christian

I’ve been playing Axiom Verge, it feels like the platonic ideal of metroid. I’ve cleared almost 90% of the map so I’ve got to imagine I’m close to finishing.

I’ve been suprised by how much I enjoy the lore. You can find notes hidden around that expand on the story and I get more excited stumbling on one of those than finding a new powerup.

Eastward is an indie game I actually first learned about here on lemmy, just a couple weeks after its release. I went back and replayed it just a month ago and it’s so good. I can acknowledge that it’s not for everyone, it almost feels like the target audience is me specifically.

The dialogue is really wonderful and you fall in love with the characters. When I play games I generally am talking to every npc, Eastward made that feel rewarding for me. There’s not much for tangible benefits, it’s just that to me the dialogue feels very…human (the robots included). If you’re inclined to check in with the npcs you’ll catch wind of little dramas and occasionally see them resolved, and none of it really affects gameplay or the story but it makes the world feel more alive.

My personal favorite, and one I wouldn’t have found without going out of my way to talk to the npcs - the train attendant robot talking shit about the repair-worker robot: Image Image Image Image

The most frequent complaint I’ve seen about Eastward is too much dialogue and too little game, so ymmv. Slight oversimplification, but the gameplay is basically Zelda but with a frying pan instead of a sword. It’s not innovative but I still find it fun.

The story was heartwarming at times and (with help from the environmental visuals) creepy at other times. I will say it was a bit of a letdown just how much was left open-ended at the end though, there were a few plot points where I was looking forward to seeing how they’d be explained or where they were going and the game just never gave an explicit explanation.

The pixel art is so special. I try to avoid looking up too much before playing a new game and there was one moment in particular that just floored me visually. I do think the game as a whole made a stronger impression on me because I went in mostly blind, some of the ways the environments change and evolve visually as you move forward really impressed me.

tl;dr the appeal is lots of emotion captured in the details

I recently played through Slice of Sea, which is an adventure game, a bit similar in spirit to the old LucasArts games. I could give a lot of criticism on the gameplay, but it was so artistically captivating that I’d call it worth my time regardless.

I got through it in about nine hours without a guide, but I think trying to play it in a couple sittings would be miserable. If you get stuck put it down and come back a couple days later.

I just finished Anode Heart after a million hours over the past couple weeks. Spectacular game. It’s an indie monster tamer, it doesn’t have the graphics of Nexomon: Extinction or Cassette Beasts but I liked it better than either of those.

I’ve started a monster taming game called Anode Heart and it’s good stuff so far. There’s a lot of depth to the gameplay, somewhat nonlinear with a strong story anyway. It came out about three years ago. Comparing to other indie monster tamers I’d definitely put it above Cassette Beasts, not sure about Monster Sanctuary but it’s much less well-known than either and deserves to be.