Recent games

[liv]

jack has cut short our date night because he is finishing prep for roleplaying with OSOs and the children tomorrow. It's something we've been hoping to do for ages and we finally have time for it, so I'm really excited.

Anyway, stuff I've been playing recently: cjwatson fixed Minecraft, because he is amazing. So now we can play a shared game reliably, and we are having a hilarious time with me being a total inept newbie and the children trying to teach me everything at once while also pranking me. So far they have blown me up with TNT, filled my bedroom with a pack of wolves, and led me through a portal into hell. There's hardly any need for pranks because I spontaneously fall into pits and set myself on fire and get into fights with the wrong creatures due my cluelessness about the interface or the world rules, but hopefully I'm not far off being able to actually play.

I also played through Brothers with jack on the Switch, hooked up to our big TV. I had got the wrong end of the stick reading reviews when the game came out and thought it was compulsory two-player local co-op. But actually it's intended to be played with a single player controlling two characters. That sounds way too hard so we went for the discouraged option of controlling one brother each.

It was a very different experience of gaming from basically anything else I've tried; mostly it's a story, and to my mind worked really well to experience together. You have to solve puzzles but they are mostly fairly trivial puzzles, like you find the lever and then you pull it and the machine grinds into place. It's almost completely linear; there are a few side branches but they're pretty much just short cul-de-sacs. There are a couple of screens where you have to jump at the right moment to scale a difficult climb but almost no serious reflexes are involved. The controls basically consist of directional movement, plus a single "interact" button which you just press until something useful happens. So almost all of the play is in getting to you to connect emotionally to the two characters and their quest. It is really gorgeous, not up to the standards of the latest games in terms of graphics but the scenery is amazing.

I am not totally convinced by the emotional stuff. There are some genuinely touching moments, particularly the interactions with magical creatures, and I really felt invested in the two brothers supporting and saving each other. But a lot of it feels manipulative, and also several of the scenes are just grim for the sake of it, you stumble on freshly dead bodies from the aftermath of a lynching, a house fire, and a war, and there wasn't really any explanation for why any of these tragedies had happened, they seemed to be there just to heighten the emotional tension. I am really split about the ending, on the one hand it's really emotionally intense to an extent I wouldn't expect from a simple game (I know sophisticated games can have as much drama as any other medium, but this game is really pretty basic). But also it didn't feel quite respectful to the characters or the players, and I learned from the ending credits that there's a Narnia-style secret Christian message which is rather pro-death for my taste.

Otherwise Andreas is quite into Super Smash Bros Ultimate which I can see the appeal of but don't really have the energy for learning all the moves and combos to play effectively. It's quite nice as a hilarious multiplayer chaos game where six of us can play at once on the Switch and not really care about actual skill. I can see there's a lot more to it than that but probably won't acquire my own copy.

I have rediscovered the rather lovely word game Highrise heroes in the course of recommending it to Judith. It basically works like the old Popcap game Bookworm adventures only with a non-terrible plot and much nicer art, with a cute anime style. Like most word games it's a bit too easy for me but last time I played through was long enough ago that I can enjoy it again. Also, it has a nice old-fashioned business model which is that you pay once and then you own the game with no adverts, subscriptions or in-app purchases.

Board games, cjwatson got jack the Uwe Rosenberg game Nova Luna for Christmas. It's very pretty, and it's a nice self-contained little abstract game, interesting enough to require real thought and be more than just filler, but short enough to play in under half an hour without too much analysis paralysis. Rosenberg is clearly developing the theme he started exploring with Patchwork and then the Cottage garden series. The tile-laying mechanic is interesting but not earth-shattering, and it's essentially competitive solitaire (there is in fact a solo version; Rosenberg hasn't repeated the mistake of making a strictly two player only game).

Other than that, not much bridge in the last couple of months, we should try and get some players together again. A fair amount of the brilliant unofficial online version of Terraforming Mars that ambyr recommended, and some Potion Explosion on Steam. We've progressed a little way along the main story arc of Gloomhaven just me and jack, but not managed a big family game for some time. Most likely the roleplaying game is going to take priority for a while.

Comments

[nicki]

I'm glad you were able to get your minecraft issue solved! Woo!

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

Ooh, have you got a link to the brilliant unofficial online Terraforming Mars?
TM is possibly Alex's and my favourite board game to play together, and we'd be interested in a way to play it with other friends during the pandemic (and the official app is reputed to be not very good).

[cjwatson]

https://terraforming-mars.herokuapp.com/, although I ended up installing our own copy after that server disappeared in the middle of a game and I found the admonition on https://github.com/bafolts/terraforming-mars#Demo. Email me at the address on my profile if you decide you'd like to use my installation (I didn't want to have the whole internet descend on it, partly because it's running behind my ADSL and partly because I didn't want to get in trouble in case the game publishers decide they don't like the unofficial version existing, but I'm happy for people I know IRL to use it).

[superborb]

I've bought Highrise heroes, bc I was just looking for a new cell phone game! Thanks for the rec

[flippac]

Unless it's changed even more from Super Smash Brothers Melee than I know about you can probably learn a character or two by "just playing" over the course of a few more hours? Tournament-grade combos might require some more effort, but I figured a bunch out just experimenting, the core system's certainly not got the same complexity that more traditional fighting game systems have. Though "dropping" a combo while you're juggling your opponent over thin air can leave them making it back to land while you fall yourself!

It's definitely better for a wide range of casual play than my own "grew up with SF2 onwards" taste.