You’re Death. Not THE Death, but one of ’em. Your turf is Cosmopolis City. You were made for the job! Literally. Summoned for it. By this guy, Fate.
You can always trust a dude in a chair with a cat
The job’s been streamlined. No going out there and swinging a scythe or any of that exhausting nonsense; just review the files as they come across your desk, and use your best judgment. Kill, or Not Kill? It’s kinda like Tinder — but you’re gettin’ paid, not laid. Also, death.
Hope you weren’t super attached to this whole “living” thing, dude. Sweet ‘stache, though.
You boss has some opinions on who you oughta be killing. Don’t worry, bro. It’s all according to the Plan.
This is a darkly silly game that’s more thoughtful than it appears, and seriously rewards engagement. Do you embrace your role, or do you fight against it? I mean, if you just roll with it, you DO get paid, and can spend your wages in that pirate guy’s shop in the basement. And you can experience the sublime joy of official recognition at work!
Killin’ it, yo
Who lives? Who dies? Why are you the one who has to decide? What the hell is going ON here, anyway?
Figuring that shit out is what the game is all about.
It’s well-paced, and satisfies without wearing out its welcome. I honestly don’t want to say much more about it, because exploring the game is just a lot of fun.
Very cool game. Recommended.
So how many people is this next one gonna ask me to kill?
Page 42, Game 2: Our Hero Neighbors by Jamie O’Duibhir
“A game of community, collaboration, and cooperation.”
You are trapped — trapped! — in a hallucination on your way to the City of Angels. The entirety of your identity has been stripped by some unknown force, leaving you and your partner with only the barest rudiments of who you are. Why are you going to LA? What do you wish to avoid? (For me: to become a world famous juggler, and herpes, respectively. For my wife: becoming a stuntwoman, and a combination of palm trees and capitalism.)
But the album Emotion by Carly Rae Jepsen shall guide you back to your identity! Aim your magic music device at The Album, and put that shit on shuffle. The song that appears shall determine your trial, from which you shall reclaim some small piece of yourself. For instance, if you come up with LA Hallucination, you find yourself at a massive gala surrounded by cheering fans, and servants there to offer whatever your heart desires. Add to your identity something that makes you happy! For me, dancing. For Jasmine, smashing capitalism and seizing the means of production. Then, you play out the scene, taking turns asking things of the staff. Jasmine asked for a Mailbu & Pineapple. I asked the waitstaff to dance with me. The trial ended there, because Jasmine could not bear to witness my exploitation of the working class any longer — after getting another Malibu & Pineapple.
But some songs allow you to define aspects of your partner! In Black Heart, you “Add to your partner’s identity something that hurt you once.” We … weren’t sure how to interpret that. Is this something your partner DID to hurt you, or some element of your partner’s identity that you find hurtful? Me, I declared that I was hurt by Jasmine’s insistence I not make inconvenient and inappropriate demands of waitstaff. Jasmine declared she was hurt by that one time I stabbed her. From this, we determined that Jasmine is judgy, and I am inclined to stab people.
After the hallucination in which I helped Jasmine get to the front of the line at Orange Julius by chainsawing everybody in front of her, we came to the end of our journey. The spiritual voyage has ended! But what piece of that identity do you carry with you into the waking world? For Jasmine, it was her ability to sweat sunscreen. For me, my newfound love of stabbings.
So, how is the game?
I don’t know that I’d call it “good,” exactly, but given that we did indeed have fun with it, I’m not sure I’d call it “bad,” either. We obviously got very, very, very silly with it. I have a feeling that’s not QUITE how it’s meant to be played, but that’s just speculation, since the rules as written don’t give me a super clear idea of the author’s original vision. And as mentioned, some of the prompts really could stand to be tidied-up a bit to make it clearer just what they’re asking of you.
Still, at one moment, we did bring the game to a screeching halt, because while describing the sounds that were returning to our world as we drove along, Jasmine indicated we could hear the sounds of EMOTION BY CARLY RAE JEPSEN. WE ACHIEVED SPONTANEOUS JEPCEPTION. I think the experience was worth it just for that moment.
Do I recommend it? You know what? Sure. Why not. If you’re a fan of Carly Rae AND free-form storytelling RPGs, why the fuck not. It was effectively free for me, but I’m sure it’ll be dirt cheap for you. How much does it cost?
