets a weapon pick up an effect from me when I hit myself, and the last one repairs the weapon if I hit myself. Officially changing my name to Mr. Delicious This means that I can now easily start runs with a weapon that never breaks that I can use to regenerate my health whenever I want, so I can top off anytime I find a safe area in a level. It's particularly useful on a low-damage map but I can set it up on any weapon The boss of the Cabin area is a beefy deer named Maneater, who I managed to avoid entirely on my second attempt and find Her second arm. Four parts down, not sure how many are left The levels are getting more elaborate and I need about six keys per level, but I'm making good progress with my handy self-regen - I can no longer suffer a 'death of a thousand cuts', which is usually what's been ending a run outside of the boss monsters. Speaking of boss monsters, the next one to bar my path is Castle, a huge figure carrying a huge sword and causing huge damage. He killed me lots and lots. I think he CAN be killed, but not by me. I eventually managed to sneak around him and find She's torso... and then the game threw me into a very strange vignette. Some wheelchair-bound murder investigation that had nothing to do with anything as far as I can tell Golden Light is an exercise in horrific absurdity. Everything is meat, you eat weapons, my most successful strategy is to find a safe area and hit myself with a map every so often. Let he who has correctly assembled a dismembered woman cast the first stone The next area appears to be corridors of madness, wall after wall are lined with notes. There's some nasty enemies wandering these hallways I've added some speedy abilities to my list of permanents, including one that makes me super short and run around like a dog, so screenshots from here on are going to be from a low perspective. On one level I managed to have one of my minions survive all the way through, and it made getting the last key and getting out trivial. Just keep carrying that key all the way to the door buddy! Who's a good eye-taker? You are! The boss of this level set (the pattern is three levels per area, third level has a boss that makes your life miserable) is Scourge, some sort of wizard with a sword. I lucked out here - I teleported right next to it and then Scourge didn't move while I lasered it to death. Scourge dropped the 'Meatnomicon', which is a spellbook that inflicts random status effects. It's great - most of the boss weapons are - but I died two floors later and lost it, and I don't think it's worth the effort of replaying earlier levels to try to re-obtain them. Scourge was guarding her Heart! The last part! All right, one Heart, one Head, Torso, Two Legs, and a Hand - that's like 95% of a woman, I think we're good to go. Good news! I put Her together and she looks a lot better than you'd expect! Bad news: A tower of arms appeared and a bike whisked her away into the sky. I followed her up to the sky jellyfish Meduse which took me to the final set of levels. Did I mention the game was absurd? My self-regen setup got me through the initial levels with a lot of time and caution, but the final boss, Gutworm, was a hell unto itself. Unlike the other bosses there's no hiding from him, he goes right though walls and chases you constantly. He barged into the starting elevator and ate me After a couple failed attempts to kill him followed by many failed attempts to try to find all the keys while he was chasing me, I finally got fed up and managed to play 'Ring around the Rosie' with a spear until Gutworm was dead. It didn't end well. One of the ways writing about games has changed the way I play them is that I'm more consistent about finishing them, because I want to finish out the story and make a complete entry. Golden Light has multiple endings (indicated by an achievement and the rather depressing final page that you write), but I will end my time with it here. This is a difficult game, and playing it is highly stressful and utterly exhausting. I have to constantly be on guard against ambushes and random horrible sound effects and in all honesty if I were not blogging it there's a good chance I would have moved on sometime around when I was being cut in twain by Castle, and I am most certainly ready to move on now that I've beaten it. That said, Golden Light is an impressive game, it is well designed with a lot of interesting strangeness to it, and being able to acquire permanent abilities over time makes it more of a roguelite instead of a roguelike - I doubt I'd have had the personal fortitude to beat this game without them, but at no point did they make the game anything I'd consider easy. If you want to see something weird and scary, Golden Light delivers. Also, I'm pretty sure She cheated on me, that bitch.

'Tis October, the season for Halloween! To celebrate I'm going to embrace the festivities by playing scary games. CARIMARA looks ominous and that's about all I know, so here we go! I am Carimara. I'm the little old man with a staff walking to this house in the woods The art style is striking, bleak with hints of dull color - but I have to remark on how animated it is. Even when you're standing still, the world is moving and shifting - almost as though it's breathing. I talk to the old woman in the house. Sure sure I'll just go head to your basement, sounds great You can find 'cards' by looking at different objects and these translate into dialogue options when speaking to a character. The basement is a maze of tunnels, and I'm lost when I stumble on a 'Forelore', or ghost. Game feature: creepy wall frogs I speak to the Forelore. It just has three questions for me: "Who was I?", "Who killed me?", "What killed me?" My answers were incorrect The old woman finds my unconscious body and kindly drags me back upstairs for some rest. Looks like this is a solve the mystery game! The old woman doesn't know anything about what this ghost is so I'll have to find out more myself. I wander around the house and see what else I can find. This wise old owl scared the pants off me when her head whipped around Exploring a bit, I find an awful little hole in the attic. The thing inside ate me but fortunately 'death' just means waking back up in bed I managed to coax it out with something that it wanted and immediately regretted doing so PLEASE GET BACK IN YOUR HOLE You progress the story by using the right cards to the right things - the basic system is nice and simple, choosing a card represents either using it on the item or showing it to someone in order to get them to talk about it. My character is mute and uses these cards to communicate. Some characters don't want to talk about certain things Thanks to the Hole-Horror I found my way into the shed. Looks like Hole-Horror's buddy died in here The back plank of the shed was loose so I was able to explore outside the garden a little bit. That's a fancy gravestone From the two-person bed and the owl I'd gathered that Violet, the old woman, didn't always live alone, so I suspect the ghost in the basement is her husband's spirit - and he was murdered. Talking to Violet about the grave gets her to reveal what I assume is an effigy she made of her departed husband. A very sweet memorial - the unpleasantness of the place ameliorated by something beautiful I stand corrected (By the Owl), 'Lavender' was also a woman. Now I'm the bad guy for making assumptions. Something from earlier makes sense now - the frogs in the basement wanted to 'see her again', so I assume the spirit with questions is Lavender. Also, Violet told me earlier that the chest is where she keeps her Lavender, leading me to assume that it was for herb storage. I try just answering the first of the spirit's questions since I'm confident, but that doesn't help - I have to get all three right. Exploring doesn't reveal anything else either. Thinking about what the Owl and Violet are saying about things, I actually have some educated guesses about how Lavender died and why - there's some inferences to be made here.... Nailed it! In a touching scene, the specter of Lavender is reunited with Violet - and that's all, folks! It's a very short game - I think it's the only full game that I've started and finished a blog post on in a single session. There's nothing wrong with short and sweet, and the ending is very sweet Even though our time together was brief, it was time I enjoyed - I'll take a good game over a long game any day.

Ok, let's try this again. I'd like to note that I have to work harder at this than a lot of historical Kings who were born princes and just became King by default (With all due respect to those who earned their Kingship by murdering people). Meet the Beetnicks I have some different starting options, most notably we're going to try being a peaceful clan - make as many friends as we can, including being nice to beastmen and non-humans. I chose the Trolls for our ancient enemy because in my first attempt they never attempted negotiation, nor did they ever appear to pose a clan-ending level threat, so they seem like they might be a 'safer' choice for a longtime foe. Starting a new playthrough gives me some insight into what's the same and what's different. Here's the 'new' map. Actually pretty similar to the old map. The clan names have changed but their actual natures have repeated - I see some that I didn't encounter before but I think the actual nature and personalities of the clans in the game is the same. albeit in different locations.   The Pottery Fanatics are our neighbors again, this time as the Greenwing clan. We have again found the Duck people on our land. This time we're being super nice and not even demanding that they feed us. They even put in a good word for us with their buddies in the swamp In these early days I've ended the initial feud we had with a neighboring clan, I'm exploring both my own territory and abroad to find things (sometimes this results in treasures or valuable trade goods when exploring my own territory), and I'm trying to establish trade deals with other clans to bolster my economy. And I swear I wasn't thinking of this when I named the clan, but a clear opportunity to embrace the essence of the Beetnicks presents itself and will forever guide our future choices. Whenever we CAN use poetry, we WILL use poetry! Overall things seem to be going well. I've had very few raids against me, the extra crop / herd magic has us producing lots of food which I'm alternately trading for cattle, giving away or hosting feasts to improve relations with other clans, I ended the last feud with another clan and I'm starting to make more alliances. I've unlocked the ability to perform the Making of the Storm Tribe quest but I'm thinking I'm going to hold off on performing it until all my neighbors are great friends. Not this time crazy man, I'm waiting until I'm good and ready. I don't know if it's the extra bit of magic or the blessings or what, but the food production is off the charts - we're making double the food we need. I'm giving so much away that my reputation is already at 'King'. My efforts at being peaceful have caused the Warriors of the clan to get bored (despite them still seeing occasional action as horse-nomads and trolls occasionally attempt to raid my village.) You know what's EVEN BETTER than a raid? A poem! My efforts at Poetry have often yielded good results, sometimes been neutral, and never backfired (yet). So far so good. One thing that's very cool about this game is that as far as I'm aware it's a unique fantasy world, and I'm learning about it as I play through the game. Things like Dinosaurs are real (they ate me last game) and Trolls are accompanied by goblin-like Trollkin. This latest event implies to me that Dragonewts have some form of immortality - when they die