Renzatic on 13/12/2019 at 03:14

---

One thing I'll say about Eastward: it has THE basiest gunshot and bomb sound effects I've ever heard in a game. It's a proper *thowoomp*.

Skatebird? Eh. It's a gimmicky Tony Hawk, but it feels floaty, and lacks righteous crunchy shredding. It might be worth looking into later, but for now, I'm unimpressed.

The Drifter was interesting. Good old fashioned adventure game with a nice story hook. I might consider picking it up.

reizak on 13/12/2019 at 08:25

---

SS definitely had a strong atmosphere and seemed better than I dared hope. Did anyone manage to get into cyberspace or was that just not in yet? I hopped into the elevator a bit earlier than I meant to and since there were no saves to load I didn't get to poke around everywhere.

I like the solarpunk visual style of Eastward but it was not much fun to actually play. Might be largely because of the awful mouse aiming, although bonking those raft poles got old fast too. Not a whole lot of variety in what you get up to in the demo.

Not sure how much time if left on the event, but hopefully I'll get to try a couple others. It's a fun way to engage people at any rate; I never pay much attention to these shows normally.

Sulphur on 15/12/2019 at 09:06

---

Some thoughts:

SS definitely brought the atmosphere. It's more or less faithful right down to using the original VOs, with some interesting tweaks to mechanics and level design. You could nitpick some of this shit to death - I don't care that much about the cameras seeming to have cyber elephantiasis - but it's got the tone down and is promising, all in all. I'd like to know why there isn't a HUD subscreen to reload my goddamn magnum, though :mad:

Eastward looks very, very pretty. And it's about as interesting as oatmeal for breakfast. I don't care about the characters or the story because it's a demo that pretty much in medias res, so that's okay; it'll probably have done the groundwork earlier. Gameplay-wise, bapping shit with a frying pan doesn't feel fun, switching over to flouncy gal and shooting things doesn't feel fun: there's these microsecond delays to the controls and animation that make things feel just a little clumsy and inaccurate. It also does all this with respawning enemies, which means it very rapidly descends into 'okay, can we be done with this now' territory. It's charming and very SNES-y, but also feels like it's calibrated to an earlier age and hasn't learned from the present, when you have something like Hyperlight Drifter that modernises that template much better.

Haven is more or less a relationship sim with added flavour in terms of combat (not with your SO; with other alien life -- though now that I think about it, I don't see why not) and some easy, glide-y exploration. It's charming and slight, and I don't see any way to not damn it with faint praise.

Röki was charming, again. Also slight. This seems to be a theme. Anyway, folk/fairy-tale inspired with a dark edge that's only somewhat barely hinted at in the demo.

Spiritfarer was fun and adorable, and lets you hug everyone without triggering a harassment suit by virtue of being set in the afterlife. Good save, Thunder Lotus. (You can also hug the cat; the cat follows you everywhere, including on water, by rolling on a magical ball that's otherwise hanging off its collar. This is adorbs and I love it. <3). There's cooking, fishing, building, and travelling, along with the studio's trademark, exquisite hand-drawn animation. It also all felt very slight. But charming! Yes.

The Drifter is the stand-out of all of this: it's a punchily paced point and click with an interesting story and gritty shit happening right from the word go. The VO is quality, and in terms of atmosphere, it has something almost akin to a 70s exploitation film like Wake in Fright. Lots of stuff happens, very little time is wasted, and I want to see what happens next. Wish-fucking-listed.

Renzatic on 18/3/2020 at 21:54

---

I played Eldest Souls. Great art, spooky atmosphere, controls and gameplay were kinda rough. It felt like Dark Souls, but with a lag on rolling.