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Smashing Bottles (PC) by jp (May 30th, 2026 at 18:16:28) |
Heard about this one recently and got stuck playing the demo on itch (though it's also available on Steam) for a few hours until I got to the final (demo) ending!
It's an incremental game with some interesting things going on - you have a bat and smash bottles, but you have a limited time to do so (in seconds, like max 25 or so after all the upgrades?). When time runs out you can go again or go to the shop to buy upgrades. As expected you want to get more money from smashing bottles and there's ways to do that - spawn golden bottles, champagne bottles (when they smash the corks fly out and can smash other things), and even molotov cocktails (that explode, smashing other things).
There's a few things I thought where nice/clever:
a. The game has two distinct phases (once you unlock molotovs, everything changes, really) - the "you smash" and the "maximize money in the time allowed". In the latter, the game mostly plays itself as the molotovs keep everything getting smashed.
b. The "you smash" has rotating bottles, and since the smashing can take a few hits, there's some interest in smashing champagne such that the cork flies in a certain direction for more damage.
c. The champagne corks are pretty clever - since it gives you a reason to, in the short time you have to smash, choose what to smash a little more carefully. Go for golden or champagne hoping for a productive chain reaction?
Of course there's also a prestige/reset mechanic - from which you can lock a separate bat that smashes.
I'm curious how far things will go once the full game is out - and what the nature of the upgrades will be. I'm really hoping for more variety in the experience beyond the simple "number go up" - in that sense the molotovs seem like they're capping the experience in a detrimental way (even as they were super fun to smash when I first unlocked them.
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Donkey Kong Bananza (NSW2) by jp (May 30th, 2026 at 18:07:32) |
Still playing!
It has an interesting structure in terms of its levels and such - the core metaphor is that you're going deeper into the planet with each level, and they're both thematic and numbered. I got to a point where there's a bifurcation - go right into what I thought was "jungle land" or left into "snow land". I went right did a few more levels, cleared the boss (it was plant/poison land) and in order to continue going deeper I was then told to go back to "snow land"! There's a fast travel/teleport system involving giant worms that can move your around, so it was easy enough to do this, but I was surprised to learn that the fork was just a "choose what order to do these" situation... and also, the entire "fork" makes little sense thematically so I'm curious to see how it's explained and communicated in the interface - will it look like a fork in the "hole" going into the planet's core?
The titular ability (bananza mode!) was a bit underwhelming - you turn into a bigger DK and can now punch things you couldn't before - it lasts a limited amount of time. But, I've since unlocked a new one - DK-bird - where you can glide around (and after paying to unlock) and drop an egg on enemies. The gilding around was important/necessary in the plant/poison levels, and I'm expecting it to be similarly required in the snowy ones. We'll see!
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Hollow Knight: Silksong (PC) by dkirschner (May 13th, 2026 at 14:58:07) |
Kicking myself for not writing an entry when I was playing this 6 months ago. I am cleaning up my wishlist, backlog, and etc., and the FEELING I get when I see Silksong "in progress" is anxiety. I had jotted a few notes in December, as follows:
"It’s true, Silksong is hard. Like, really, frustratingly hard. Like punishingly difficult. I hit a wall at the end of Act 1 trying to beat the Last Judge. The game likes to place benches far away from boss fights, such that retrying boss fights involves slogging back through tough platforming and other sections of the map."
I did kill the Last Judge and complete Act 1. I remember that took a very long time, and that after the Last Judge, I died a few more times and, probably, with shaking hands and rapid heartbeat, said, "I can't do this anymore." Actually, it may have been in one of those rooms with waves of enemies. This innovation is new and unwelcome to Silksong, rooms that lock upon entering and spill several waves of challenging enemies at you. Yeah, I think that is what got me, just being pummeled over and over in one of those rooms, getting tired of exploring the maze-like map, tired of dying, tired of corpse runs, just exhausted. The game became a chore.
Besides that, I loved it, haha. I was definitely into it for a while. It was sublime until it wasn't.
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Turnip Boy Robs a Bank (PC) by dkirschner (May 12th, 2026 at 17:20:35) |
I meant to quickly beat this back in April so I could have a "completion" for the month, but I got really busy after spending barely an hour one afternoon with Turnip Boy Robs a Bank, a bizarre little twin-stick shooter about a turnip...who robs a bank. The game builds off previous games in the series, which I have never played, in which Turnip Boy commits tax evasion and, according to this game at least, seems to have started a war. Work has slowed down for the first time in nearly two months, and while I wait for my next contract to begin, I figured I'd knock this out.
