Media and games

[liv]

cjwatson and I have just finished watching through S1 of The Owl House. Very, very slowly because we rarely have time to watch TV coinciding with times when the rest of the household aren't also trying to watch TV. I liked it a lot!

The Owl House is yet another in the genre of human goes to monster school. It's just much better written than most of them! It's the right level of zany and silly humour, both relying on and pastiching tropey American high school shows, and with plenty of plot. The animation is good but not amazing; I wouldn't use it as a prime example of how cartoons can be art, but it's pleasant and there lots of fun background details. What really makes it stand out is the characterization; tOH genuinely likes its characters, and even though it relies on the stock characters of this sort of thing, everyone in it is real and believable. The mean girl, the nerd, the awful headmaster, the sarcastic but heart-of-gold mentor, all of them do what the genre expects of them but also shine through as people that you care about. And King is the most hilarious annoying side-kick ever.

The protagonist, Luz, comes across as more butch than tomboy. She's a strong character, flawed and likeable in a way that works really well for a protagonist of this sort of children's show, brave and loyal but also impulsive and lacking in world knowledge. She's not notable for being pretty, but she also has feminine interests. I was expecting queer-baiting and got an actual canon f/f ship, which is cool. I am not sure I can think of another show, especially not aimed at this age group, with a female main character who comes across as a main character rather than a heroine, but also staying well away from "not like other girls" as well as "aspirational Mary-Sue".

There's an original plot mixed in with the obvious genre beats, and it suddenly escalates in the two-part season finale we just watched. The main question becomes not, will Luz fit in in high school? but: can Luz save the whole of monster society? And in hindsight, there were hints towards this larger scale plot throughout. It's a portal fantasy that takes seriously Luz' connections to her previous life back home. And absolutely brilliant found family.

Now I have a couple of months with a bit of free time, I've been playing some of the computer games I optimistically saved for such an eventuality. I have played through S1 of Monument Valley; everybody probably already knows MV (it swept all the awards like 10 years ago) but I really enjoyed it, the music and art are gorgeous, the puzzles are just difficult enough to be challenging without being frustrating. I wanted to mention a couple of more obscure things, though.

On mobile, I'm rather impressed with Merge Teahouse, which is one of those terrible clicky distraction games, but surprisingly good. Yes, it has monetization and dark patterns and all that, but it's genuinely enjoyable as F2P, and there are no compulsory or interrupting adverts, indeed it's fine to play without ever looking at an ad. The art is among the prettiest I've seen in mobile games. And it has plot. Your rewards for completing enough clicking are episodes in an actual story that I'm invested in. It's linear, you don't get any story-relevant choices, but it has great characters and a complex, multi-level plot. I don't think I'd read the story if it were just a manhua without the game elements, but it really elevates the digital fidget aspect.

Also, just grabbing a chance thing from a Steam sale that I didn't know very much about, I discovered Monster Sanctuary (2020). It's a sort of mashup of several of the main video game genres of the last couple of decades, with the huge advantage that it's easy enough for a casual gamer like me to play (at least on base difficulty)! It's a metroidvania with fun exploring, it's a platformer where I can actually master the jumping puzzles after a few tries, it has pokemon-like catch-em-all mechanics, it has turn-based combat which isn't the most thrilling ever but also isn't boring, and it has RPG-like skill trees which I'm really enjoying. The art is fairly conventional pixel art, the music is pleasant, if you like that style it's not a bad example. It's a little bit more combat-based than Stardew Valley but would probably appeal to a similar audience. It feels really nice to have a game that has depth, and lots of satisfying progress, but doesn't require me to sink hundreds of hours into mastering the mechanics.

In physical games we got invited over to a friend's specifically to play Mycelia. NB there are way too many games with that title but I mean the 2024 game by JJ Neville. First impression: it's one of the best and most original semi-abstracts I've played in a while. I would say up there with Wingspan, and similar in that it has cards with beautiful art of real-world mushrooms. It has some great territory control mechanics involving spores and building networks, as well as card collecting. And just lovely components, really pretty with mushroomy colours and squiggly almost knot-work style art and nice wooden meeples and triangle tiles.

Comments

[justphoenix]

Oooh, I need to try Mycelia then!

[superborb]

I've been pretty addicted to Merge Teahouse (tho I feel like they had experimented with giving fewer resources for a few weeks and now they are giving a lot again), but I admit the further along I go, the more the AI art is bothering me...

Mycelia looks so nice! I love Wingspan, and it looks along that genre.