O_o
…
…
…
‘Kay.
Perhaps something else in the Carly Rae Jepcember game jam might be more to your liking.
This is a collection of three graphic short stories that are seriously challenging AF for a basic bitch like me. The art is highly stylized and abstracted, and doesn’t make it easy to tell just what the hell is going on in any given frame.
The stories cover themes of isolation and suicide, with the third going into gonzo bugfuck-crazy science fiction territory, with religion adapting to the grim realization that humanity was not created in the image of God, but God’s dog. That one, “The Real Jesuses,” was definitely my fave; it felt like the best fit for the WTF-ness of the art. I can’t help but respect a plot to save the world by sneaking into heaven and jerking-off God.
I don’t understand most of this well enough to provide a meaningful review of it, and I don’t want to be the kind of jackass who defaults to mockery of that which I don’t understand. (I much prefer to mock that which I understand perfectly well, thank you.) So, I’mma just speculate that if you dig darkly challenging comics, this one may well be worth your time. The curious should definitely give it a look.
Will I be able to understand what’s coming up next?
Page 3, Game 21: Death and Taxes by Placeholder Gameworks
“You are the Grim Reaper on an office job. Save the world.. or condemn it to damnation?”
All about working that day job, huh? Yeah, I think I’m gonna know what’s going on a little better in this one.
In Pong you … play fucking Pong. Come on. It’s Pong.
But Dual Pong re-imagines Pong as a serious competitive e-sport. How serious?
Madden 2020: PONG Edition!
You can just let the ball bounce off of your paddle — if you’re a punk. Hit the right button at the right time, and you can hit it HARD, and/or hit it straight across or reverse the direction of the ball.
Depending on where your opponent is, this can result in a ball they literally CANNOT reach. Particularly if they’re chasing down the other ball.
Did I mention that the “Dual” part of Dual Pong is a reference to the two balls bouncing around the screen?
This is the most wholesome context in which you will ever see the initials “DP” in conjunction with “two balls”
But that’s not all! DOUBLES Pong, motherfucker!
Size does matter
An insano-pants FOUR-WAY CLUSTERFUCK of PONG ACTION!
In a four-way DP, I feel like there ought to be more balls
And STORY MODE! Compete for the PONG CHAMPIONSHIP YO!!!
Coach Jimmy here is not known for his brevity
So, how is it?
Well … it’s fun. It’s not perfect. But it’s way more fun that I would expect Pong to be.
The collision detection seems to get a little sketchy at high speed, particularly with how the balls interact; I want the balls to bounce off of each other a bit more than they do, or at the very least not occupy the same space so easily. I wouldn’t mind a little more variability in the angle of the ball as it comes off the paddles; it’ll either come out at a 45-degree angle one way or the other or straight out. The AI is not bright; in the four-way Pong Brawl, when I started reversing the angle on my return shots, the AI was fucking BAFFLED.
But the goal here is to turn Pong — fuckin’ PONG — into a game of depth and skill, and … yeah. I think it does. Make the right return shot, and your opponent is BONED. The permanent multi-ball play does add a fun twist. I got bored with the AI kinda quickly, but this feels like the kinda think I woulda had a BLAST playing back in the day with the other guys living in my dorm.
There’s room for improvement. But you can seriously get into this motherfucker.
If you’re looking for a fun retro same-screen multi-player experience, I definitely recommend giving this one a look.
So, how far back into video gaming’s history are we going for this next one?
Page 42, Game 26: Combed Clap of Thunder by emosludge
“Comic collection exploring human emotion and isolation.”
Ah, jumping “games” entirely and hitting up the comics. So we’re going WAY the hell back.
You have a small farmstead and alchemy lab. Grow plants, then harvest them either for seeds or for alchemical components. Turn those components into potions, which you can either use or sell for cash, which you can use to purchase BETTER seeds and brew even COOLER potions!
In theory.
In practice, the game’s pacing is so completely janked that I gave up on it after about an hour and a half, the final hour of which was spent in an increasingly resentful state of “This is going to start getting interesting soon, right?”
The game starts promisingly enough. Your plot of farmland is a dried-out shithole, with only a few places where the soil is moist enough to take seeds. Luckily, your starting seeds (of which you have a thankfully infinite supply) grow a kind of hydrating flower. Harvest five of those, and you can create a hydration potion which you can use to make MORE of your farmland usable.
