A person who is seriously interested in games, game studies, and game design should play a lot of games.
To the right you will see the latest GameLog (diary)
entries I have recorded for the games I'm currently playing and my thought and feelings on the game, the experience of playing it, and so on.
If you want to see all the games I'm playing, or the ones
I'm no longer playing you can follow the "List of Games I'm Currently Playing" and the "
List of Games I've Finished Playing".
During the summer of 2003 I started a little project to keep track of the videogames I had been playing. I also wanted to keep track of my thoughts as I played them.
Thus, GameLog was born as a blogging tool for gamers. If you are interested you can hop on over and register. I personally enjoy reading about other people's thoughts
on the games they play and the more the merrier! www.gamelog.cl
I picked this up again and I've been playing it a little over the past few days. I'm enjoying it more than before - though I really don't like having to grind for resources that are then used up with you use your items, needing more resources and so on. Just having to "refill" my items feels onerous to me - as in, not necessary and detracting from the overall gameplay experience. I'm also excited when I find a new blueprint for something, but then I quickly lose interest when I see that the item doesn't seem that fun/useful OR that I don't have enough materials to use it well. It all seems a bit of a drag - but I'm mostly annoyed because other than that - I do have fun with the game, some of the enemies are neat to plan around and I think I'm also getting better at the game.
I'm also wearing a Santa Suit that's super helpful - every now and then it'll drop an item. It's less about the item and more about how having items on the board reduces the difficulty because it gives you more/better chances of continuing a chain. Oh, I did my first 40 chain - it was on a weird bonus level I played - but still, 40 is almost the entire board!
If this isn't already an "indie darling" then it soon will be. And, I feel lucky I got to play this now while there's still lots of secrets, a general lack of guides, and a community that still might be actively exploring the game trying to find hidden things.
I've been enjoying this a fair amount (just finished it, failed to write about it prior to that, whoops!) I think in part because I've been enjoying deck-building games as well (Slay the Spire, Monster Train, etc.). This game is definitely in that vein - with shallower mechanics/systems but, a LOT more story, narrative and puzzles. So, the lack of depth is not a problem at all - in fact, there's what I might call "lateral depth" - so, new systems and things that are introduced but don't co-exist with what's already there - so maintain overall depth, but mix things up a bit. Now that I think about it it's sort of what like MtG does with each set - has a few mechanics/systems but you don't really play with ALL the mechanics that exist in the game (I mean, you could, but it doesn't happen all that much if you're playing any of the formats that limit cards to the most recent sets).
I really enjoyed going in blind. Everything was a nice surprise and it felt interesting and intriguing to see what was happening with the story, and the characters and so on. The 2nd act was definitely a jarring disconnect with the rest of the game - at least for a while until I picked up on the fundamental differences in how I needed to play in order to make progress again.
I think that what I enjoyed the most was having the game sort of shift itself a little bit - throw wrinkles into the gameplay (once I was past the 2nd act). Strangely the game gets alot easier after the 1st act is over - looking back it took me a few attempts to get to the end of the 1st act, but after that all the progress was pretty linear... So, the first act is rogue-like while the rest feels much more rpg-like.
So, it's a Magic the Gathering themed puzzle quest game - and I've played a fair amount of puzzle quest (back in the day). I guess I was expecting something of a re-skin with MtG characters and whatnot. I was wrong - this is a full-fledged Puzzle quest game with a huge amount of extra mechanics - all from MtG, and all the art from the cards and more. It's incredibly overwhelming because, while it uses all the cards (for at least a few years of sets/releases) the mechanics/system are tweaked and changed slightly (for it to make sense in the puzzle quest game). I've mostly enjoyed my time with the game so far in that I've been learning how the different systems in the game work and trying to make sense of the game through observation and trial and error. I've actively resisted online guides and all that stuff.
The nutshell is that you match gems to accumulate mana you use to cast spells - there are three types of spells one of which is creatures. You can have 3 creatures out at a time and they all attack/block automatically. What's been messing me up the most is that sometimes the creatures block but other times they don't - and I haven't quite figured out when they do/do not block.
Your character is a planeswalker and you can also charge up special abilities you can use by spending "magic points" you also get from doing swaps on the board.
The whole game is incredibly F2P with monetization out the wazoo - you can buy different resources, you need to level up cards, planeswalkers (to gain access to higher level abilities), card packs, etc. Oh, you also have a deck of 10 cards (you get free copies, but I'm not sure how large a deck really is).
There are also events and you can play PvP against others - all this to get access to more cards, better cards (I have yet to see a mythic rare!).
You can also create decks - paying special currency to open up more slots to store your decks. The weird thing is that, for the last few days, I have not been able to edit/change my decks. I'm not sure if it's a bug or what.
The OTHER weird thing is that when I downloaded the game and opened it up, it recognized that I had played it before! With stored progress and all that. I don't remember playing the game - perhaps it had a different name? This is so weird!
I've played maybe 20% of the campaign. Or, as far as I can tell - the FIRST campaign. I have no idea if everything else that showed up on the menu is available for me to play or if I need to pay (DLC?).
I've been enjoying the game so far, it's basically a brawler with a lot of progression and RPG systems. There's all kinds of things to unlock, level up and so on. And, also special abilities (combos, special moves, etc.). So far I've (mostly) played with the Hulk and the Ms. Marvel character with the rubber hands/arms. It's been fun, and I've enjoyed the Ms Marvel(?)
The game's menus are quite overwhelming and I was initially not feeling it...as in, not feeling excited about playing the game. But, I then had an epiphany of sorts - I realized that this game looks like what Destiny 2 must look like to a new player. There's events that seem like strikes (online multiplayer - get loot/rewards) and more. There's a whole map full of them - though I suspect I'm too low level at this point for it to make sense for me to chase these. But we'll see!
I have been keeping track of this information for the past 18 year(s), 6 month(s) and 18 day(s).
