Celeste - Thoughts

[contains minor spoilers]

Behind Celeste's cartoonish art style and vivid color palette is a story about struggle. The struggle of trusting others, the struggle of accepting oneself, and most pointedly, the struggle with failure. Few games are as honest and forthcoming about their themes as Celeste, which opens by telling you that your goal is to climb a mountain. It's a daunting task that weighs on every character in the story, growing heavier and heavier as the air continues to thin. Yet there's a beautiful brutality to it in hindsight, like catching the sunset glimmering over a lake during a marathon. The catch is—like with any fulfilling activity in life—that to get the most out of it, you have to struggle.

And if you're interested in the postgame, that means struggling a lot.

Not since Super Meat Boy have I faced such an oppressive wall of difficulty in a platformer. But the good news is that if you're only interested in the main story, Celeste isn't all that bad. That's not to say it isn't frustrating at times, but if you stick with it you can clear the game in under 1000 deaths. Compare that to the postgame, where there's a chance the tally will skyrocket up to 10x that amount. If that number appears dispiriting, what helps take the edge off is that Celeste has lightning quick restarts to keep the action rolling. It's a minor but crucial touch, one that keeps the player invested in maintaining their groove even in the most absurd situations (like at the start of stage 3's C-side).

What also helps is that your next checkpoint is always close by, as individual sections in Celeste are pretty short (besides the damn C-sides). Stages usually consist of 1-2 screens littered with obstacles and spikes, with checkpoints doled at every screen transition. This keeps its individual challenges brief and surmountable—which is ironic, given that Celeste's levels on the whole are lengthy and grueling. The shortest stage takes around twenty minutes to complete, with the rest of the levels gradually adding to this time until it culminates in the one hour endurance test that is the final level (which will feel like a joke after Farewell). Stages in Celeste are more like entire worlds from Super Meat Boy—but even then, the latter title at least lets you skip its hardest levels. Meanwhile Celeste... well, it is a game anchored in struggle after all.

Thankfully, similar to many of the best platformers, unique mechanics are frequently interjected to spice up gameplay. While you can expect genre staples like springs, wind, and falling platforms, what surprised me were some of the mechanics not seen in many (any?) platformers before: permeable star blocks, dash-activated blocks (both varieties!), gold feathers, and the entire hot/cold mechanic of the core (as well as its clever dash limitations). You won't ever find Celeste at a want for ingenuity... although there definitely are moments where it indulges in its design a little too long (specifically, the end of stage six). Still, it's impressive just how many mechanics Celeste crams into its relatively short run time.

Even more impressive than that, however, is that the game continues to teach you new things long after the credits have rolled. Within Celeste's bonus levels (cutely labeled B-sides and C-sides), you'll discover new ways to interact with old mechanics, as well as uncover two more dash maneuvers. Like with Super Metroid, what's nifty about these hidden abilities is that they've been available to you from the very start, opening up the ways you can interact with the game on a replay. But be forewarned that they're not for the faint of heart; wavedashing in particular is a fickle beast, something I could barely get to work properly half of the time. You don't need it for the majority of the game, but the spots where it is required will definitely test your resolve.

I maintain that the gameplay in Celeste is its greatest asset, but it's no slouch in the narrative department either. The story here is simple yet potent, opting to avoid the granularity of mountain climbing for a more introspective look at its characters. You won't find an in-depth discussions as to the lore of the mountain or how its magic operates either; Celeste keeps its eye squarely on the future, less concerned with the "why" and more with the "what are you going to do about it?" It has a great message about coming to terms with who you are, conveying its emotion not just through the writing but its wonderful art, music, and even sound effects. Plus thanks to Celeste's brilliant assist mode, nearly everyone can make it to the top to see how the story concludes.

Don't be surprised however, if you're initially drawn in to the story but wind up staying for the gameplay.

While climbing Celeste, expect your palms to sweat, your joints to ache, and even your fingers to callus over. Despite its lighthearted exterior, Celeste is a hardcore experience that can give even the most hardened platform-savants a run for their money. But it's never flagrantly cruel or purposefully pernicious; Celeste is about keeping calm and finding a surgical solution to your problems. And more important than that, it's about knowing your limits—do you want to get all the strawberries? Finish the merciless B-Sides? The punishingly precise C-Sides? Endure the bottomless abyss of the golden fruits? To play Celeste is confront your limits, understand your capabilities, and not beat yourself up if it gets too hard. Through play you'll struggle, and in struggling, you'll cultivate the chance to succeed.