So, the early stages of the game are a straightforward but satisfying exercise in force multiplication; grow more hydrating plants to open up more farmland to grow more hydrating plants, etc. It wasn’t long before shit was ready to harvest faster than I could click on everything.
From there, it becomes a balancing act to decide what to keep and what to sell — because sell enough hydrating potions and you can buy some more different seeds, which you can plant and then, as mentioned, either harvest them for seeds or for components. (Though the game does a poor job of teaching this concept, and forces you to notice the difference between right- and left-clicking your non-starter plants. Grr.) However, your soil will sometimes dry out, so it always pays to have some hydrating potions on hand.
This is where the wheels start to come off.
As one might expect, the more advanced seeds grow more slowly than the basic boys. This is tolerable at first; the second-tier seeds still grow reasonably quickly. (There’s a day/night mechanic in play where some things only grow during the day and others only grow during the night, but this is a largely inconsequential nuisance.) The second tier seeds only grow freezing and burning potions; already the game is getting away from its core-level concept of “Do you sell it, or do you keep it on hand to use it?”, because I really don’t have a need to either burn or freeze anything. Those potions are strictly cash crops; I guess I’m supplying chemical weapons to local adventurers.
The third tier seeds allow you to create quick-grow potions, which flips that dynamic on its head; the key ingredients for those are MUCH too slow-growing to make them worth bothering with as sellables, so they are ONLY for personal use. They exist to mitigate the tedium of the rest of the game, because from here on out everything grows so. Fucking. Slowly.
Maybe the game wants me to just let it run in the background and come back to it? Nope. Weeds show up. They’re easy enough to get rid of, but you have to notice that a weed has arrested a plant’s growth and click it to get rid of it. So the game forces you to keep an eye on it, even as it relentlessly wastes your time.
Behold the field where I grow my fucks. They better start coming in a LOT faster, game, because I’m seriously starting to run out.
Buying fourth-tier seeds with second-tier potions was, as you might expect, expensive as balls, but I did it, because I wanted to see where the game was going to go. I meticulously turned that one fourth-tier seed into a whole shitload of fourth-tier seeds, using growth potions to accelerate the game’s pace from “Utterly unacceptable” to “Extremely annoying.” From there, I was able to harvest a whole shitload of fourth-tier components, which I could then use for….
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
There are some crows bouncing around your field as harmless screen noise; every once in a while, one of them will fly off and bring back a page telling you how to play the game. (You might be Odin.) I kept waiting for them to tell me how to DO SOMETHING with the four-leaf clovers I’d so carefully cultivated, but nah.
Maybe the game wants me to experiment?
The lab where excitement goes to die. Also, NortonLifeLock is apparently cool with what my webcam is up to, so that’s reassuring.
Given what a HUGE pain in the ass it is go get some of these components, chucking five of them in a vat and hoping for the best is a seriously bold request. But, what the hell, I tossed five of my precious four-leaf clovers and produced….
A hydration potion.
Apparently, the only way to move forward is to purchase the fuckmothering FIFTH-tier seeds with SECOND-tier potions, because the third-tier potions are less efficient time-wise and the fourth-tier potions DON’T. FUCKING. EXIST.
To get the fifth-tier seeds, I’m going to need to sell ONE HUNDRED TWENTY FUCKING FIVE second-tier potions, each of which is going to have FIVE components in it. That is SIX GODDAMN HUNDRED TWENTY COCK-GOBBLING FIVE plants I’m going to need to harvest, which is TWENTY complete plant-and-harvest cycles on my farmstead — assuming I don’t have to interrupt that to plant hydration crops, which I’m going to.
If I pull this off, my reward will be seeds which, I have no doubt, will take EVEN FUCKING LONGER to become a harvestable plant. And then once I harvest them, MAYBE. The game might POSSIBLY. Tell me how to proceed. IF IT FUCKING FEELS LIKE IT.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
I resent that the game suckered me into playing it for as long as it did. This is the most grind-tastic time waster I’ve yet encountered in this excursion, and I’m including the overly verbose click-n-read “interactive” novels I’ve encountered. At least those things are trying to tell a story. Most of them fail. But by Dread Cthulhu they’re at least TRYING to give you some sort of narrative progression.
