Stuff I played at my grandma's house

Well, turns out there was way more stuff to do at my grandma's house than I planned for, so I didn't get to play as many games as I had hoped.  Plus, I had a party to go to after work today, wherein I got hit in the eyes, making looking at the computer screen not quite painful enough for me to take the night off but just painful enough to make this experience very annoying for me.  So, now you have a post that's anemic and overly grumpy.  Enjoy:

Photon Bunny

Well the first thing I noticed was that this game had the courtesy to start me out in windowed mode so that I can talk to my friends or browse the internet while I play.  Of course I would play the game that does that while I was in the middle of nowhere with no internet access.  Much like the Dial-up I would have had to use to surf the web from where I was, the pace of this game is sooo sloooow.  They try to fix that with a new mechanic early on, but I'm going to talk about all the things I noticed beforehand first.

-black platforms against dark purple backgrounds.  Why, god, why.

-pixel art.  nuff said.

-useless tutorials are useless.  The game conveys instructions just fine, so the tutorials pretty much just get in the way.

-then they use a “dark room flashlight” mechanic on top of the already hard-to-see platforms. The devs are drugs.

And then we are introduced to the light dash.  It only helps the slowness of the game so much due to the cooldown time, which is just long enough to be annoying. Also, you can go through little hoops to increase the duration of your light dash, but there's no sound cue or anything.  Game feel? What’s that?

It was only after I took note of all these minor frustrations that I asked myself tyhwhen does this game get even the slightest bit hard? Nothing about the design makes you think; levels are linear yet somehow still annoyingly roundabout.

All in all, just a forgettable platformer.  Granted, I didn't play it to completion and it seemed to introduce new mechanics rather steadily, but it didn't hold my attention long enough to introduce anything too intense, so I'm going to go ahead and say give this one a miss.

Pixelcraft

this is the part where I started to get too distracted by my grandma's pool table to write anything meaningful. I could expand upon the bullet points I wrote, but I think I'll just leave you with what I wrote, and then add in a concluding statement.

-interesting premise.  Keeps tower defense not excruciatingly boring.

-decent conveyance even without how to play tutorials

-what is going on with the graphic design?

-lots of things to consider (angle, etc)

-difficulty curve is a bit steep.  I quit within 5 minutes.

This was simply not a game to play under my conditions.  It requires boredom, patience, and free time.  If you have all of these and like fast-paced strategy type tower defense games, give it a shot.  If not, hold off.

Pixi

When I played this, I had only one bullet point to myself:

-just wing it, I guess.

 Of course I'm not going to leave it at that, but the reason I didnt write anything meaningful down is because Pixi is a really unique game.  It's not fantastic, but it's interesting.  I'm just going to give a quick summary and then a very quick review:

There are Pixis in bubbles.  You click the bubble to free the Pixis.  You then click and drag the Pixis to Boxi that are trying to steal your stars.  Each Boxi has a weak point and if you miss it, you're going to lose a lot of Pixi really fast.

The game is innovative and stylish enough to warrant a play from anyone curious, but the game simply didn't feel good enough to hold my interest for very long.  Something about its playstyle just makes it seem like the game plays itself and what you do is largely meaningless.

Plight of the Penguins

from here on, I wrote nothing and played each game for about a minute before deciding to put them down.  Plight of the Penguins at least feels damn amazing with explosions going off everywhere, but I really wish there was a jump feature rather than just needing to throw a grenade at your feet.  The game is challenging and has terrific feel, but just didn't have much substance.  I think if you just look at it for what it is, a much more fun and exciting yet less intelligent alternative to Minesweeper (and by that I just mean a game to play when you're bored and want to kill a few minutes; the two games actually have nothing in common), you'll enjoy it just fine.

Pocket Park

this one, on the other hand, I don't think anyone can enjoy.  When you do finally figure out how to control the damn game, you'll find it to be a constantly frustrating puzzle game that just leaves you yelling at the computer.  Essentially, you have to flick marbles into a goal ring, but your opponent (the CPU) can knock your marbles right out of the goal ring, and they well if you hesitate for more than a millisecond.  It's like trying to play shuffleboard with an elderly person.  It just feels like an exercise in futility.  It's so frustating, in fact, that in this particular scenario, the elderly person also has a gatling gun that shoots an unlimited supply of pucks toward your own.

and that's all I was able to do in this 4-day span.  Yeah, I fell a little behind schedule, but hopefully I'll make it up soon, one way or another.  That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay productive.

PS- I totally forgot that I tried to play Pirates of Oceaneus as well, but that was one of them not real exe thingies.  

Links

Bunny: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25876

Pirates: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26013

Pixels: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26014

A Thousand Mini Navis: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26000

'Guins with Nades: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26700

Just Play Marbles: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=463