And few things are as tremendously satisfying as finally besting a challenge that had once seemed all but impossible.

Celeste is a really cool game that deserves all the praise it gets.

20 Minutes Till Dawn - Thoughts

[This is an Early Access Review, July 2022]

Despite the low price point, I was never compelled to pick up Vampire Survivors. From its silly, totally-not-Castlevania art style to its annoyingly long lootbox animation, I never felt like I was missing out on anything special. The player characters were as slow as molasses, enemy mobs behaved too similarly, and thirty minutes just seemed a bit too long for such basic gameplay. Of course the game has evolved plenty since release—a cursory search on youtube will reveal a kaleidoscope of psychedelic colors and yellow numbers—but Vampire Survivors always felt like it was missing something to me...

... something like a gun.

Well that's not totally true—20 Minutes Till Dawn also looks tremendously better than its spiritual predecessor. The 4-bit aesthetic is sleek as hell, using salmon pink (of all colors!) to wisely convey danger. That small touch allows players to read the battlefield, even amidst a violent storm of chaos. Rest assured, 20 Minutes Till Dawn will always get hectic, especially when you're new and unaccustomed to the visual effects of your numerous upgrades. But as long as you've developed an eye for shmupping, the game never gets too noisy—well, just make sure you avoid taking the Splinter upgrade with the grenade launcher (a mistake you definitely won't repeat again).

Speaking of upgrades, 20 Minutes Till Dawn offers a buffet of useful abilities, each of them important to at least one viable build. Of course you'll quickly latch onto some obvious favorites (I take Run & Gun, Kill Clip, and Frost Mage on nearly every run) while others may only find themselves considered in the most niche or desperate scenarios (Focal Point, Watch & Learn, Giant, and the entire Ghost Friend tree). But unless you're playing with the same character and weapon every time, you'll inevitably come across a tough decision to agonize over—especially since one wrong upgrade could cost you the entire run on harder difficulties.

More and more, I'm becoming convinced that granular difficulties à la Slay the Spire are the best fit for roguelites. Not only do they acclimate you to the game's changes one minutae at a time, but they naturally encourage multiple runs, ensuring you can't stumble your way into a lucky victory on "hard" and call it a day. 20 Minutes Till Dawn starts off fairly easy but really ratchets up the intensity, especially when standard enemies are given a minor speed boost. Darkness 15—the (current) final difficulty—forces you to experiment with different runes and upgrade pathways, which can be frustrating when you're missing that one powerup you really need, but invigorating once it all finally comes together. It's a good blend of RNG and skill, though some characters/gun combos will be notably easier to win with than others.

If there's something to criticize about 20 Minutes Till Dawn (besides elemental builds being the best and summon builds the worst), it's that each run always has the same peaks and valleys. Specifically, the second and fourth bosses will be your biggest obstacles, both of them a tense encounter that can drop your health in the blink of an eye. It's a cool challenge you have to consciously spec for... but nearly every other boss is a simpleton in comparison. In fact, the final three minutes are more or less a victory lap; if you can survive being caged in with the spinning laser blob, then there really isn't anything that can stop you outside of closing your eyes and letting go of your controller. Hell, in some rare cases you might win anyway (ah, the beauty of triple Glare)! It's just a shame that over the course of a twenty minute non-stop brawl, there's only a few memorable bits—and they're the same ones every run.

20 Minutes Till Dawn is a great game that offers considerable bang for your buck. It requires a decent blend of deft dodging and smart upgrading, promising a fireworks-like spectacle if you make it to the end. No doubt the game can be vexing when you aren't offered a pivotal powerup—speed upgrades are essential for Darkness 15—but it's thrilling to know that success isn't always a guarantee (again, at least on Darkness 15). While I look forward to seeing how 20 Minutes Till Dawn develops, I've probably had my fill for now, content to leave its banquet of bullets with my stomach stuffed and satisfied.

(Oh, and avoid Endless Mode—at least for now. It's a repetitive snoozefest that lasts over two hours, which is waaaaaaay too long for a game this bite-sized.)

The Room - Thoughts

When I started The Room, I didn't expect there to be quite so much... clicking. A cursory glance suggested perplexing riddles or logic puzzles, but the entire experience is leagues simpler than that: The Room is a linear series of fidget cubes. Well, elaborate fidget cubes—which at least require some semblance of logic to puzzle out. For those tickled by antique wooden boxes hiding a plethora of compartments, The Room is a cool game... but venture into it understanding that it values a curious mind more than a sharp one.