they're born into a new body with their old memories, and in at least some cases they want their old body back. Super glad I didn't make his old body into a suit of armor, that would have been really awkward Elves are literally made of wood, I think? In this rather grim event one of my Clan Ring has taken it upon himself to kill some. Leikan we are a PEACE clan, damnit. He's off the ring for this and I hope we can placate the elves. All right, I have ample extra cows and goods, and either excellent relations or alliances with all of my neighboring Clans. It's time to perform the Making of the Storm Tribe Heroquest Some of these events run in a long sequence - this feud between two families in different clans is constantly threatening to erupt into a larger conflict. At first Randara stole a prize horse, Glendara got it back and killed one of Rangdara's relatives doing it, now Rangdara has killed one of Glendara's kin. I'm hopeful that a well-composed Poem might end the cycle of violence Having met with almost all of the neighboring clans (I had to agree to not accept one clan to please another, so one of my neighbors won't make it in), I convinced all of them to join us by agreeing to everything they wanted. I even invited a clan that's probably a huge mistake but I can't pass up the opportunity to see what happens. The Hendarti's issue is that they tend to have chiefs that are insane. This is the only time I got an 'Are you really sure about these guys?' message Look man, the Beetnicks are not a judging sort of people, we want everyone to get along! And for the price of hundreds of cows and goods, we form a very, very large tribe - and we're not waiting around to be King! After all, we organized all this! The Poetryslam tribe is appropriately comissioned Poetryslam consists of the Clans Beetnicks, Apple, Gorind, Greenwing (shout out to the Pottery fans), Hendart, Karandoli, Stag Hearth, Tanahart, Vanstach, and White Horse. Now that I'm King, there's two new ways to use our magic - Destiny and Heroism. I should try to figure out how to get more magic overall Not sure what they do yet but I threw a point into Destiny. I get the sense that magic points spent in an area tends to improve your odds when it comes to some internal random determination for the outcome of an event or battle. Poetryslam is about twice the size of the only other tribe, Colymar. Treasures seem to confer permanent bonuses and effects at no ongoing cost so I'm working on trying to find them via exploration or buy them from other clans (which it turns out is VERY expensive) After a year or two I don't think being in a Tribe has helped all that much except for doing Heroquests, where calling upon the tribe gets you lots of additional people to help. That doesn't save me from failing one when I misinterpret the story and choose the wrong option. After awhile the Prophet shows up again and sets us on our future path: Six quests to Honor the Gods Beginning with Ernalda's quest, which I've actually already done, but needs to be done again Even though his leadership is 'Reknown', the man I made king of Poetryslam - Sarotar - is as indecisive as they come. He almost never has a clear opinion and he's not even good at Poetry Internationally, Poetryslam is a big deal. The existence of the Tribe prompts the other clans in the Valley to form their own tribes. Nobody's nearly as large as we are but hopefully we can all be friends and read poetry together Speaking of Poetry, the Warriors of the Beetnicks are unhappy. I don't generally send them on Raids until they complain too much about not being sent on Raids, and since they're not well trained they tend to do poorly when they do go on these raids that they demanded they be sent out on. The third time I read them a poem to assuage their anger I got some cold looks. The fourth time the poem just makes things worse. Maybe they'll like the next one better. Oh hell no. I just lost one exploration party last year to an unknown fate, and now this. A Troll-spider sounds just awful! You know what, Orlev? I know she's big and strong and probably has magic, but Trolls are our ancient enemies and YOU are EXCELLENT in combat! YOU GOT THIS! Orlev... did not got this. I have lost two exploration parties. We will commemorate his brave sacrifice in verse..... Another long-running event series has been Theya's story. As a child our Clan noticed that she had prophetic visions, so we sent her to wise sages to become educated and learn about her abilities. After she returned as a capable seer she was able to complete the Heroquest for Ernalda Feeds the Tribe and grant herself great leadership. Now the time has come for her to marry. Way to spoil the mood Theya Right now I'm in a cycle of trading off excess food for cattle / goods, trading that for treasure, sending out exploration parties, and occasionally just donating excess food to whoever likes me the least to change their minds. The food surplus has really put me ahead of the economic curve and at times it's challenging to spend it all - the food spoils if I just keep it so I don't want to have too much on hand. In between those actions I'm sacrificing to discover Mysteries for more Lore and Rituals of the Gods. One of my exploring parties comes back with an incredibly valuable battle artifact - Humakt's Raven Banner. If used we'll automatically win the battle... at the cost of the banner-bearer's life. Since my warriors are not good at what they do this is priceless I think some poor Dungeon Master's RPG party has wandered into town. They rolled into town, fondled someone's wife, drank themselves silly, got into a fight with us and killed a warrior and injured five others before running off. I'm 90% certain this was someone's roleplaying group. There is trouble in the Tribe, and unfortunately I don't know exactly what I'm supposed to have done to handle it - but this is the second time the other chieftains are angry, and I'm really unclear exactly why they're angry. What oaths have I not honored, my countrymen? Having found out that trying to push through this would utterly shatter the tribe, leaving it with only two other clans plus myself, I've chosen to abdicate the Throne. The King has retired. Long Live the King! Now is the time of Kagradus of the Apples And the bad news doesn't stop there - we lend some magic to a guy doing a Heroquest, and he never returns. By the time the year ends we're down 10 magic and at sacred time we can't allocate anything. And we're still in the red Time to call in favors from other clans to try to get us back up to snuff, hopefully this year isn't too bad. We survived the year, even without magic the harvest was still plenty good and we had food to spare. The years go by and I continue to donate to our nearby clans - I suspect that I was focused on improving relations with other non-tribe clans that still didn't like me and simply wasn't giving gifts to my tribe-mates, so I'm trying to remedy that now. I'm also going on additional Heroquests when possible, I heard rumors of Chaos approaching and so I performed Elmal Guards the Stead to protect against it. Trust me you do NOT want to be the Heroquester for this one Only a few years into his reign, Kagradus resigns due to a pretty rough prophecy. How do you like them Apples The Ring doesn't believe we're in good enough shape to win Kingship yet so I support another candidate (Who loses, oh well). It seems at this point the Heroquests count towards our main objective whether I'm King or not, and I didn't really see much actual benefit from being King so I'll focus on getting the Heroquests done for now and then try to position myself to take back the throne when we're closer to completing the seven or so that we need. Militarily we're a defensive powerhouse - I have a horn that terrifies horses that keeps the horse people from making any headway when they raid us and a stone that turns our arrows to fire that breaks up troll raids, and the two of those are really the only things that have been attacking me with any regularity. Beyond that we've constructed all of the available defenses, and no other clan is actively raiding us - being friends with pretty much everyone is working well. Not everything goes well with the Heroquesting. Sarotar, the first King of Poetryslam, is slain while attempting Humankt's Heroquest. That bad news is quickly followed by more, as someone steals the precious Raven Banner - I offer a reward for its return but it's gone. Then the outcome of a battle of Heroes leaves my best fighter, Kallyr, dead. I hope this Band of One Hundred is worth it. You know exactly what we did in her memory I spend several years in a row unable to successfully perform a fourth Heroquest. I tried Humankt's twice and failed both times on the wrong choice, but even with the correct choices I think there's a chance of failure - I just got beaten up by one of the foes in Orlanth and Aroka even though I tried to fight them, which as far as I can tell is what I was supposed to do. Failing a Heroquest costs you clan magic which needs to be recovered as well as effectively preventing you from re-attempting one for another year or so, which is making my Heroquest progress very slow. For all that, the overall situation remains good - we have plenty of food, a ton of treasures (some of which have broken in battle but that's life), and all the failed Heroquests amount to is a significant delay rather than defeat. One problem that's been nagging at me is overpopulation. The number of our people are growing slowly but steadily, and when I founded this clan in the interests of peace I chose to take no more land than we needed. While we're still producing more food than we need, the higher population is eating more too - and eventually that may become untenable. The only way I know how to get land is to try to raid for it, but every clan next to us is either allied or part of our own tribe. The Queen of Poetryslam dies in a blood feud (I guess that prophecy that caused the last King to resign was not kidding around!), and the Throne is once again up for grabs. During her entire reign we got 0 Heroquests done and Theya doesn't want the throne. We'll continue to wait. I'm learning that I haven't nearly been using the powers of Divination enough. All this time I'm sending food gifts to everyone pretty much randomly because I don't have a great idea of what they currently think of us, and I was pretty close to complaining that there didn't seem to be a way to find out what other clan's opinions of you were. Well, I was wrong - it's in a sub-menu of the God Sacrifice screen The God of Knowledge is about to get a whole lot of cows sent his way so we can get a better idea of the overall diplomatic situation. As I suspected, the other clans in our tribe all have a high opinion of us. Or at least they did until this happened. Now this here looks like one of those game-ending disasters I'm not going to try and put the Beetnicks up against this guy, so I try to buy him off... and it works, with a caveat. The other clans in Dragon Pass view the Beetnicks as traitorous cowards. On the other hand, the Beetnicks didn't get the shit kicked out of us like they all did. And we got our revenge later. Derek, a warrior from our clan dedicated to the destruction of the Prax, takes down Goldentooth After many attempts and me being impatient enough to try a Heroquest only a year after the last failure, I finally pull off Orlanth and Aroka. Four down, three to go. Theya's story has been incredibly tragic - the man she married died and all her children were stillborn. Despite this she is a powerful seer and I have made her leader of the Beetnicks - perhaps we are all her children now. Theya's visions and leadership have seen us through more than one crisis The problem of overpopulation continues to worry me. My options are as follows: 1. Ignore it - Let the population continue to grow until we have so many people that we can no longer use food as trade goods and eventually starve, hoping we can win the game before this happens. 