Potion Commotion is just the same goddamn thing over and over and over. The early stages make it clear there’s a halfway compelling game under this crap trying and failing to break through, but if anything, those early stages just make it worse. The early stages fooled me into thinking that things might get interesting again, and they emphatically did not. If the game had been wall-to-wall tedium, I would have bailed on it much sooner than I actually did.
This is awful. Even if your goal is just to deliberately waste your own time as we all continue our long slow march to the grave, surely you have better ways to waste it than this.
How much existential despair is THIS game gonna fill me with?
“a dream-like TTRPG for 2 players based on the album E•MO•TION by Carly Rae Jepsen”
A TTRPG based on an album? The despair potential here ranges between “None whatsoever” and “All of it.” Let’s find out where it pegs the ol’ dread-o-meter.
This issue is all about the Labyrinth. Like, THE Labyrinth, the one from ancient Greek legend, not the Bowie one. (Though if you want some Goblin King and his attendant Bulge, fuck it, it’s your game, mate.) What does the Labyrinth represent symbolically? What are the various versions of the myth? What are some theories about where that myth came from?
All of that is presented in a style that’s academic without being dry. The overall vibe is like a really GOOD college class, one where the prof still genuinely digs the material and is enjoying the chance to share it with you lot. It’s honestly pretty cool.
It’s also just a lead-in to the game at the heart of the endeavor, which is all about printing out a deck of 52 maze tiles onto some cardstock and playing a game with them. The game is all about creating your own version of the Labyrinth myth — and you can go as realistic or as wild with that shit as you like. You can ground your story firmly in historical events, or you can have monsters running around, or you can even Bowie that shit up. The game is more than flexible enough to accommodate whatever you’re feeling.
Also, by the time the story comes to it’s conclusion, you’ll actually have created a physical card-based Labyrinth on your table. So that’s pretty dope.
Not sure what else to say, other than this looks really cool. It’s a well thought-out guided storytelling game with a very clear central theme. If that’s the kind of game you and your buddies are into, this looks like one you’d have fun with. Definitely makes me curious to see what other issues of the zine are like, that’s for sure.
Is this next one gonna be a zine, too?
Page 56, Game 9: Potion Commotion: Heart Edition by JENNY_
“Grow plants, brew potions, maybe even solve a mystery”
Interesting. If it lets me show-up Snape for the punk-ass incel he is, I’m SUPER into it.
What’s this? Something BAD has come to the Dogwoods!
FUCK YEAH I AM!!!!
Assemble your three-dog team of heroes!
Pure badass
Now get out there and kick some side-scrolling ass! Launch flurries of weapons! Blast through level after level of–
Wait, it’s over?
Yeah … it’s over. You won.
Good dog!!!
It’s a cute enough little game, but it suffers from two problems. The first is the challenge: there isn’t much. I banged-out a complete playthrough in … I wanna say, 15 minutes or so? Made it all the way through to the end on one go. One of my doggos fell during the final boss fight, but the other two were able to bring him down. There’s really not much to the game; avoid the stuff that hurts, blast the stuff that’s trying to kill you.
You can even turn on the “Repeat” option, which just blasts away over and over and spares you the bother of holding down the “Fire” button. I’m of mixed minds about that. On the one hand, yeah, the game clearly benefits from that addition, but at the same time, I kinda wish it didn’t. I wish there was some strategy involved in there somehow.
But, nah, just blast away. Cycle your dogs’ positions so that the ones with the most health are most likely to take hits, I suppose.
When I went through the “Harvest the Screenshots” run, I could step away from the game for a remarkably long time, and my three goodbois were doing just fine with no input from me whatsoever. They got pretty chewed-on during the boss fight, though. That’s when I decided to see what the “You lose!” screen looks like, and … there isn’t one. If all your dogs drop, then two of them get back up and on you go.
You basically have to give the hell up entirely to lose this game.
Okay, fine, it’s not a hard-core gaming experience, it’s more of a cute little trifle. But … is it all that cute?
Here’s what the main gameplay looks like:
A pom and two corgos, stomping tail
And here’s a boss fight:
Nice of him to let me know EXACTLY where his attacks are going to drop
Notice anything?