The whole game is silly. The world is populated by sentient fruits and vegetables. You are employed by a pickle / mafia gang leader to rob a bank of a garlic bulb / bad guy / killed your dad. You have a base, where you can get new weapon loadouts by bringing weapons from the bank (always try to return with something new or high-powered!), purchase progression items from the "dark web," and upgrade stuff at another vendor. You go on "runs" to the bank, which are timed (starts at 2 or 3 minutes, goes up to 5 or 6 with upgrades). Runs are over when you die or when you exit the bank. Die and you lose half the cash you accumulated in the run. Survive and you are handsomely rewarded. Upgrade stuff. Go back to the bank. It's a roguelite too.
The bank has a specific layout of rooms, but you'll encounter some randomized areas too, and enemies and treasure are somewhat randomized. Throughout the bank are tons of NPCs with little fetch quests that usually reward you with pictures (fun/ny to look at) or hats (fun/ny to equip). A blueberry might want you to find its wedding ring, a lime wants you to get divorce papers from her lemon husband, a scientist pineapple wants you to find a philosopher mango and ask it an ethical question about experimenting on fruits, etc. I had some good laughs.
In each corner of the bank is a boss. Boss fights were fun, but the most challenging were early on. Once you start upgrading stats, the game becomes easy. It definitely ends up being an "upgrade everything and go nuts on all the enemies!" type game, experience being overpowered.
I haven't played a twin-stick shooter in a while, and while this wasn't revolutionary or anything, it was fun and scratched the itch. I gotta get back to Divinity: Original Sin 2. I might have some extra time till my next gig, so maybe I can boot it up, remember what I was doing, and make some progress this week.
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Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS) by jp (Apr 27th, 2026 at 22:04:52) |
I got to that point where I hit a monster/boss that just wasn't that much fun, and then I got a bit lost in terms of where to continue making progress, and the backtracking started to get a bit tiresome...as I explored and searched for different paths. So, time to bail!
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Freud's Bones (PC) by dkirschner |
| Interesting point-and-click game about Freud, but so boring to play. |
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most recent entry: Friday 2 August, 2024
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I bought this for the interesting premise. You get inside Freud’s head and help him dig into his crisis, as well as help him conduct psychotherapy on his patients. It's a point-and-click with a lot of reading and listening to Freud unraveling. Most of the game takes place in his office, where you can click on things (ooh, aah!), solve the same frustrating Egyptian hieroglyphics puzzle over and over (ooh, aah!), treat patients, and watch Freud spiral. As such, the game is quite small and quickly becomes repetitive. The puzzle, for example, is an artifact that Freud acquired during his travels. It spins like a slot machine, and you have to use a legend to decipher the hieroglyphics that appear on its face. Easy enough, but they are out of order, and to put them in order, you just have to guess at what the hell it wants you to do. The words will form a sentence, but sometimes it's a question, sometimes the independent clause is first, sometimes it's second, sometimes it's just worded in a strange way. You have no way of knowing any of this, so you will assemble the four images in all possible configurations until you happen to get the correct order. Super annoying. So far, the resulting sentences have just been Freud posing existential questions to himself.
I thought the most interesting part would be conducting psychoanalysis. Well, when this game says that's what you're going to do, by god, that's what you're going to do! You get some excerpts/summaries of Freud's writing, an encyclopedia of psychoanalysis terminology, a breakdown of mental diseases, types of patients, dream symbolism, and so on. As your patients lay on the couch, you are sort of cross-referencing what they are saying with all this information to get to the root of their problem and diagnose them. This is interesting for sure, but I think the problem is, well, most psychologists don't do this anymore. This isn't what clinical mental health counseling or social work is. So, trying to play this, I could not help but constantly be like, "No, don't ask that!" or "He should do this..." or "But that's not what the patient said..." This is a case where my prior knowledge and experience probably got in the way of "becoming" Freud.
He's a hard person to become as it is, considering the smoking, cocaine addiction, obsession with sex, and so on. In addition to treating patients and posing existential questions to yourself, you also need to manage Freud's finances. To do this, you go out to fancy places and schmooze rich people, trying to get patrons to fund your research because your books are selling poorly and the newspapers are calling you a fraud. In all the game's social interactions, you have to choose dialogue options that will appeal to the other person, or get them to do what you want. For potential patrons, this might mean sucking up to them, appealing to their desires. For patients, this might mean taking an approach that aligns with their sickness (e.g., don't be direct if they are suffering from anxiety because it will make it worse). Characters make facial expressions and you can see patients' hearts beat, so you can read them.
The game also visualizes the id, superego, and ego as layers in the head. As you're appealing to characters, or digging around during treatment trying to find causes of their problems, you identify topics and "move them" from the id to the level of conscious awareness. Pretty neat. Anyway, at this point I might have written as long as I played, and I don't feel like finishing. The cases "solve" themselves as you scrutinize case files for a magnifying glass icon to click on important words, and I've gotten bored of listening to Freud. The marketing material for this game heralds the "visionary game designer" who made it and goes on about how this is the pinnacle of Italian game design. I should have been wary of that. It's a neat idea for sure, and obviously a lot of knowledge and passion is on display here, but it is not a good time in practice.
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