2. Self-enforce population control by getting our own population killed with poor responses to events and failed attacks on enemy clans. 3. Attack another Clan within the Tribe that we are not allied with to try to take their land and possibly wreck the tribe. 4. Attack the Slapfoot Ducks that we made peace with decades ago and haven't bothered us and will likely anger the Beastmen. 5. Attack the one neighboring clan that we're Allied with but that isn't part of the tribe and suffer the reputational consequences of attacking an ally. I'd been learning towards option 5 as our least-bad option when an event pushes me in that direction. I hadn't been able to voluntarily end an alliance whenever I wanted. The Squat Oaks are troll-lovers anyway I hadn't planned on fighting anyone and thus far we haven't proven particularly good at attacking others, but without additional land the Beetnicks will starve. Faced with that dire event, we reorganize as a War clan. The Beetnicks must conquer to survive - or cull their own population by trying. The initial attempt to seize land fails - not because we lost the battle, we won but our warriors saw the Squat Oak mothers and babies weeping and decided not to take their land after all. This is not a problem I am accustomed to having in video games. There we go. We have acquired more living space. After attacking the Squat Oaks over the next several months, they are shattered - we take land from them twice and have significantly expanded our Tula. We have room to grow for perhaps decades. The victory is bittersweet, as the curtain falls on our final attack, Theya dies giving birth to her first living child. A sad day for the Beetnicks We have enough land, we don't need fan the flames of war beyond that. As the clan ring is reorganized and a new leader is chosen, the Beetnicks once again return to being a peace clan. Apologies are made and gifts sent to the Squat Oaks to prevent a long-running feud. Turns out I probably owe the Squad Oaks even more of an apology. A couple years after my brief war of conquest, my own people get pissed off that there are too many of us and some split off to form their own clan. Turns out I needn't have gone to war at all, the people would solve overpopulation on their own accord On the second attempt (on the first attempt the Quester was eaten while pretending to be a cow) I manage to complete Uralda's Heroquest. I've failed Humankt's so many times that I'm going to give up on it and attempt others. When the Kingship of the tribe becomes available again I'm going to try for it, I think I can manage to get the seven Heroquests finished during the reign of the next monarch. My efforts at diplomacy have gotten me back into the good graces of most of the other Clans, even longtime enemies like the Ernaldori which have been an ongoing source of raids for decades are finally settling down and making amends. I've just noticed that some of the Heroquests are intertwined with each other's stories - in Lhankor Mhy's Heroquest he's very busy doing his thing and is annoyed when Issaries comes to ask him 'annoying questions' about making peace between these warring peoples - which is the Heroquest that Issaries is focused on. Meanwhile the 'pointless' thing that Lhankor Mhy is doing right now is retrieving Truth itself I don't know if this is something the game normally does or extremely fortuitous timing, but the moment we complete our sixth Heroquest, the current king of the tribe steps down. Was the dream too terrifying or too embarrassing? This is our time. One Heroquest to go, and Ernaldesta wants the throne for herself. Our best Poet makes our case at the Tribal moot, and I throw in hundreds of cows and goods to seal the deal - this is a chance I do not want to miss. Poetryslam is now ruled by a Beetnick Queen - Long Live Queen Ernaldesta! Something is going on with my cows. Normally their numbers increase slightly overall from breeding and such, but right now they're dropping significantly on their own, season after season, despite blessings and magic spent on herds. I haven't seen an event that appears cow-related, the Ancestors say there is no curse upon my clan.... and yet we lose them. The reason why is an utter mystery, as many things in the world are mysteries to my clansmen. It doesn't help when the Cows fail the basic task of making good calves I am not the only one trying to become Queen of Dragon Pass. The Chief of the Dundalos tribe visited our village, arguing that she should be made Queen. We rebutted her arguments then, and months later she showed up with an army in tow. Thanks to rumors we had heard, the Tribe was ready to meet her - and had a magic clod of dirt ready that caused an earthquake and shattered her forces. Saraska's quest to become Queen ends at the point of our swords I have figured out the mystery of the disappearing Cows. I had bad farming settings Remember when we took all that land from the Squat Oaks? I put it to use as extra farmland and I was adjusting these sliders to maximize the expected harvest. The only warning you get that this is actually a Bad Idea is from Enfrew here - I didn't connect that dots that not having enough farmers to tend our crops and herds would lead to large amounts of cattle escaping, and I wish the game had had a more prominent notification that this was the cause of my cattle woes. In fact the only way I noticed there was a problem at all was in watching the cow count! Thankfully we still grow so much food that I've been able to trade for cows to bring our herds back up, but my more frequent trading partners have actually stopped trading cows with me - guess I've been draining their supply too much. For our seventh Heroquest, I complete The Making of the Storm Tribe again - even though it's the one I did to start the tribe in the first place, re-doing it appears to count towards the quests we need. I hate to appease Trolls since they're our ancient enemy, but I'd rather our ancestors be mad at us than die That... may have worked but it mightily pissed off many of the Clan's Carls, who left in disgust shortly after. I can't appease the trolls, but if I don't I fear the Clan will be crushed. Well, maybe I'm damned if I don't, damned if I do here. If that's the case, let's bash some Trolls. The Tribe gets restless and gives Queen Ernaldesta the opportunity to take the Tribe to war as a distraction. Poetryslam unites and beats the Trolls on the field of battle and writes poems about it afterwards Ernaldesta's reign settles down after that and she continues to rule for many years, during which we end up finishing every available Heroquest. Having reigned over the Tribe for over a decade I'm getting concerned we might not hold the Throne much longer In a fun incident, there's a tribal dispute over a magical Black Spear. The solution we went with was to hide the spear in the forest and whoever found it got to be part of a brand new Clan. This is the second clan we've created over the course of the game And then, at long last, signs and portents of destiny! Finally! The time has come! Our ancestors show up to bless our Queen, and we're ready to begin trying to unite all of Dragon Pass under our rule. UNTIL THIS HAPPENS Ernaldesta honored the Beetnicks like no other, by reciting a grand poem upon her deathbed. This... will be a problem for ruling Dragon Pass. Turns out it was Ernaldesta's time, not ours. She got us to the requisite number of complete Heroquests and then some. From now on I'll be Heroquesting specifically for the various benefits they can offer (and there are many to choose from). As of now the Saga of the Beetnicks has been going on for 50 years - I was right about having a lot of time to accomplish the goal of the game. Looks like it's going to take a bit longer with this setback. Despite throwing my hat in the King ring again, the next Tribal King is from another clan (after the last candidate got shanked by someone!). Actually... it appears that we are simply no longer in the running for rulership. An event featuring the Feathered Horse Queen (which I encouraged, back when I had rulership of the tribe) has proceeded in such a way that none of our Clan are included in the consideration of who's going to marry the Feathered Horse Queen. Wait, who decided that this would be the criteria for Kingship? I take some consolation that Derek is originally from our clan, so we're arguably in the running here? I'm sure that's what our Thanes are telling themselves anyway. Derek, you should have returned to your birth clan! We would have welcomed you back and won the game! We didn't win, but this is a much better outcome than our first attempt - the Beetnicks successfully survived the trials and tribulations of Dragon Pass for over a half a century, completed a bunch of Heroquests and had a real shot at going all the way. And we irritated everyone with lots and lots of Poetry. Stupid snake.

Initially I'm not sure of what sort of game King of Dragon Pass actually is. The start menu had some tips for 'those who don't read the manual', but that's not me so I did read the manual and while I'm glad I did and I feel a little bit more prepared for the game now, I don't think this game falls into any particular genre that comes to mind. I'll be managing a Clan that has recently migrated to Dragon Pass, and the objective of the game (I'll be playing the 'long' game) is to become the King of Dragon Pass and unite the other Clans there under my rule - which sounds like the pitch for a strategy game, but this isn't a game that takes place on a map where I'm going to send units around conquering things, it's a series of choices and selections made on text screens in response to events and changing seasons. Starting a new clan prompts me to answer questions about my Clan's history. My clan absolutely drank themselves into a stupor From the manual I had planned to allow thralls (slaves), since I wasn't too concerned about the moral implications and figured they'd be taken from a people we'd been fighting against. When I saw the story involved a people we were assigned to protect I changed my mind Our Clan is leaving our current area because of Pharoah, who is oppressing everyone and nobody can stand against him. Pharoah must be really bad if this is the better alternative With our choices made, I get to choose the clan name. I don't think there's a character limit on the clan name. Hello, we are Clan Hey Do You Have More Beer We Are Not Drunk Enough We begin in Sacred Time, which is where the clan allocates its magic for the year. Mechanically I'm very unclear about what any of this does, so I'm just going off of general ideas of how it's supposed to work. I haven't even seen a map or have any idea what clans might be around us, but I do know from the manual that the main thing that's likely to destroy my clan is starvation - we've got to keep our food stocks maintained first and foremost. What does a magic point DO, exactly? I've put the most I can into crops and herds for the food supply, and then split 1 among Diplomacy, Health, and War anticipating that we can start interacting with other clans or possibly fend off attacks soon. I keep one point in reserve as many of my Ring of Advisors (that panel of people) advise me to do so. I found a map, looks like we have a lot of clans as our neighbors. Those are the ones we'll mainly be interacting with. I hope this means the Boskovi are fanatical about Pottery I guess there's already been some interactions because Hey Do You Have More Beer We Are Not Drunk