About an hour in, I understood why the series is buzzing with positive reviews—there's not really anything like it out there. Sure, you get an occasional puzzle box in Resident Evil and Uncharted, but a whole game based off pulling out miniature drawers to discover bizarre keys? That's an untapped (digital) market! And thankfully, Fireproof Games knows how to design a game around prodding and poking an ornate box full of secrets...

... for the most part.

In order to investigate a particular section of the puzzle box, you first have to zoom in by double clicking nearby. But you can't zoom in anywhere you want; sections are delineated, forcing you to click around frantically to see what is and isn't interactable. Sometimes you'll zoom in on completely innocuous bits that don't have a use (yet) and other times the camera will send you right beside the thing you actually want to investigate. And since clicking can also manipulate objects, you'll be frequently mashing your mouse pointer against anything and everything, in the hopes of uncovering a secret pressure plate or hidden dial. It never gets as bad as pixel hunting in adventure games, but trying to find every interactable object does evoke a similar confusion—if not frustration.

This isn't a minor inconvenience either, as aimless clicking composes most of The Room's playtime. But if you can put up with it, there are some cool animations and nifty perspective puzzles to behold, along with some really gorgeous puzzle boxes. Seriously, if any screenshots from The Room capture your interest, it's worth the price of entry just to explore each chapter's convoluted wooden contraption. There is an undeniable delight in watching a latch or spindle slide away to reveal a new piece of the puzzle, all while staying (mostly) consistent with the internal dimensions of each box. The way hinges creak and gears click is impeccable too—if there's something Fireproof Games got right, it's making the boxes the star of the show.

The last gripe I have with The Room is that it's ultimately... directionless. When you start the game, both the setting and narrative seem to indicate you're on the verge of discovering something far beyond your imagination. And while I liked the occult flavoring, the experience doesn't really lead anywhere conclusive—at least for the first entry in the franchise. There's some cool art and non-Euclidean trickery in the latter half, but at no point does it feel like you're building to the final puzzle or an unspeakable treasure. In fact, you don't really fulfill your main objective at all; the game kind of just ends and goes "hope you're ready for more some day!"

You can blast through The Room in a handful afternoons, and that's honestly the perfect length of time for the game. There are some neat bits and bobs here but nothing that will really stick with you once the experience is over, besides a feeling of "I guess that was cool." Yet conversely, you won't ever get stuck in it for too long, as you know the path forward has to be located somewhere on the exterior of the object before you. While I would've liked more meat to the game (1/3rd of the puzzles have you making the same shape over and over), I'm glad The Room exists for puzzle box enthusiasts—and I'm curious how the series expands from here.

Neon Abyss - Thoughts

[contains minor spoilers]

Three runs deep, I had a troubling realization: Neon Abyss wasn't winning me over. There are other roguelites I dropped faster than it (Legend of Dungeon, Sublevel Zero), but I wasn't itching to plumb its depths the same way I had with Spelunky, Dead Cells, or Crypt of the Necrodancer. On one hand it's unfair to compare it to the genre's greatest, but on the other hand Neon Abyss has the chops to contend with the best: it's smooth, flashy, meaty, and has a sardonic charm that helps it stand out. But even after besting its managers (both regular and cursed), I still find it... lacking in a lot of ways. Succinctly put: Neon Abyss is a fun game, but I don't think it's a good game.

Or perhaps I should specify that it's not a good roguelite, as my issues mainly stem from Neon Abyss's poor balance run to run. As a game it can be quite captivating, handing you quirky weapon and item combinations that will bathe your monitor in bouncing lasers and cascading explosions. If there's something you can expect from Neon Abyss, it's bang for your buck: there's a staggering amount of enemies, items, characters, oddities, and unlockables here, ensuring there's something new to contend with each run. Despite my playtime clocking in at over twenty hours, I've only laid eyes on 75% of the power-ups available—and what I've currently seen is more than enough to check a box labeled "variety" multiple times over.