The dogs are the ONLY dog-themed element on the screen at any given time. On of the enemies spits bones at you, but that’s pretty much it. Heck, even the doggos’ attacks aren’t thematic at all; I don’t typically associate dogs with knives, or spell blasts, or battle-axes.
Everything other than the dogs is generic video-game enemy stuff. You could replace the dogs with traditional fantasy hero sprites and it wouldn’t impact the feel in the slightest.
What kinds of weapons should dogs be launching? Kong balls? Tug-of-war ropes? And what kinds of enemies should dogs be doing battle against? Mailmen, obviously, but what else? Squirrels? Cats?
If I’m going to lead a band of adorable doggos to glory, I’d like their world to be much, much doggier. Even if the gameplay does make it just a silly trifle, I still want it to have more personality than this.
Though those ARE some totes adorable heroes. They are, indeed, very good dogs. Just wish they had more of a chance to shine.
Will this next game give me even more doggy funtimes?
Page 36, Game 16: Lost in Dark Halls (Forking Paths #2) by Orbis Tertius Press
“featuring rules for Labyrinthine, a storytelling game of branching myths, for solo or group play”
I’m willing to bet a fella could shoehorn dogs in there. If he made the effort.
You and up to 99(!!!) friends are competitively digging for artifacts! See who can court the most exciting danger and get the best artifacts!
Or, if you’re strapped for time, everybody roll a die, high roll wins. Same destination, shorter path.
This is a decision-free game. You’re rolling on a series of three charts, which may force to re-roll on various charts, which makes it feel like a press-your-luck game except those allow you to make choices. You are encouraged to make up stories fleshing out your dice rolls — and if you don’t, there’s literally no reason to play this game, so you may as well.
Good rolls get you points, most points/first to 45 points wins.
Also, the game closes-out with six pages of real-world archaeological artifacts. So that’s nice.
There’s nothing here, so let’s just move on.
… save to take a parting shot at the designer’s assertion that it seats from 3-100 players.
No.
No, it does not.
How many players does this game take?
Page 21, Game 26: Dogs Throwing Swords II: Three Barks To The Wind by Rook
“A sidescrolling bark-em-up where you create and guide a team of very good dogs to save their home!”
Goodbois on an adventure together?!?!
I’m trying to keep my expectations reasonable. This is difficult.
When I randomly select my next game, I like to close out with a knee-jerk reaction to the game’s short description. Here’s both from last week:
“Dehumanize kids and make money.”
“Oy. What have we said about “cheap adolescent nihilism,” bundle? Am I gonna need to put my rantin’ pants on for this one too?”
The answer to my question is “No.” No, I shall not be getting my rant on. I remain unmoved by cheap adolescent nihilism. But hard-won cynicism? I can still get behind that. As long as the game does it right.
You are the administrator of a school, and you have a goal. This goal varies from scenario to scenario; maybe you’re trying to earn some money, maybe you’re just trying not to bankrupt the school, whatever.
The Rutherford B. Hayes Academy of Academic Excellence
The most annoying part of running a school is, of course, the children who go there. They’re high-strung little balls of hormones who make friendships and get pissed at each other and hit on each other and form bands together and just do all sorts of annoying bullshit that isn’t SCHOOLWORK. Because at your school, your funding DEPENDS on how well your students are doing. Lower grades, less money. And time those little shits spend on interpersonal nonsense is NOT MAKING YOU MONEY.
FFS, Sharen, she’s your only friend! Shouldn’t you be studying Math or something?
However, pineapples are way less trouble.
Look at this perfectly adequate bundle of mediocrity
Pineapples are just there. They neither find nor make trouble, they go where they’re supposed to without any fucking about, they tend to pull perfectly acceptable grades. Pineapples simply exist.
Taken at face value, this game is exactly the type of unadulterated nihilism that so severely turned me off in Headliner. The difference is that I’m quite certain this game doesn’t want me taking it at face value.
This game lives and dies by the tension between what it encourages me to do and what I, as a human being with some modicum of empathy, actually want to do. The game advises you to suppress the children’s Humanity scores; push that Humanity all the way to 0, and they become nice pliable pineapples. Conversely, if you let your pineapples’ Humanity creep all the way back up to 100, you’re asking for all sorts of messy complications.
I, naturally, would PREFER not to suppress my students’ humanity. The game lets me go either way.