Enough already owes and is owed favors by several of the neighboring clans. We already have a couple allies (I guess that's blue), the Blackrock and Hendart clans, though we're not neighbors with either. A lot of the game seems to be about making choices, and the Ring has helpful (sometimes) advice for you. Sadly I can't actually choose to follow Bastakos' suggestion Going through the tutorial, I have to deal with a lecherous little man. Insisting that he marries the woman he slept with does not go over well and we end up raiding another clan despite it being 'Sea season', which is usually the time for planting. I hope following the tutorial doesn't cost me too much food! At least the raid goes well. Combat consists of deciding to commit magic resources and what battle tactics you choose. One sexual encounter leads to the deaths of 8 people The year passes and the harvest isn't as bad as I feared - we'll still be ending the year with more food than we started with. Bastakos goes too far and gets himself in trouble with another clan leader. We're already feuding with two clans, we don't need to add another conflict. We don't want a war on behalf of someone who's idea of a diplomat is Ace Ventura Bastakos, as fun as your suggestions were, you are out of the Ring. Despite that the Herani ended up feuding with us anyway, thanks Tutorial. We are now tutorial-less and on our own. This year we're going to allocate some magic to mysteries and try to learn more blessings / lore from the gods - the shrines you can build for the Gods confer permanent advantages for your clan so I want a lot of them (But not too many as you have to sacrifice goods / cattle to them yearly. I also need to go on 'Heroquests' which are re-enactments of the stories about the Gods - these This year our efforts in Mysteries reveals the story of Lhankhor Mhy finding the truth, and thus gives us clues about how we might go about achieving the Lightbringer's quest. Since the Herani hate us now, I send an emissary to the Blue Spruce clan to end that feud between our clans - it works with a gift of 50 cows. I don't mind feuding with someone - I think it'll be useful to conduct cattle raids and give our warriors something to do - but I definitely don't want to make too many enemies. I love that these events have their own artwork. Varsens, take care of the old man. Apparently the Undead are going to be a problem. I hope you won't think that I've gone senile when I say that the ducks are helping us defend our lands against them. Option 6: Shame everyone else into fighting the undead because right now Ducks are doing that Apparently there are Duck-people in lots of places - including our own territory. The clan is united in getting rid of them - when it came time to choose an ancient foe, I chose Beast Men, and the manual recommends that we will do best if we behave in a manner that would please our ancestors. When I chose 'Beast Men' to fight I was imagining something furrier and more ferocious We are going to embrace the spirit of our ancestors and be extremely cruel to ducks. That valley is ours for the taking! Sing loud the songs of Victory! Our mighty warriors have defeated the Cabbage Ducks! Entering our third year, I have a ton of magic this year and I don't know why - maybe building shrines / temples gives you more. This year we're going to attempt the Heroquest 'Lhankor Mhy Finds the Truth' so I can try to figure out what Heroquesting is about, and it says this one can reveal additional Myths. I have one point invested in 'questing' magic and I have the basic story of the quest but not the 'details', plus I don't know what I'm doing so it's anyone's guess whether I can actually do this yet. Looks like a Heroquest can do a variety of things and you get to pick Once you begin you go on a series of events related to the story. In the story the Storm Bull fought alone, so we go with that option and he murders everything This gets pretty involved so I'm very glad that I kept the text of the story as a handy reference - it's too long to memorize in the detail you need for some of these events. In the end, the Heroquest is successful, and since I chose Knowledge about Dragon Pass as the reward, large areas of the map are now visible to me. This would have taken a lot of exploration parties to achieve! I've built so many shrines that I'm having trouble maintaining them, and one falls apart as I lack the goods to keep it upright. Now I'm working on establishing permanent trade routes with as many clans as I can - it seems to get me more goods at no cost to myself. It's a shame that the clan most interested in trading is the Heran that I'm still feuding with (I keep taking some cows from them every Fire season in cattle raids.) The events seem to be drawn from a random selection and it looks like there's no provision to stop an event happening more than once, because this one happened twice. In a row. They just can't resist beating the crap out of poor Enjossi I guess Some people came to our village seeking refuge - they had been enslaved by a distant clan. Months later, those enslavers on strange horses came after them and demanded that we return the people we had taken in - and haughtily proclaimed themselves lords of our lands, to boot. I attacked them on the spot. It went extremely badly Over a dozen of my clan dead, and three leaders kidnapped by these intruders! This will not stand! Unfortunately, I have no idea where they are. But thanks to Leikan, I know where to start looking. We will be exploring West for the forseeable future. The way events interact with each other is very cool. I had an emissary from another clan ask us to give them some of our magic in exchange for some Thralls. I declined the Thralls since we don't do condone slavery in Clan Hey Do You Have More Beer We Are Not Drunk Enough, and instead asked her to perform a ritual to see into our future. She mentioned that soon a four-legged creature would appear and make us a very good offer. And that is why I'm about to give more than two dozen cows to a fox I think the damn fox got away with enough meat for a lifetime. Diplomatically I'm doing very well, I've been holding the occasional feast and sending gifts of food to nearby clans and we've allied with three others - the Eagles, the Greydogs, and the Isoltings. That makes five with the two we began with. I've been sacrificing to Orlanth and obtained the basic info for the Making of the Storm Tribe quest, which is the one I need to accomplish in order to unite several different clans into a Tribe - a major step towards becoming King of Dragon Pass. I figure it's worth a shot to try the Heroquest for it now, with five allies I expect I should be able to form a decent Tribe and I assume we can incorporate more clans later. The Hurt Everything Clan will not listen to reason I'm enjoying these stories, they have a quaint primitiveness to them that makes me feel as though they were translated from some other language. So Orlanth searched for some good laws, and found the Knowing God, who was head of the Marks On Bark Clan. The Knowing God was trapped inside a great cube. He said that the Stone Tribe had put him in there. Orlanth ruined the cube so that it fell apart. Orlanth gave the Knowing God one of Yinkin's old claws, and said, "Now you must join my Storm Tribe, and help us remember our good laws." The Knowing God agreed to make the Marks On Bark Clan part of the Storm Tribe, so long as this new tribe had fierce warriors. Success! With the Heroquest for forming a tribe complete, we now await prophecies and events to arrive that will let us form a tribe. In the meanwhile we will be generous with our fellow clans and work to get more of them to like us. And there's a lot going on in the meantime. Explorers find a group of dragonewts guarding a silver statue, and we steal it. Alirene joined the tribe earlier, she was a wandering warrior who had killed a Pharoah agent and I made her an honored Weaponthane. She has proved her worth today. The Ancestors showed up, and they are well pleased with us. We've been killing Beastmen just like you did, dad! The Beastmen showed up and they are not so pleased. A war with the Beastmen doesn't sound good. And then one day, a crazy man shows up and says that making a Tribe is not only a good idea - it's destiny! You heard the man, let's do this! With the councilors off to assemble the tribes, I get lucky on the timing and it's Sacred time again. Expecting to form a tribe this year I max out on Diplomacy magic Forming a tribe takes time - I need to contact each of the tribes in our potential confederation and negotiate with them one by one. Some clans like the Greydogs ask too much and negotiations break down, they won't even come to the moot After over a year of visiting other clans, six agree to join. And it almost immediately falls apart Thankfully I think I've been a relatively good steward of my cows (plus many taken from the Herani (who were not invited to the tribe)). Giving away loads of bovines smooths over the rough patches. The time has come to select a King. Just forming the tribe has hurt my supplies, and the King is expected to be generous. Instead of trying for kingship now we support the leader of the Eagle clan to be the First King of the Drink All Things tribe. Our time will come And thus the Drink All Things tribe was born of the clans Eagle, Blue Jay, Boskovi (who are actually pottery fanatics and everyone has to use only their containers now), Gorind, Hiord, Isolting, and Hey Do You Have More Beer We Are Not Drunk Enough. With this many clans banded together this tribe ought to be a force to be reckoned with - but right now that force is commanded by someone else. I'm going to try to use the reign of the first King to restock all those cattle I spent getting everyone together. Exploration has been going badly - no sign of those horse warriors that kidnapped my people and the last scouting party I sent disappeared entirely. It's a dangerous world out there. Extremely dangerous, as it turns out. I had just fired up the game intending to rebuild my clan wealth when this happens. Utter Catastrophe To be fair, this didn't come out of nowhere - the Lizards did send emissaries warning that this might happen if I didn't become nicer to them, and I just sent them away without a lot of gifts to try to mollify their wrath. So much for having the strength of a Tribe to help me here! We will attempt to soldier on to see if this can be salvaged but this is a long fall to try to recover from. We're down to less than a hundred people. Or rather, I may want to soldier on but the remnants of my people do not So... what did I do wrong? The first and most obvious is that I didn't treat imminent threats of destruction with the seriousness they warranted (granted, I didn't know how much real danger these threats actually posed) - I was visited both by beastmen and dragnewt emissaries that threatened destruction of my clan, and while I didn't treat the emissaries badly, both times I simply shrugged and sent them away with vague promises to behave better. For the Dragnewts that clearly wasn't enough. Looking back at the saga of Clan Hey Do You Have More Beer We Are Not Drunk Enough, I'm surprised to learn that it only lasted 8 years (It felt much longer!) - I don't know how many years you actually have in which to achieve victory, but I suspect it's pretty long (I got a prophecy at one point speaking of events over 200 years in the future!). I was probably trying to form a tribe much faster than I strictly needed to, and if I had built up more wealth and relationships before making the attempt I probably could have formed an even larger tribe. So taking these lessons to heart, let's give this another shot. May the next Clan fare better than this one.