But the byproduct of having a mountainous heap of options is that a certain portion of it is destined to be junk. And the garbage isn't on the periphery either: there's a myriad of common power-ups that range from mediocre to detrimental. Even items that could be useful under certain conditions (like spite-producing power-ups) are all but useless unless you can proc them consistently (so pray Animosity falls into your lap). I think a big part of the issue is that while certain guns or items are fine to run into, the really good ones (Lipstick, Forbidden Mask, Most Wanted List, Howard Reactor, Divinity) are so invaluable that it's frustrating when you're deprived of them, instead offered rubbish like Matchbox and Black Rum. The worst is the entire subset of melee power-ups—melee is a risky, impractical, and sloppy alternative to simply shooting your problems away from across the room. I mean come on, a huge amount of enemies and bosses are airborne!

Weapons sadly fall prey to this disparity too, although you'll have a better chance of encountering at least one decent one in a shop. Unfortunately, your starting weapon will always suck with no exceptions—which makes finding a new firearm a top priority. Gun upgrades can help transform an anemic firearm into a capable one, but some weapons (Phantom, Thunder, Noise, Deathray, New Type) will always stink compared to their kin. Meanwhile armaments like Famine, Animosity, and Vortex are so devastating that you can stand still and decimate encounters—including some of the toughest boss battles! 

Anyone that's played The Binding of Isaac knows that imbalance is sown into the roguelite turf, but player skill usually helps buffer that annoyance. Namely, that Isaac (and Gungeon and dozens of others) are played as a twin-stick shooter, where good positioning and sharp reflexes can counterbalance some of the worst loot drops. But Neon Abyss is more in line with a run'n'gun, cutting the second dimension out of your movement. This makes it notably harder to dodge enemy attacks, especially when they warp in right above you like in arenas. And there's no floaty ScourgeBringer physics or Dead Cells dodge mechanic to assist in avoiding attacks either—the best way to dodge is to kill your enemy ASAP, or pray you find a rare flight-granting item (which then trivializes the rest of the game!)

You'll learn quickly that there are very few comfortable middle grounds in Neon Abyss—victory will either come easily or feel impossible. Nothing embodies this better than the arena fights, a trio of tight encounters you're encouraged to beat without taking damage. Victory will reward you with a much-needed gun upgrade—but if you've brushed against a single bullet, you'll receive a consolatory bomb/key/nickel instead. Fights don't really scale past the second level either, meaning that if you can best your first few arenas you'll basically snowball your way to victory. Yet on occasion you'll encounter an arena where you simply need to dodge a predictable laser, a task so straightforward that your weapon upgrade is guaranteed upon entry.

And stuff like that is pricks me about Neon Abyss: it leans into randomness too hard. Sure, thematically the game gels with chaos like chocolate does with marshmallow, but so much of the game is RNG stacked atop RNG. There are so many sources of randomness: shops, eggs, crates, chests, bricks, arcade rooms, Smirk counters, roulette machines, roulette doors, roulette boxes, roulette rooms, roulette stages... hell, even the gun upgrades that drop from bosses will randomly cycle between 1-3 random powerups! I know RNG is the lifeblood of roguelites, but Neon Abyss fixates on gambling to the point that it stacks random rewards inside of its random rewards, like a self-propagating matryoshka doll. Anyone that's gone through a room full of chests, tried fishing, or suffered through a clown room will know exactly what I'm talking about.

I know I've been relentlessly trashing on Neon Abyss, so let me at least clarify that there are definitely some cool things about it. One of the most appreciable touches is how much the player can customize their experience; beyond difficulty and character selection, you can choose from a handful of items to start with and remove upgrades, items, and even enemies you don't like! Plus the power trip Neon Abyss sends you on can be as fulfilling as it is ludicrous, with entire rooms melting under your gigantic, wall-piercing quintuple laser. And considering how there's two items per treasure room, wisdom & violence rewards, and a shop on every floor, it's pretty hard not to cobble together a winning build (at least on Normal.) The game is fairly laid-back once you get used to its eccentricities.

The problem, however, is that even with these eccentricities accounted for, Neon Abyss continues to feels unbelievably sloppy. Every run devolves into a landslide of visual chaos, making it impossible to tell where attacks are coming from or what's happening most of the time. Endgame fights like Hal, Zeus, and Athena are a collage of colors that will not only obscure incoming attacks but are guaranteed to obliterate most of your pets (RIP pet builds.) Yet what's weird is you don't really need to know what's happening either; should a Basketball Jersey, The Towel, or a decent weapon be in your possession, you can tank those bosses like nobody's business. It was only on my fourth Prometheus kill that I finally understood what the hell was happening during phase 2!

