Zarf Updates

IGF finalists were announced yesterday. I don't have a pile of reviews queued up for this year, but I can at least post my quick comments.

---

(The only new review in this post:)

Thank Goodness You're Here!

• by Coal Supper -- game site

A diminutive, violent, nonverbal salesman goes to Yorkshire. Run around punching things and solving puzzles.

This got nominated for approximately everything. Look, TGYH! is fundamentally a trivial game. It has no guiding principle except "Throw nonsense at the wall, as hard as possible." Does it really deserve all these awards?

...Yes. Yes it does. It really is the best animation and the best voice performance and the background graffiti and the accents and the subtitles and the song and oh god. The Yuichi-Yokoyama sense of scale. Even the design, which pretends to be an open-world setup with arbitrary fetch quests, does a tremendous amount of work to keep everything bouncing along.

(Okay, you can argue that this is a satire of the point-and-click format. That's a guiding principle. But TGYH! goes way beyond that.)

I'd say that the complete randomness leads to a bit of a pacing problem; it's all kind of uniform, with no big goals in sight. (When you achieve a big goal, it's always a surprise.) Running around can feel like a grind, even though you can't get very stuck. And then, with no warning, it's over. But you know what -- fine. It's a winner. I even forgive them for getting "Ilkley Moor" stuck in my head forever.

---

(Games I've already played:)

Indika

• by Odd-Meter -- game site

That Russian nun game. Surreal, ambiguous -- ambiguous about how surreal it is, which is a good trick. Basically a walk-and-talk about faith and sin and free will, wrapped up in a walking simulator with light puzzles and platforming. I enjoyed it and then I had to think about the ending (I don't think it's nihilistic! But you might disagree!) That's all I ask out of a short game like this.

Full review here.

Animal Well

• by Billy Basso -- game site

Loved it. Beautiful, sneaky, all about the joy of discovery. An open-world metroidvania, which is harder than it sounds.

I liked that your expanding bag of platforming tricks gives you more and more ways to approach levels. (And people will discover them in different orders -- open-world, right?) A lot of areas that present as "precision platforming" turn out to be easier later in the game. It's still a platformer but my modest dexterity sufficed me.

Also, I reached the <spoiler> without <spoiler>ing <spoiler> and therefore didn't have to get all the <spoiler>s. And the game allowed for that. That's pretty cool!

Full review here.

Miniatures

• by Other Tales Interactive -- game site

A small mixed-media point-and-clicky thing, in the line of Vignettes or Islands: Non-Places. It didn't blow me away but it was short, evocative, and good for unwinding of an evening.

The Rise of the Golden Idol

• by Color Gray -- game site

More static deduction, Lemurian style. The gameplay is expanded in interesting directions, the story is more engaging, and it's not pixel art any more. All improvements.

I worried the Golden Idol gimmick itself was mined out, after the first game. (Or even in the middle of the first game!) It's not -- the designers found a good new direction to take it in. But I hope they're not stuck in this setting forever. I'd like to see a fresh start.

Full review here.

The Thaumaturge

• by Fool's Theory -- game site

A meaty RPG set in a slightly alternate 1905 Warsaw. It teases being a Witcher knockoff, but really it's bouncing off of Disco Elysium. That's fine -- it bounces in its own direction.

Excellent narrative work. Excellent writing and sense-of-place. (I have many favorite characters and you will too.) Not bloated in length. The combat, yeah, that's a slog, but whatever -- switch to easy mode and call it the price of admission.

Full review here.

---

(Games I have not played, or have not played much:)

Caves of Qud

• by Freehold Games -- game site

I have not played Caves of Qud. I am scared of Caves of Qud.

Seriously, I have read many articles about Qud, including the chapters in Procedural Generation and Procedural Storytelling (ed. Tanya X. Short and Tarn Adams). One of my friends livetwooted chunks of his experience. It sounds amazing. I'm glad it exists. I don't feel the need to get into it.

UFO 50

• by Mossmouth -- game site

I played a few chapters at a party. Again, it seems cool, but it's not my nostalgia bracket and I'm not hankering for fifty small games.

Blue Prince

• by Dogubomb -- game site

I played a demo of this last summer. It seems like an interesting idea and I love the vibe. Looking forward to the release.

Mouthwashing

• by Wrong Organ -- game site

This has been recommended quite a bit. I am not in a horror mood right now (real world, thanks) but I may get to it.

Consume Me

• by Jenny Jiao Hsia -- game site

Sounds harrowing. I wind up loving some of these "teen years of horror" games, and bouncing off others. Not sure how this one will land.

Arctic Eggs

• by The Water Museum -- game site

I know everybody loves this, but man, I did not get into it.

Ginger

• by Kevin Du -- game site

I said "what the hell" several times in a row, and then I made it do something, and then I said "what the hell" very loudly indeed.

(That was on the demo of Ginger. It's not fully released yet.)

Instant top of my list for "what the hell" games. I have no idea if it will be playable in any real sense, but I am going to try.