Ender Lilies begins with me playing as a much-too-pale girl who wakes up in a ruin somewhere. Doesn't seem like a great place to have gone to sleep. I'm able to make an impressive-looking sword attack, except it's not 'me' swinging the sword - it's being swung by the spirit of an 'Umbral Knight' who is normally a red spark floating around. The girl just sort of cowers and wishes her ethereal bodyguard would venture further than a foot ahead of her. It isn't long before we reach the first boss. So far I'm digging the art style, this is a beautiful game. The Blight has corrupted the people of the kingdom The boss' initial phase isn't too difficult, but then she gets mad. I want to note here that the music, instead of being intense boss-battle music, is actually a rather sedate piano piece - and I'm kind of a sucker for violent scenes set to peaceful music. And being mad makes you very large. Defeating her, I get the chance to absorb her memory and see who she was. I am Lily, and the monster I just killed used to be my guardian Happily, her soul is now released from the corrupted body, and she joins me in the form of an additional spirit weapon I can use. Siegrid acts as a separate type of attack and uses a ball and chain to hit enemies. I like the setting and both the art (especially the backgrounds) and music are top notch so far. I think I'm going to really enjoy this one. Buddy I don't know anything about you The only thing that bothers me so far is Lily's dodge. Mechanically, it's great - you travel a reasonable distance and you're invincible while it's happening. Visually however... Lily belly-flops herself our of harm's way The structure of a game is sort of souls-like lite. Combat is relatively easy thus far. There are benches to rest at that respawn the enemies and you can heal yourself three times between rests. I am leveling up as I fight enemies so my damage has been increasing naturally. Even big scary looking guys like this aren't that hard to beat I've also been finding several additional spirits to help me, sometimes entailing a battle against a significant enemy. I was hoping the Western Merchant would sell me something. No dice. The spirits all become additional attacks for your arsenal - the Western Merchant is particularly great because you just summon him and he floats around shooting ranged attacks the whole time. Free hits from the bird in a boss fight is great I've encountered and defeats the second boss, Gerrod. After defeating a boss you purify them of the blight, and you get to see one of their memories. I think I visited him before too. Am I going to have met all of the bosses I need to kill? I'm getting the sense that these White Priestesses, of which I am one or was training to be one, were these people's best defense against the Blight. And I wasn't the only one. But... I might be the only one now After beating Gerrod I get a new main attack option (a Hammer that's way too slow compared with the sword) and a down-attack that opens new areas. That allows me to reach a forest area where these delightful mushroom wizard people are attacking me. I'm in deep shiitake I've noticed that at rest spots I can access memories, and some of them are 'Purified' memories where I can re-fight the main bosses again, only these fights are significantly tougher than the original battles were. I don't know if the bosses are faster but they are most definitely tougher. I have yet to beat the upgraded bosses but I'm going to attempt them once per rest. After a bit of use I'm coming around on the hammer, it hits like a truck and I was able to upgrade it whereas my sword is still currently stuck at level 1 - the sword requires 'ancient blight' but the hammer requires 'furious blight' that I have some of. The hammer has better range than the sword and now hits hard enough to justify how slowly it swings. It will also slam airborne enemies into the ground, which is satisfying and often lethal The game's map is nowhere near as pretty as the rest of Ender Lilies, but it's functional. I like how it shows you 'incomplete' areas so you know there's more stuff to find there. It's not long before I encounter the third boss, Dark Witch Elaine. Defeating her gets me a projectile weapon as well as the ability to swim underwater. All of the bosses so far have a bench nearby so it's easy to re-try them if you fail I'm not clear on what the long-term goal of this actually is - the world is wrecked, and I can go around purifying the souls of people who have been lost to the Blight, but are we saving the world here or trying to accomplish something beyond that? Maybe it's about the friends we made along the way I'd like to give credit to this game for having one of the most terrifying versions of a Mimic that I've seen. In Mother Russia, Pot smashes you Things are looking grim as I venture deeper into the catacombs, enemies are getting a bit tougher and I'm starting to encounter more of a challenge traversing these areas. The moment when you wonder if you're really supposed to be here at this point in the game You get two 'spirit sets' that you can switch between, so I've changed up my ability sets - one using the Dark Witch's main attack which is a projectile plus other ranged spirits, and then a set more focused on melee. The ranged set has limited use but there's enough 'ammo' to kill lots of enemies before it runs out. Being able to safely stand off and shoot trivializes some encounters The first boss I'd consider hard that I run into is Guardian Silwa. She takes me several attempts and what eventually works is a little bit of melee at the start followed by using ranged attacks to finish her off. She has a nasty ranged attack that can hit you multiple times and take more than half your life if you don't dodge it At the conclusion of the battle, I got an improved dodge so I'm no longer belly-flopping my way to safety. Also, we got some clarity on the main quest - an apparition of an adult White Priestess appeared and told me that there was a spring where the waters still ran clear and I might be able to cure the Blight with it once and for all. Speaking of the Blight.... is my hair turning red? After a look back at prior screenshots I can confirm that yes, I'm purifying these blighted souls by absorbing the Blight into myself to some degree - and I fear it's beginning to corrupt me. I've beaten a couple of the Purified memories of bosses now, they give you a little bit of material for upgrading your weapons but nothing too crazy. Ender Lilies bills itself as an 'action RPG' and that's true insofar as I'm leveling up and getting more powerful, but I'm not choosing stats to improve nor do I have a class or intrinsic abilities. My power comes from the different weapons that spirits grant me and from a selection of Relics that can give me bonuses - very similar to Hollow Knight. The White Priestess status takes up four slots but I think it's worth that for an extra heal. By now I've gotten a whole lot of additional movement and door-unlocking abilities, so I think it's time I revisited old areas and scoured them for things I couldn't reach before. My original Sword guy is at level 1 and it's just not keeping pace with the other weapons, I feel like I may have missed something. Backtracking in Ender Lilies is trivial because you can fast travel from any rest point to any other, and rest areas are frequent, there's one every 3-4 rooms. While backtracking I found an underwater passage filled with mines (which doesn't really feel like it fits in this universe). I think you're supposed to dodge past these mines but I found that the Silva Hammer's charge attack can hurt and kill them. If it bleeds, I can kill it, and these mines bleed. Somehow. At the end of that passage is an area I don't think I'm quite ready for, the enemies are absolutely vicious and tough to kill. I'm not ready for the Stockade yet Similarly, I don't think I'm ready to take on this thing. It hurt me so much Eventually my backtracking reveals a snowy area that I missed, and I think it may be easier than the Catacombs with the skull piles. Aw, the girls are back together! I think it would have been nice if the other spirits would talk more, so far it's just been commentary from the Umbral Knight every so often. This is not a dialogue heavy game. Most of the story comes in from pieces of paper that you find along the way. The need to finish up a game session quickly prompted me to try a tactic that I've often used in other Souls-type games - simply running past enemies. I haven't been doing that because it's better to kill foes to get the XP and level up here, but it turns out to be a very effective way of getting through a level - the dodge lets you phase through enemies without being hit. I may use it more now that rest spots seem to be getting further apart. In terms of level design, Ender Lilies has lovingly embraced the unlock lever and used it everywhere - you need to go through a longer section of the level and enemies to reach one, but doing so then unlocks a shorter path for you to use later. Just reaching a shortcut lever means you've made progress even if you die right after Speaking of dying, there's absolutely no death penalty other than being sent back to a bench - no currency to lose or additional corruption to live with. This is a kinder, gentler soulslike. There aren't even any consumables to manage, all your limited-use spirit attacks fully refill at benches. I have an ultimate attack that I need to use more often, it's great and recharges quickly Of course, I would have the impeccable timing to write that this is a kinder, gentler game moments before venturing into a field of flowers and meeting Ulv. Ulv the Mad Knight likes flowers. He's saving them for someone. Ulv is easily the most difficult boss so far, and I actually made things harder on myself by spending the first several attempts using my usual ranged standoff tactics - he has a couple nasty long-range attacks that are difficult to dodge. Once I switched to nothing but melee I did better, and somewhere around attempt ten I managed to barely pull it off in a nailbiter. In many ways I maintain that Ender Lilies is easier than many of its counterparts, but some of the boss fights like Ulv and Silva are nothing to sneeze at. Defeating him earns me a wall cling / jump ability, so now I can treat all vertical surfaces as ladders. If you happen to be curious about my current setup, this has been working well for me: Spirit wise we're continuing to use a melee set and a ranged set Set 1 is Guardian Silva's hammer, which lets you use charge attacks (or not) to determine if you need speed or power and range for the situation, and it has the best ultimate attack I've seen so far. Complimenting that are Siegrid who attacks in place and I can just throw out when I'm close to an enemy, and Fallen Sentinel that charges forward if the enemy is a little further away. Set 2 is range-focused, with Dark Witch Elein's homing projectiles as the main firepower, complimented by the amazing Western Merchant who is my favorite spirit in the game since he just floats around and does damage for you without having to think about it. It also has Fallen Archer who shoots a barrage of arrows upward to give us another option to hit the games large amount of flying enemies or just enemies hanging out on platforms above us. Now that I know what I like I've been focused on upgrading the main spirits that I use instead of upgrading everything. Having cleared the snowy area / castle, I think I'm ready to try the Stockade again. The Stockade is still very tough, it's the first place I die multiple times attempting to progress through the levels But progress we do, and it's a good thing I took the time to figure out how to fight the enemies here because the next boss spawns a lot of guards to help him. After sweeping Hoenir's guards away he was trivial - the only boss I've beaten on the first attempt After some fancy jumping that I'm not certain I was intended to be able to make at this point, I ended up making my way outside into the rain, and found the pure spring the knight spoke of earlier. The ghost of the White Priestess greets us Beyond lie the flowers - both pure and blighted. I found a note here that talked about the Children of the Ancients - of which we are one (I knew I was too pale!), that's what gives us the ability to absorb the blight. Purifying the flower here prompts the Priestess to try purifying everything herself We're treated to a cutscene where the Priestess takes some degree of responsibility for the blight, and expresses regret that we had to live through it. This is the 'walk away and hope the problem gets better' ending. The game makes it clear that this is one of multiple endings, so we're going to get back in there and try for something better. And honestly, it irks me that I've beaten the game without having managed to upgrade the starting sword! Where the hell is the Ancient Blight? Hoenir's defeat keeps the tradition of the bosses by granting us another movement ability, this time we get a grappling hook that can attach to specific points. Between this and the wall-climbing ability I think it's time to again scour the rooms that still indicate they have goodies left in them. Would you look at that - an Ancient Soul in one of the first rooms I backtracked to. Just lying around on a corpse. Hope I didn't miss any others. My wanderings now bring me to a castle on the northern part of the map - Inside is a smorgasbord of enemies from earlier parts of the game as well as some powerful knightly defenders. These guys are pretty tough so I'm running past enemies more often I can't run past everything though, some of these rooms trap you in with the enemies and force you into battle. At times like this I wish the enemies would hit each other Interestingly there's a bit of a puzzle getting to the top of the castle where you have to climb the castle from two directions in order to enter a room from two different sides to flip two levers and open the way forward. Eventually I reach the throne room - I had assumed I might end up fighting the Blighted king, but instead my foe is the Knight Captain Julius. Mr. King (far right) is not looking well. The last boss was a cakewalk and I'm more powerful than ever, so this shouldn't be too h... JESUS TAPDANCING CHRIST He's up there with Ulv - he's armored so not all of my attacks damage him and that leads to a longer contest of endurance. Similarly to Ulv I end up switching spirits for a close-in melee to take him down. I think you're just dead if you're on the wrong side of him when he whips out the Death Star's primary armament. Persistence pays off, and he falls, revealing that the King was not a good one - he sought immortality for himself, and ended up making his soldiers drink an elixir to make them undying so that they could stand against the Blight. The King sought immortality I'm still piecing together the story but I don't know where the Blight originally came from - was the King defending his people as best he could or is he perhaps responsible for the Blight in the first place somehow? Some notes have indicated that various Dark Executioners and other important personnel ventured somewhere called the Verboten Domain, and I've just found it. Maybe it used to belong to Germany The enemies here aren't too bad - the main hazard is environmental as large parts of the area are covered in poisonous gas. I'm having to run through it as fast as possible to preserve my health. I could really use one of these masks. Would be nice if they had stored them in the entry way. It's touch and go down here, but if any attempt can either obtain some materials or reach a lever to unlock a door before dying, that's a victory. Even by those low standards not every attempt is a victory By the time I reached the bench at the bottom of the area, I was out of prayers, nearly out of spirits, and certainly out of remaining hits I could survive. Rest, little priestess At the bottom of this blight-soaked nightmare, I found Miriel the Beloved. Not sure who exactly Beloved Miriel but they don't share my tastes Miriel is unique among the bosses in that she doesn't move so I ended up bringing the Mushroom Wizard spirit out just for this battle - it leaves a poison gas cloud in place that does continuous damage. Between that and the Hammer's charge attacks I brought her low, you need to stay in the air as much as you possibly can for this fight or you'll die to repeated claws emerging from the ground. Oddly, I didn't purify Miriel - I guess she's a lost cause or maybe she's just a pure blight monster. Instead I purified the King's researcher Faden who was just beyond. Faden's power lets me unlock fancy doors, so there's a lot more exploring to be done - there's one all the way back at the start I've been curious about. And there's some very interesting information there This looks to me like it could be the key to ending the game in a better way than our initial discovery. I don't wonder for long if this is just an interesting note or something we can actually do, because in short order I've found one of the tablet pieces. Six to go. Re-exploring the available rooms is something I probably should have done even more frequently, some of these tablets I could have obtained earlier, and some of them have a lot of weapon upgrade materials with them. A WHOLE LOT Yes, definitely regretting not doing this earlier. I really, really could have used this trying to get through the Verboten Zone It's a good thing I have the mask now though, my search for the last tablet has exhausted the earlier rooms and I'm now plumbing the depths of the abyss to see if it's down here somewhere. This is instant death without the mask, and slower death with it Lo and behold, it was indeed at the bottom of the nightmare. Returning to the start gives me the chance to repair the tablet and form an amulet that will allow me to absorb tons of blight. Didn't know you were good at translating things Mr Knight, I feel like we didn't chat enough along the way. We bring the constructed amulet down to the White Priestess of the Font. Maybe we can save her with it. Sorry I took so long but maybe YOU should hang out somewhere more accessible Or she could turn into a Blight Lord and try to kill me, that's good too. I would like to thank the HP recovery on damage relic for granting me this victory Defeating her, we see her memories of the little priestesses taking on her burden of blight unto herself. She laments at how pointless it all was And in many ways, it was pointless. The Priestess of the Font couldn't save the kingdom. I couldn't save the kingdom - all I could do was relieve people of their undying torment - but everyone is still dead, everything remains in ruins. There's only so much one little Priestess can hope to do, and we can't always save the world. The Blight rain finally stops. The past may be dead, but now a future can be born. And we did save one person. You're welcome I very much enjoyed Ender Lilies, the music and art was wonderful. My sense of difficulty might genuinely be skewed because I'm also currently playing Silksong but I found it to be (overall) easier than other souslike / metroidvania games; the platforming is easy, enemies telegraph their attacks in a blatant and near-universal manner, and you have a pretty ample supply of healing. If you're interested in the genre, you could do worse than choosing this as your introduction to this type of game.

Brigador is an isometric shooter from 2016 - and that's about all I know going in. The first mission description is instantly confusing: Solo Nobre is hiring me and I lose my Solo Nobre citizenship? What? The mission itself doesn't do a lot to alleviate that confusion. There's a bunch of people running in circles with flashlights. I do my best not to step on them because they don't seem to be a threat, and I eventually find some poor unarmed schmuck that's labeled as the mission target and squish him. Couldn't we just sign the contract instead? The intro after this 'learn to walk and shoot' mission sheds a bit more light on the situation. SNC really should have named themselves something else. Ok, so I'm a Brigador, which is someone who accepted a contract to work for the Solo Nobre Concern. The Solo Nobre Concern are NOT the nation of Solo Nobre, which has been taken over by a 'Dear Leader' North Korea-style tyrant type (or so claims the SNC). Even though I am not expected to survive, my likely Heroic Sacrifice is appreciated in the efforts to overthrow Dear Leader. I have my doubts about whether SNC are actually the 'good guys' here or not, and those doubts are not assuaged by the appearance of our main character. I appear to be leaking The combat so far is interesting - it's not super-detailed but you seem to have a mix of shields and health and my initial impression of Brigador is that it's tried for a blend of arcade and simulation game. You have limited ammo so you can't just shoot everything but you can find pickups to restore your shields and ammunition mid-mission - but the ammo pickups act like real objects in that you can accidentally shoot them and blow them up rather than having them add to your ammo supply. I love these textures for destroyed houses, they look great. SNC seems to be paying me a small bonus for stepping on civilians and destroying random non-military property, but hey, a girl's got to make a living. In addition to the campaign mode, there's also a 'freelance' and 'acquisitions' option available from the main menu. SNC found Norman and basically said 'might as well let him drive a truck into battle'. It looks like you can use money obtained from campaign missions to unlock these freelance pilots, and use this money to get equipment for campaign missions rather than it being a larger integrated campaign. The game ALMOST feels too dark but it's not, you can see enemies clearly and the aesthetic feels good. I got a tooltip that recommended I turn on Easter Eggs in settings - and sure, why not? The settings menu also has an option to just turn on invincibility if you feel like stomping through the game unopposed. Continuing the campaign, it looks like you don't get to choose or customize your vehicle / weapons in this mode - these are set missions which change characters / vehicles, but in Freelance mode you can buy additional vehicles and weapons to play with. I may as well do the whole campaign first then since I'm getting a ton of money from it. Money can be used to unlock additional vehicles and weapons, but also the rest of the contract you signed in the lore section! That's quite the termination clause in the event of breach of contract. The combat in Brigador has a great feel to it that makes it more than an arcade shooter - your projectiles inherit your momentum, meaning that if you're running around really fast shooting sideways you need to account for that with slower projectiles. Units have different armor in the sides and front / rear so you'll kill enemies much faster if you can flank them. Enemies aren't just mindless things that come after you, they have awareness and you can take them by surprise if you come around on their side or use abilities like active camouflage or smoke. I'm finding it to be a lot of fun to play. There's a three-dimensional aspect to combat as well - your weapons and vehicle exist at a certain height so you can hit taller foes over short cover. This is especially important when fighting enemy 'agravs' which hover, your shots can pass right under them. Yeah I think SNC definitely aren't the good guys, they're paying bonuses for killing civilians and causing collateral damage! At least they pay well, I'd go to war myself for a million per mission. I've been thinking the game is on the easy side but I now realize that the first... thirteen missions of the campaign have all been tutorial levels to familiarize you with the three vehicle options for going through the campaign. Each pip represents completing the same level with a different vehicle You keep your damage and ammunition through the end of the mission so you need to not get beat up too badly early on. The three vehicles available now are a 'mech' with decent firepower and toughness, a big beefy open-topped slow tank, and an agile 'agrav' hover vehicle. The biggest threat to me isn't the enemies, it's the explosive materials that I sometimes don't see and accidentally blow up when I'm standing next to them. And then they make you pay for your own funeral The campaign is changing things up more than I expected - after just a few missions with the vehicles I got accustomed to in the tutorial, those guys hopped a shuttle and went off planet. After making 15 million dollars I'd leave too. Now my choices are from four vehicles that seem to comprise a small military unit, I like the variety here and I'm glad we're seeing a lot of different options as we move onward. I CAN BE A LITTLE BATTLESUIT I MUST TRY THIS By mission 04 Great Leader is apparently dead (I have no idea how, I didn't kill him) and I'm fighting 'Corvids' who I think are another faction. The lore / story here aren't presented very well and remain confusing - the game wants me to go buy the lore that will tell me additional details but it doesn't say which lore to purchase! These blue Corvid vehicles make me feel like the police are after me The little battlesuit is hard to operate but not because it's fragile - it's not even that underpowered. The reason it's difficult is because the upper torso isn't a full turret so if you're walking directly away from the enemy it has trouble turning all the way around to get a bead on the target. Every mission now is giving me a different selection of four vehicle to choose from and it's delightful. At this point I'm completely checking out of the story and enjoying killing things. This grav-tank is really great, it has a high-powered laser that wrecks everything I cannot in good conscience pass up the chance to use a 'killdozer; Why be one vehicle when you can be 10 vehicles all mushed together The different vehicles provide some nice variation in gameplay. Some really are built for cloak-and-dagger style stealth approaches to missions where you try to stay hidden and pop out from the flanks to quickly kill enemies and hide again. Nice variety in the levels too, facing these strange tall spotters in the cornfields. I'm going to have to crush about 100 gravestones to knock over this statue, which will win the people over Just checking in on the story, let's see what's going on... Aren't WE seditious against Great Leader too guys? I've reached the end of the numbered missions (The mission numbering for the campaign is bizzare - missions D3, *2, D4, E1 are coming up) and it doesn't look like this whole operation went well for the Brigadors. We're the last four left alive on the planet. The missions past 21 are much tougher (and I suspect optional) - it took me several tries to find a way to beat this army of bikes. They just kept swarming me and were followed up by a heavy tank, nasty combination. These levels were where I felt Brigador started to really shine and hit it's stride of being seriously challenging, requiring a change in tactics and vehicles for each level before I found a way through. In one I learned to love using the mortar, which I had previously hated for being so ponderous, suddenly it become extremely useful facing larger, slower groups of enemies - and I started disengaging from the enemy rather than just killing everything in a group, because the enemy groups were becoming too dangerous to beat in a straight-up fight even for the vehicles designed for an all-out brawl. The final campaign levels probably tipped the difficulty scale into the 'too hard' zone, each one was very long and took multiple attempts. One became an exercise in effective mortar usage against tough opponents Another I eventually beat by using chemical gas on chokepoints to kill swarms of smaller foes With all the campaign levels complete, let's take a brief look at Freelance. I have a ton of money saved up from the campaign so I can already buy a lot of the stuff that's available. It looks like in Freelance mode you can be any unit in the game after you buy it, and that includes absolutely useless options. Such as being an infantryman. It did not go well, It also includes this insane thing with a giant head. This is not going to fit on the escape shuttle There's an enormous variety of 'mechs and vehicles to try and a lot of levels, and if I feel the inclination to shoot things I may jump back in from time to time - but for my part those last campaign levels have me feeling like that was enough and it's time to move on.