What really put the nail in the coffin for me and Neon Abyss were the damn wisdom chests. To reach the true final boss, you have to traverse either the path of wisdom or violence—which just means opening up a bunch of their respective chests. But a major problem is that wisdom chests that take damage turn into violence chest—and not the other way around. So on more than one occasion I failed to reach Cursed Athena due to a wisdom chest taking unavoidable damage from an enemy on the other side of the room, with no way to prevent it! Hard mode bafflingly compounds this issue too, occasionally making it impossible to reach Cursed Athena/Ares due to not enough chests spawning. Why? Why allow me to make it so far through the game just to shrug and go, "Oops, try again!"

In some ways, one can argue that Neon Abyss succeeds with flying colors—brilliant, blinding, and absurd flying colors. But for me it's just too sloppy, noisy, and undignified to warrant returning to. Team 17 feels more concerned with content than balance, addicted to designing new roulette wheels for the player to waste their time on. Again, I can't deny that I already played a ton of the game and had a lot of fun doing so, but boy howdy was I wrong in assuring myself that its peculiarities would become palatable if only I stuck with it.

At the end of the day, perhaps it's just a difference of opinion. Whereas Enter the Gungeon sought to make Binding of Isaac more serious, Neon Abyss zips off in the opposite direction at full speed. Neither is the "right" or "wrong" approach—I just find Gungeon to have more of a substantive and balanced game to it compared to Abyss. If a zanier, less coherent Binding of Isaac sounds like your jam, then Neon Abyss might be right down your alley. Just be wary that the flashing lights of this neon alley might be all there is to it.

Etrian Odyssey - Thoughts

Playing through Hollow Knight awoke a cartographic instinct in me, igniting my curiosity in the Etrian Odyssey series. I always liked the idea of needing to manually map out a dungeon mid-exploration, but have been hesitant to engage with rudimentary RPG mechanics—especially when you factor in how long a game like Etrian Odyssey can take to beat. Grinding has always felt like a draconian solution to difficulty, a bygone holdover from when RPGs sought to inflate paltry playtimes. But when the 3DS Atlus sale popped up in January (and factoring in the absurd rise of DS & 3DS physical copies), I decided it was time to delve into this notoriously brutal series.

Perhaps the most bizarre thing about Etrian Odyssey is that it categorically doesn't respect your time. Shortcuts are far and few between, a party wipe returns you to the title screen, and the Yggrasil Labyrinth itself is an elaborate web of mazes that only get more absurd as the adventure goes on. The sixth stratum alone takes around ten hours to map out, due to frequent restock trips as well as a plethora of stupid pitfall traps and one-way doors. It's a thankfully optional part of the game, but the fourth and fifth stratums will surely push your patience to its limits long before you arrive at the postgame.

However, Etrian Odyssey blatantly wasting your time is an intentional design. You can save yourself a lot of hassle by looking up maps, build guides, item locations, or boss weaknesses... but what's the point? The gameplay is fairly rudimentary even for a JRPG, and the story (while decent for what it is) is extremely bare-bones with nary a memorable character in sight. The main draw of the game is navigating its horrifying thirty-floor dungeon packed to the gills with booby-traps and overpowered enemies—a challenge that's neutered heavily with outside help. You're the one that's meant to be sketching out each floor, uncovering powerful artifacts, discovering enemy weaknesses, and avoiding surprise-attacks by game-ending FOEs. To deprive yourself of any of these facets robs Etrian Odyssey of the best thing it has going for it: overcoming the unknown.

Despite its "impenetrable difficulty" reputation, Etrian Odyssey's sharp edges dull once you know what you're up against. Playing cautiously, I only wiped a handful of times overall; debut fights against bosses and FOEs comprised the majority of my losses. But what gives Etrian Odyssey its "hard" label is that it's entirely on you to set the pace while dungeon delving. You have to decide at every juncture if you have enough health to forge ahead, enough TP, the right equipment, right items, and (worst of all) the right party members. The game will never let you know when you're prepared to face a FOE or stratum boss, so it's up to you to summon the mettle to look death in the eye. Yeah, it sucks losing all the XP and loot you've accrued after a party wipe, but at least your map markings will carry over, ensuring that each venture into the manslaughter-maze will grant at least some progress. It's a game that brings intrepidness to the forefront but isn't afraid to punish you for recklessness either. If you don't take your time and dive too deep, you're probably gonna get your ass handed to you—an indelible lesson you'll learn very early on.