Similarly, how should you treat your faculty? Obviously, you want them to be as cheap as possible. Dealing with students costs energy, as does teaching classes. (Unless you let them just run a TV for the entire class, the “I don’t give a fuck but at least nothing bad is likely to happen” option.) Sooner or later, they run out of energy, at which point, you can just fire them and hire some fresh-faced youngster to vampirically drain instead.
This is gonna be an easy period
… or, you can notice that their energy replenishes more quickly between days if you pay them more money. This may lead to you noticing that as they gain more experience, they get access to more effective teaching techniques, thus raising the students’ grades and earning back MORE money than what you’re paying out to them.
That’s the difference between this game and Headliner. Headliner presents a system that’s so inherently corrupt that there’s nothing you can do about it, even if you want to. Pineapple gives you the option of fighting the system — and even of scoring victories against it.
Kinda. Sorta.
The game progresses. Teachers’ workloads start exceeding what any amount of salary can compensate for, so even if you care, you’re going to need to let them slack-off and let the TV do the teaching on occasion. (Assuming you do, in fact, care. Burn-n-churn remains an option.) There are so many students that it becomes difficult to keep an eye on them, and try to encourage them to stuff that maximizes their Humanity.
Your resources for doing that are limited. Each teacher has a laser they can use to mess with their students:
Yes, this is actually a thing that exists in the game
Make them feel better, or push them towards becoming nice, pliant pineapples. Break up fights before they start, or discourage friendships so they have more time to spend on their schoolwork.
Each time you use a laser, it costs that teacher a bit of energy. Use them wisely.
No Pineapple Left Behind doesn’t start to sing until it starts adding on layers like this, when it makes it clear that caring, although still an option, is difficult. There’s only ever so much you can do. How much do you want to exhaust your teachers policing these little shits?
(You don’t have to police the pineapples, you know. They are neither bullies nor bullied. Sure you want to discourage your students from pineapple-hood? They might honestly be happier that way.)
The playthrough when I discovered that good pay for your teachers leads to good results for the kids ended with me sacking all the teachers. I had a goal of making a net $1000 by the end of the scenario, and avoiding those pesky salaries was what I needed to get over that hump. Sometimes you just have to make the tough decisions, you know?
Or the scenario with the bus drivers’ strike, when fully a third of the school was showing up late to their first-period classes and thus getting F’s. My only goal was to keep from bankrupting the school. First period was, across the board, TV Time. It just wasn’t worth it to spend the teachers’ precious energy on partially full classes.
Oh, and then the parents start calling. They’re complaining about grades, or want you to prevent their gay son from hitting on any boys. Do you ignore the calls, or indulge them? There’s a cost to each.
The final scenario I played focused on a single student, Davis Jefferson, a pudgy boy who likes to wear makeup. Davis catches a lot of shit from the other kids, because he wears makeup. Goal for the week: send Davis home each day without the “Teased” condition.
This means ending the day with Davis’s teachers bathing him in soothing “No Teasing” lasers, at great cost to their own personal energy. It is a pain in the ass — and if the little fucker gets out the door before I can strip him of all that teasing, I lose. He sincerely might be happier if I started intentionally trying to pineapple him, he’d catch a lot less shit. At the very least, he’d make things a lot easier for everybody if he’d stop wearing make– OH MY FUCKING GOD I’M PART OF THE PROBLEM NOW HOW DID THIS HAPPEN.
This is the genius of No Pineapple Left Behind. It does not FORCE you to become a part of the problem, it entices you into it. It seduces you. It shows you how much easier everything would be if you simply stopped caring.
Caring becomes an act of defiance, of revolution. Nurturing the kids, encouraging their humanity, is an eternal battle, and the system wants you to lose. Which makes those times you can win that much sweeter.
Whoever wrote this game has serious beef with the American educational system. Depending on your own experiences within that system, this game may make you laugh, or trigger a full-on PTSD episode, or do both simultaneously.
It is two-fisted blunt-force satire wrapped in a genuinely compelling game experience. It’s honestly kinda fucking brilliant. I very much recommend it.
So the second hundred games is starting off with a bang. Is the next game gonna keep this momentum going?
Page 43, Game 12: Tabletop Archaeology 101 by avarisclari
“Are You Ready to Join the Dig?”
Damn right I am. There’s awesome shit underground. Gimme a shovel.