I recall having a good time with developer Bad Viking's initial foray, Strange Horticulture . Getting into the minutiae of plant identification with invented herbs and flowers was surprisingly enjoyable, and judging from appearances it looks like Strange Antiquities will be following a winning formula. Indeed, what if a powerful artifact were to fall into the wrong hands? Like mine? We begin when Eli, the antiquities shop owner, has to leave town for a couple days and reluctantly leaves the shop in our care. Thanks for the vote of confidence in your apprentice, Eli! He leaves us with a reference book, and I'm enjoying just reading it. Some really interesting - and occasionally dangerous - items are listed in here. Eli departs with an admonishment to not open any of the locked drawers or cabinets. You and I both know that won't be happening. This is my shop now! Right off the bat I notice there's plenty of little objects and doodads to play with. The clock on the wall changes time if you pull on the pendulum and there's a way to get it to flip to show moon phases. There's a little wheel handle behind the counter that raises some sort of puzzle box, and the pedestals at the bottom of the counter seem to be large buttons that can be weighted down by objects. And that's before we actually look at any of the artifacts on these shelves! You can examine objects in detail with various senses and then label and categorize them. One thing that's immediately apparent is that Eli was too lazy to label or attach prices of any of his store's wares, so I'm as much in the dark as any customers that wander in here. Ah well, we'll just muddle through somehow. First customer walks in while I'm trying to figure out if the plants are powerful reality-defying artifacts of yore or just houseplants. I think I'm going to introduce myself this way from now on Thomas Pope wants a replacement for his hunter's boon, so it's off to the book to figure out what that is. No tutorial here, I'm immediately running a shop and rifling through a (delightfully written) reference manual to ensure that I'm giving Mr. Pope top quality customer service. Tom, since YOU want it and YOU know what these things look like how about YOU find it? I start by inspecting the two animal-shaped objects on the right since they seem like good candidates, but end up deciding they're not the right ones because they're made of clay and wood - I was hoping one might be carved out of bone since Hunters Boons are made from trophies. Then I spy a pendant on the left that looks like a tooth. The game doesn't explicitly tell me that it's made from an animal but it seems like it might fit, so when I present it to Thomas I'm still not certain if it's the correct object until I've finalized the choice. One satisfied customer! Success here unlocks another book page, which means that there could be some objects in the store that aren't yet detailed in the book. As I identify items I take care to use the labeling system to note them - unlike Eli I am going to label these things so I don't need to figure out what something is more than once. By customer number three I'm already questioning whether this guy is actually human. Something strange is going on in the town - Ravens have been gathering in great numbers and it's got people on edge. I guess if I wanted normal customers I should have apprenticed at a coffee shop At least all of these people so far can name the thing they want. As the days go by I suspect I'll see people start to give more vague descriptions as word gets out about how awesome I am at artifact stuff and the rubes wander in. Day 1 is complete with no misidentifications. I suspect the gauge in the bottom right is a health bar of sorts and I'll fail if I get too many wrong. I'm going to look around the shop and make a cursory attempt to try to identify each unknown entry from the book - anything I can identify now eliminates possibilities from future requests, and this shop is in dire need of organization. I don't know how I'm going to reorganize it yet but I'll figure something out. The shop is bigger than it first appears. Maybe I'll start with moving everything that's on the side panels into view. Ooooh, I bet Eli keeps the good stuff under lock and key There's more to identifying objects than just the descriptive examinations - I was waving this temperature magnet thing (one side is cold the other is warm) in circles when I noticed that passing it in front of the candles dimmed the light from them. I still have no idea what it is but it's very cool. I also found some weights in an unlocked cabinet as well as scales, so I can determine how heavy things are. I was able to tentatively identify about six more of the objects here, and gave them white labels to remind myself that these aren't positive identifications. Moving on to the next day, I acquired a mysterious card and it showed up on this strange board: I'm utterly clueless on this one. The day starts off with an elder woman dropping off a book that she borrowed from Eli. It sheds some light on what all these symbols around the board mean. I have no idea what to actually use this knowledge for. Yet. I did quite badly on the first customer's request and found out what happens when you fail - you get to place a dice game to restore your sanity. It's actually pretty fun! What happens if you lose all your sanity, I wonder? Game over? Winning the game restarts the day and I figure out what went wrong - I missed that there was a map in the side-drawers of that symbol Ouija board and you can use is to visit other locations in the town to find artifacts there. That's the use for the clue delivered this morning, as well as other notes I've gotten or found. Just visiting random locations will drain your energy so you can't just explore it all at once. This morning's clue isn't too hard to figure out now that I have the map - and I found - something! This is absolutely not what the customer wants but it's cool as hell. The customer service as this shop absolutely sucks, because I'm now repeatedly leaving the shop while I have a customer waiting to bring in artifacts I found that the customer doesn't want. A+ would shop here again. I don't think the customers get to complain though, I don't think they're giving me any money for these things. Maybe we've moved beyond the need for simple currency. Maybe Eli is going to be extremely pissed when he gets back. I just noticed that in a nod to their other game, Strange Horticulture is also a store on the map so I decided to pay it a visit (My first customer of the day is still waiting for their Horned Shackle). To my delight I returned from Strange Horticulture with one of that game's houseplants. Now I've been thrown a curveball. This customer wants a Moon Heart for their grandmother, but crucially I don't have an entry for that in my book so I can't look up anything about one. And instead of a clearly identified object the 'hand thing to customer circle' just says '???' Does this mean I can just give her anything and hope for the best? Turns out the answer is no - the reference book does actually list the correct item under another name, and after one failure I find the correct one. Some of my attempts at pre-identifying things have been wrong. The next customer wants to lay a trap for someone that's been stealing from them, and this time I get a choice - I can present one of two items. I think I've identified both options so it's more about what effect I want to have on the prospective thief. A binding seed amplifies feelings of guilt and shame, whereas a Zeah instills fear and paranoia - and is noted as being very difficult to remove. It would of course be right an appropriate for a thief to feel guilt over their act - but what would that really accomplish? An apology to my customer? Apologies aren't going to pay the bills around here, whereas someone stuck with some sort of paranoia curse just might waltz in here asking for a cure. Madam, here is your Zeah, best of luck. It's the cooler looking of the two anyway, no guarantee the thief would bother stealing a binding seed. As the day comes to a close I look for any symbols on unidentified items to see if that can help discern their purpose, and I try visiting some locations in town with my spare energy still left. One of the locations was mentioned in the book and the visit provides some additional info about the item. Day 3 brings the scales into use for the first time as I try to find an item that weighs exactly one pound. Apparently a Mr. Hungerford has been found and his eyes are completely black, Mrs. Robertson is a doctor and is trying to cure him. It's not great when your doctor walks into a shop like this Oh, oh this so good. I wrote the 'make the thief paranoid so they'll come into the shop and buy something' mainly as a joke, but lo and behold! She's even wearing the Zeah she stole, I am thrilled beyond words. So, lesson learned - sowing discord among the population will increase business. Eli is going to be so proud of me when he gets back. Or not, considering I just figured out how to open up the locked cabinet and get to the good stuff. Hello my pretties, what do you all do? I love a good mystery, and Strange Antiquities is full of them. One of the items behind the cabinet is a compass-like object that points at two other objects in the shop - one that I found exploring town and the other also from the locked cabinet. I have no clue what any of the three actually are, all I know is that they are somehow related. And possibly dangerous. Day 4: Eli actually came back! I had really been expecting some terrible fate to befall him leaving me in control of the shop, but no, he actually returns after a few days just as he said he would. Hey boss, welcome back! I've been trying to label some of these, would you mind help... annnnd he's gone. Most of Day 4's customers want items that I already identified and the day goes pretty smoothly. At the end of it Edmund Bishop returns to invite me to their castle to look for additional things to help with the raven problem. It's a whole new map to explore! In the castle I discover another reference book - by Eli White. He really should have taught me more of this stuff, he's an awful person to be an apprentice for. Remember that claw holding a gemstone that I said was super cool earlier? Looks like it's also super evil. Exploring the castle I try to go down to the Vaults, and there I discover that those are locked (as one might expect of vaults). I need some sort of artifact to open these doors. There's more secrets to unlock than just what's in my shop. Now that I'm understanding the meaning of gemstones and symbols I think I'm beginning to understand some of these artifacts without the benefit of a specific entry in the book. I believe this amulet is for weather prediction, for example. I believe this because the central gemstone of Jade is related to earth and nature (or it might be Malachite which is for 'seeing'), and the symbols carved around it are all weather related like snow, thunder, rain. I'm very confident that it's weather related at the very least. Eli has departed again - he's going to go contact the Order of the Black veil to help figure out this raven / black eyes problem. Since the shop was still standing he figured it was in good hands. So far I've been surprised to be wrong about the identification of a couple objects, and almost always it's because I looked at some obvious characteristic of the object and didn't take the time to look into the minute details or subtle clues that might have told me something was off about the identification. Handing over an object and positively identifying it often reveals another book page, and I'm regularly finding new artifacts at various locations, so even as I identify what I have and check off another possibility, new possibilities arise and I've gotten no closer to identifying the remaining mysteries via process of elimination. So even after several days of identifying objects, the process of doing so remains a fascinating challenge. Clues can be anywhere. This depiction of Holgar holds a wealth of clues and it helped me identify an item other than the Heart Chamber I was paid a visit by a priestess named Audrey Bell. The game helpfully gives you a character profile for important people as well as their conversation history. From the sound of it she might be pro-whatever-is-going-on-with-the-ravens You know what? The author of the artifact identification book did a terrible job. Where there are illustrations, it's almost never an illustration of the artifact! Nice picture of the map you would use it on. WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE? I haven't been able to make much progress on the puzzles inside the shop - I think I only managed