Unfortunately, what will turn off a lot of would-be fans of Etrian Odyssey is that it requires grinding—a ton of it. Enemies on a floor giving you a problem? Grind. Looking for stronger spells? Grind. Need better gear in the shop? Grind. And should you swap in a new character or respec an old one, you'll have to do nearly twice as much grinding as you normally would just to get them up to speed (you lose 10 levels on a respec!). Whenever you get stuck, there's rarely a smart or creative way to deal with the problem before you; losing to a stratum boss usually means you're lacking levels, items, equipment, or all three—and the only remedy to that my friend, is more grinding.

Plenty of other aspects in Etrian Odyssey are cool on paper but obnoxious in practice. Loot from monsters can be brought back to the town merchant to form new armor and weapons... but you have no idea what raw materials you'll need for those shiny new swords/axes/whips/etc. Side quests give you a reason to revisit previous floors of the labyrinth... but are often so vague that they require an FAQ to follow (good luck on Reversal of the Poles). And binds are an awesome debuff that allow you to control which moves your enemies perform... but not only do they often fail even at max level, but you also have no clue which binds prevent which moves. You may be able to deduce that spellcasting is done via the head, but good luck figuring out what legs and arms will constrict half the time, especially on unconventional monsters (arm bind on a Lucifird prevents... Bad Beak?)

And though I maintain that Etrian Odyssey isn't as difficult as it first seems, the game can definitely punish you for suboptimal choices. Specifically in party composition—and even more specifically, if you form your party without a Medic. And even with the uber-broken Immunize at my fingertips, my journey with Etrian Odyssey ended when I encountered the Drake superboss and wiped on turn one. Keep in mind that this was after my party had reached max level and fully explored the sixth stratum! So rather than looking up the "correct" class and build combos for postgame, I concluded I'd be better off moving on. The game is still there in case I ever feel the impulse to torture myself, but considering that I have hundreds of untouched JRPGs in my backlog (including seven more Etrian Odyssey titles), I'm more than happy to accept that the labyrinth has trounced me. At least finishing the main story wasn't that bad—the second and fourth stratum bosses are the only real roadblocks.

Etrian Odyssey is a brilliant game that's somewhat-spoiled by a time-consuming core. Despite the banquet of options at the start, the gameplay plummets in depth once your theorycrafting has solidified. With no easy way to alter your team composition and side quests that are opaque at the best of times, Etrian Odyssey is a crude and rudimentary experience. But it also poses an interesting question, one that transforms its archaic design from stale to electrifying: how far are you willing to delve? Do you brave one more floor with dwindling supplies and low TP? How about one more room? One more fight?

It's a simple, repetitive, and an overly laborious game—but it's also unabashed in its demands, challenging you to risk your play time on each return to its twisting depths. It's up to you to put in the work to hone your team, to draw the maps, to sniff out secret shortcuts, and best the game's daunting bestiary. It can be grueling, punishing, and annoying at times (as well as straight up impossible in the postgame,) but it offers that rare chance at achieving elation and satisfaction, a blessing found only when your perseverance is put to the test. For better or worse, Etrian Odyssey is an oldschool dungeon crawler at its core—and it's a damn cool one at that.

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Images obtained from: nintendo.com, emuparadise.me, arstechnica.net, alvanista.com

Linelight - Thoughts

Sometimes, all a game needs to hook you is a clever premise. Enter Linelight, a shortish puzzle game with only two actions: move forward and backward. Well, that's not true—there's also "pass time" and "magnetically pulse"—but for the most part, Linelight tasks you with solving puzzles on a single axis. It's not the flashiest hook for a game, but as limitations can often breed interesting gimmicks I was willing to give Linelight a try. And while there's a solid puzzle game here, Linelight's real draw is—unexpectedly—it's emotive soundtrack.

On first listen you might be unimpressed with Linelight's gentle score. But context is key, as the music was written to fit the game as tightly as a glove does a hand. Linelight's entire aesthetic is warm and hopeful, from its playful sounds to its vibrant lights, supported at its base by a mellow piano and electric drum. Other instruments guest star to accentuate each level's particular mood, but the entire journey is underpinned by the first two instruments you'll hear dancing together. That's not to imply the score is saccharine or juvenile either; while optimistic, there's always a tinge wistfulness and yearning to the soundtrack if you listen closely enough. It might seem silly to focus so much on an otherwise background element to most puzzle games, but like Linelight's peculiar gimmick, those that are interested in what they hear will find their time well-spent when the tear-jerking credits roll. And yes—a one-dimensional puzzle game about lines zipping about can get quite emotional, despite whatever preconceptions you might hold.

Coinciding perfectly with the upbeat music are the puzzles, which land in that sweet spot of being neither too hard or brainlessly easy (although the main path veers closer to the latter than the former). Most puzzles are about either sliding into switches or avoiding neighboring blips of light, but every world tacks on its own mechanic. Each is easy to understand but conceals a surprising depth, which Linelight explores every possible angle of. There's the aforementioned magnetism, as well as blips that move only when you do, spirals to extend the length of your line, and a devious gate that will duplicate your movements with lethal accuracy. These sound like the ramblings of a sleep-deprived math teacher, but as with everything in Linelight, playing is believing. Expect to expand your thinking as you play, especially when these mechanics get blended together.

Perhaps my only disappointment is I would've liked a bit more challenge to the game than what's presently here. There's a significant chunk of optional puzzles to burn your brain on (especially in the post-game), but for the most part Linelight is a laid-back and chill ride. In fact, where you'll struggle the most is usually on puzzles that demand some form of dexterity, like weaving through an intersection of blips or executing actions under a tight time constraint. In these cases you've usually figured out the solution but struggle to coordinate your movements with other actors, which can feel a bit trial-and-errory. Linelight's general difficulty definitely fits what the game is going for, but it does emphasize performing your solution as frequently as it does finding it.

I dove into Linelight curious what a one-dimension puzzler would look like, and I can honestly say I'm quite impressed. Oddly, it's not with Brett Taylor's brilliant ideas, but rather his deft execution. Linelight is a tender game, built with passion and care for what could've otherwise been a game jam throwaway. It's a moving experience that lasts the right amount of time, prickling your mind with a couple of thorny thinkers but never seeking to draw any blood. It's as clever as it is creative, as simple as it is beautiful; I'm glad I played it.

ScourgeBringer - Thoughts

Similar to Doom Eternal, Flying Oak Games' ScourgeBringer is best described as an acquired taste for the hardcore. Casual players may be drawn in by its sleek visuals and snappy controls, but it won't be long before their pride crumbles and they're sent fleeing back to the Binding of Isaac. I don't blame anyone that quits on it either—ScourgeBringer is a punishing uphill struggle, one you'll have to rise to meet as the game will never kneel for you. Sure, there are a number of aspects that make it easier to beat than Enter the Gungeon or Noita, but it'll still require 6-8 hours to get ahold of the basics. But the trickiest part about ScourgeBringer—and what makes the game so difficult to master—is that you'll often be fighting against your own impulsive thumbs. 

Expect your first run to be brutally short, as if stranded naked in the middle of the Sahara. Once you inevitably die you'll be brought before the Chiming Tree, ScourgeBringer's way of unlocking permanent upgrades for future runs. You'll find most of the upgrades to be relatively cheap too, as long as you can consistently make it to the second level. Halfway through the tree however, a gloomy realization will beset you: these aren't making the game any easier. Well, they technically are—increased max HP, item rerolls, and the screen-clearing Fury attack are all great abilities—but you'll eventually plateau in the power climb, consistently making it to stage 3 yet struggling to beat it. That poison-clouded cauldron will end many a run—and should you eke out a victory, the next two stages are waiting to dispose of you like ornery bouncers at a VIP club.

If you're a purveyor of the roguelite genre, you know firsthand that experience (typically) begets wisdom. And it's no different for ScourgeBringer; learning how the enemies behave (and therefore how to approach them) is more important than bumbling into a cache of OP upgrades. Familiarity allows you to visualize threat-level charts on the fly, zeroing in on which enemies will give you the most grief while leaving the table scraps for clean-up. This is all par for the course for games like Hades, Dead Cells, and Enter the Gungeon, but ScourgeBringer throws a quirky monkey wrench into the works: your dash provides zero invulnerability frames. That means that every new enemy, boss, and stage mechanic can prove to be alarmingly fatal, even if you've been coasting up to that point (speaking of, gooooood luck in your first fight against the Seeker of Power.)