to unlock the locked cabinet. At least for the three pedestals under the counter, I needed the correct three items - and a Librarian, Simone Green, has arrived with clues about what they are. Apparently nobody knows who built Strange Antiquities, and not even Eli knows all of its secrets. Easy enough now! The plinths opened up a whole cabinet with a mug set and an artifact that makes me question one of my earlier tentative identifications. I do like the mugs, maybe we can host a tea party. I'm really enjoying the aesthetics of these items, and I wouldn't hate decorating my house with some of them. One of the customers delivered me an entry on what she thinks may be causing the blackened eyes. Seems plausible. I can't see object fields yet so I have no idea if I have one in the shop. A repairman stopped by with a trinket that Eli had asked him to repair. I quickly recognized it as a very fancy answer to one of the shop puzzles, and found a book that Eli had hidden away. It's a book on curses and their effects. We may be playing doctor soon. I perused the book but none of the curses listed cause the black eyes I've been hearing about. The time to play doctor came more rapidly than I thought - though this is for trying to treat the black eyes rather than a known curse. The Witch's finger causes pain and possibly death, so that seems like the more extreme treatment - we'll try her recommendation of the teacup. Plus I have a pretty darn good idea of what item the Witch's finger is, so I can use this to figure out which mug the Restful Mether is from among my mug collection. What I'd really like to do is give her both and tell her to go to town on treatments. The shop is getting cluttered and I'm not even halfway through the game (I think it lasts about 17 days according to the mid-day calendar) - we're on day 8. I really want to organize the shop items better but I'm really not sure HOW to organize them. Alphabetical would be ideal since people usually ask for items by name except I have no idea what letter the unidentified items start with. Francesca is worried that her sister Bonnie blames Mr. Potter for whatever is going on with the Ravens and the black eye curse and she might try to do something dumb. She implores me to not give her anything dangerous if she comes in. Doctor, it's your responsibility to talk to your sister, not mine to make sure she doesn't get her hands on a powerful artifact. At this store, the customer is always right. Artifacts don't kill people, people kill people. Speaking of dangerous - back with the blind artist Rebecca Rose came in, I had a choice to either give her an item that would let her experience synesthesia so she could feel / hear colors, or a spirit eye that would let her see into the other realm (but with some pretty dark side effects. I went with the latter, and she's back now with some insights into what could be going on - something involving the old gods. You have to break a few minds to figure out some mysteries. Keep using that Eye, Rose! Bonnie drops by as the doctor promised. She walks out of the store with that badass claw rock thing. Whatever this is Bonnie please use it responsibly, bye now! The adventurer with an eyepatch dropped by and traded me this map of the catacombs for an item. I say 'Traded' but I guess once I have an item I have a large stock of them, giving a customer an item doesn't actually remove it from the shop. Which is a big part of the reason the place is getting cluttered up. The clutter is not going to get better from exploring these catacombs to find even more items Satisfying customers is getting more elaborate - this gentlemen thinks he's been cursed, which entails figuring out what the curse is from his description of symptoms, and then looking up that curse in the index of the object identification book to see what items, if any, will help. If there isn't an explicit reference to the curse I may have to infer what could work based on item descriptions. And do it all with no degree in medicine or witchcraft. Oh, clever. The plinths (buttons) at the bottom are more than one puzzle - different sets of three items can unlock new finds in the shop. I feel very proud of what I figured out to obtain this skull thing. The sound this makes when you listen to it is spine chilling. At the end of the day I succumbed to my desire to organize the shop and did so alphabetically. Here's how the left-right sides look now - items proceed as A-M, then unidentified items on the middle shelves so I can always see them, followed by N-Z (and a couple more unidentified items below the counter). It took awhile to do this but I'm happy with the result. This will help with a lingering issue which is that I've tentatively identified (white label) many of these items by name but I haven't had the chance to give them to a customer which would confirm the identification (colored label) - and the book entry doesn't get checked off unless you get that positive identification. This system makes it easy to check if I've identified a specific item's book entry or not and it's clear where I should put newly identified items in the future. The unidentified items shelf is still a little cluttered but that will only encourage me to identify them. Adding to my scientific arsenal, I have unlocked the Ouija board-thing and can now view the Thaumic Fields of objects. One of the clues indicates that a certain type of mug has a stronger field than the others. There's a mode for this table which lets you move metal shapes around to form the Thaumic symbols and see what each field type looks like. Thus far in the game I've been avoiding taking external notes - the labeling system on objects has been good enough - but at this point I'm saving a separate folder with screenshots of the field / symbol connections so I can connect the Thaumic symbols to field shapes. A 'Noctic' field associates the object with night time. Once I become a real Thaumaturge I'm going to propose that we ditch the old Thaumic symbols and replace them with these field shapes, might as well cut out the middle man. I'm going through the objects and observing their fields when I find that this creepy one doesn't appear to have a field, or it's got a field that isn't like any of the others - it's sort of an unformed circle. This skeletal bird head was in the locked cabinet and I have yet to identify it but I hope it has a series of smaller skeletal bird heads inside. Day 11 - Eli's off on yet another trip. Meanwhile things are starting to get very concerning in town. I was exploring and ended up stumbling on this. You know I'm not sure I actually want to live here. Rebecca Rose has seen more with the Spirit Eye - she says the Nameless Gods are concerned because what's happening is related to something called the Nalean Casket. They're afraid that some person will open it and waste all of it's power, spilling it out. I almost ended up screwing myself by getting into the locked cabinet a long time ago, because Mrs. Robertson here wants something that was in it - and for the life of me it's been so long since I opened it that I don't remember everything that used to be in it - reorganizing the shop moved everything around. In my case, I can reference my own work here - I took a screenshot back when I was eyeing the goodies within. Suck it non-bloggers. Looks like Bonnie irresponsibly attacked Potter (with the dangerous relic I sold to her, granted) and managed to give him some grey hair - and now he's come in to buy a protective trinket! I'm an incredible businessman! Each day reveals a short part of a story that I assume will help reveal what's going on - a casket features heavily, which matches with Rose's Spirit Eye visions. The Casket appears to infect people's minds and turn their eyes black. A new customer walks in and she's not looking good at all. Between what can happen to people from dangerous plants and artifacts plus the terrifying possibilities of god-knows-what diseases out there, doctors in Undermere must have a really tough job. Game 3 in the series: Strange Maladies? Strange Remedies? Audrey Bell, the priestess (or really feels more like cult leader) wants my help again. I can either sabotage her or give her the strength she wants. She seems pretty evil, but it's wrong to look down on people's religious beliefs so I give her the good stuff. My explorations have yielded two pieces of a torn note that explains what I need to get inside the castle vault. Should be simple now. Like most discoveries this yields just a little bit - a single item and a piece of paper. The most I ever found at once was four items and a tile for the Thaumic board. Can I get a set of these to use as coasters? You don't often get to actually use these neat artifacts, but I'm happy to report that's not true of all of them - some of their powers are required for solving various puzzles, such as accessing the deeper regions of the catacombs. Our resident cult leader is back and she's totally happy with me. She suggests that when the time comes I should perform a ritual for Holgar. I get the sense there are multiple endings to the game. There's probably an ending involving the adventurer with the eyepatch but he bailed earlier, I gave him an item that let him enter a portal and he took one look and noped out. The Holgar ritual doesn't seem too hard, I'll definitely think about it. Holgar seems cool. Warrior god huh? I probably have all these on the shelves somewhere, maybe. Well, this is concerning. Verona Green appears to have lost her battle with the dark forces affecting the town. At least the dark forces that control her mind have more respect for me than my boss Eli. I'm not down with whatever power the Casket represents, so I hand over an item that I hope will cause Verona to win the internal battle and hope for the best. The story is revealing itself both through the characters that come to the shop and the midnight vignettes. It looks like Potter, the adventurer with the eyepatch, found the Nalean Casket along with a partner. The Casket ended up messing up Potter's eye and his partner was killed, and Potter ended up giving the Casket to Eli's brother, the curator of the museum. The casket is there now and its power is seeping out and corrupting the town. The book entry on the Heart Chamber mentions that legend says that Holgar trapped the soul of a great beast in the Catacombs in something called the Wraith Chamber. I'm wondering if that IS the Nalean Casket. (I can confirm that there is indeed a ridiculously large skull of a beast in the Catacombs which lends weight to the legend). The museum curator, Thaddeus White, has come to me and admitted that he has the casket - has had it for years. This feels like a huge choice - either give him at item that will (hopefully) keep the mind-controlled people from getting into the museum, or help him bring the Casket to my shop. Bring it, curator. I am not afraid. As the days wind to a close, we're getting into process-of-elimination identification of items with pretty vague descriptions. Great writeup, very informative, A++ reference book Eli has returned - only to leave again immediately. He leaves me a ritual that can be used to destroy the casket, which is what he thinks should be done. It's actually been a lot of extra work no thanks to you, boss. Come to think of it, I've done a much better job running the shop than Eli ever did. We now carry four, maybe five times as many artifacts as we did when Eli ran the place. And my exceptional business acumen (Letting people run around with very dangerous things) means that business is better than ever! I've reached the final day. It starts with bad news - the Curator can't find the casket. It's gone. I find a note that was slipped into a drawer that used to be empty. The clue leads me to find this: I think I have the Casket now. Eli helpfully returns to tell me that he moved it overnight - it's definitely the casket. He tells me to take to the pit where it can be destroyed. Eli is going to be very disappointed in me. This is Holgar's mess (maybe), and he seems like a cool guy. Let's do this! Unfortunately I don't get to meet Holgar. Turns out this ritual needs a sacrifice. Ok, maybe this was a bad idea. I should have brought a +1 Thanks to some quick thinking the Priestess ends up as the sacrifice instead of me, but things don't turn out great for the town when the followers of Holgar open the Casket. I mean, when you put it THAT way it sounds like I didn't think this through very well. I had a great time with this one - my mind was constantly engaged in a delightful exploration of possibilities right to the end, and if the idea of discovering and deducing the properties of a world of unusual objects appeals to you then I can't recommend this (and its botanical predecessor) enough.