Counterbalancing this vulnerability is an unlockable skill that's absolutely pivotal to your survival: the deflective parry. Being able to send incoming bullets back to their attacker sounds valuable—and it is!—but the problem is that ScourgeBringer has an exceptionally jerky flow to it. After every dash attack, parry, enemy death, and hit suffered, the gameplay will slow for a fraction of a second to accentuate the effect—which is great! It's a technique commonly employed by fighting games, providing some extra oomph to your blows while simultaneously pausing the action for a few frames, letting you plan your next move. But the parry suffers from both a short reach and delayed activation, meaning you'll often find yourself attempting it too early or too late thanks to stuttering beat of battle.

To make matters worse, ScourgeBringer is unapologetically slippery. You won't notice it at first, given how responsive and precise your character feels while parkouring around, but combat is another matter. Every swing of your blade sends your character dashing through an enemy at random angles, pushing them around the level as a cat might a toy. Like the jerky flow, this isn't exactly a bad thing as it keeps combat kinetic and uncomplicated, but positioning is crucial in ScourgeBringer. It would be like playing a beat 'em up where every strike warps your character around an enemy—it's fine when tackling one target, but quickly becomes a huge risk when accompanied by enemy fire or nearby traps.

It probably doesn't sound like I'm doing a good job on selling ScourgeBringer, but if you can adapt to its strange style and brisk pace, then you're guaranteed to have a blast. The Doom Eternal comparison at the start isn't an empty boast—having a firm grasp on all the tools at your disposal will transform you from a meek greenhorn into a bloodthirsty wrecking ball. Rooms can be cleared in a matter of seconds as you seamlessly transition between sword strikes and gunfire, disposing of your victims in an aerial ballet of carnage. Battles evolve from chaotic scrambles into calculable procedures, with once-fearsome foes (fall-bot, plasma saw-bot) struggling to make a dent in your health. As your skill blossoms, victory no longer becomes a question of "if" but rather "how"—and eventually "when."

The relentless rhythm of combat is by far the best thing about ScourgeBringer, but I also have to give kudos to the game's brilliant biome diversity. Stages not only vary in color palette and melody (although the whole soundtrack remains ridiculously aggressive), but also come with new enemy types, minibosses, room layouts, and environmental hazards. The hazards are definitely the most interesting bit—though spike traps and toxic gas hardly qualify as "unique" nowadays, the translucent blocks of Stage 4 and screen-wrapping of Stage 5 radically change your approach to combat. Not since the original Spelunky have I played a roguelite with such strong, distinct theming between its zones.

And like with Spelunky, you're going to need to play these zones by their rules. That often means slowing your roll and knowing when to strike—which can be admittedly frustrating in such a fast-paced game. Several enemies are designed to upset your rhythm and test your patience, from the toxic cloud of the alpha splat-fly to the screen-wide burst of the alpha quantum bomb. Bosses often set the pace of battle too, with the earliest ones (BodyBuilder, CandleMask) ironically doing the most damage if you're not actively paying attention to what they're doing. And if you manage to make it to the true final level, prepare for one of the most heinous stage hazards you'll see in a video game; either get good at ranged combat or pray you can tank your way to the boss.

Lastly, another eccentricity ScourgeBringer bears is that it's a somewhat... poor roguelite. ScourgeBringer, similar to Spelunky, has you hunting for a similar set of weapons and blessings each run, encouraging a habitual playstyle. RNG drops can enhance your abilities but they never alter how you approach the game; don't expect any dash builds, reflect builds, or gun builds, as you'll need to be using all three constantly to survive. On top of this, you'll have to fight every type of enemy a dozen times per run, and you better get used to the bosses as there's only one per stage (and not even their room layout changes from run to run!) It's better to think of ScourgeBringer as a long-lost NES game, albeit with a dash of randomness: the hard-fought path to your first victory will endow you with the memorization and reflexes required to easily earn a hundred more.

If an intense platforming-slash-bullet-parrying roguelite with phenomenal visuals and a frantic soundtrack sounds good to you, then by all means dive into the dark and unforgiving world of ScourgeBringer. But to get the most out of it, you'll have to be patient and fastidious, willing to learn from your mistakes and curb brash impulses. It's a cool game that I enjoyed a ton—so much so that I snagged all the achievements on Steam, which I don't typically do for roguelites. That said, I don't think I'll be going back to ScourgeBringer for repeated playthroughs, as it lacks the variety to warrant further exploration. However, the time you do spend with ScourgeBringer is fantastic, delivering an intense challenge that will keep you shaking at the edge of your seat. It may be a weak roguelite, but as a 2D action-platformer, ScourgeBringer proudly stands amongst the greatest.