General Gaming Snap judging pixel art indies

[crispy4000]

''

 

Time Spent: 45 minutes

Rating: ****

 

Another game that's totally my jam.  Takes the squad management of classic Ogre Battle (64) and puts it in Fire Emblem.  You can complete bonus objectives in each map for extra resources to upgrade your units, plus buy more soldiers to fill out your ranks.  Presentation is awesome, tactical gameplay seems well thought through, including an option to swap squares with units.  The in-combat, cutscene and tactics graphics all have different art styles, and the portraits are super on the nose as a Fire Emblem homage, but I dig all of it so it doesn't matter to me.  Animations are suitably solid as well.

 

Only minor gripe I have so far is the scaling.  The pixel art looks good on a 4k screen, but the text, even with high res fonts enabled, doesn't look quite as polished as it could.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: ***

 

Good silly fun.  Kill enemies, destroy terrain, save 'bros,' rinse and repeat.  I like the differing playstyles for each character, but wish the game didn't chose for you, some are way better than others.  It feels very loose, which is both good and bad.  There's no precision to this, at least not in the opening stages.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 20 minutes

Rating: *½

 

All style and no substance.  Actually the style isn't that great either outside of the occasionally slick cutscenes or 3d effect.  Gameplay-wise its like those old hoverboard TMNT arcade stages got turned into a racing game, with extreme rubberbanding and much shittier, looser controls.  Hitting barriers doesn't even make you crash, but slow down a tiny bit.  You then take cash you picked up at random for repairs between races, even though there's no health bar when you're on your hoverbike.  This is really just a bad game concept marked by even worse execution.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 20 minutes

Rating: **½

 

Into the Breach mixed with a dash of Final Fantasy Tactics visuals.  I'm not super familiar with the former, only having tried it once or twice.  But this game has a so-called "shade" mechanic that kind of kills the fun.  In essence, enemies that are in range to hit your at the end of their turns will still deal you damage.  You can only avoid it if you kill these enemies, or use a character with a stealthy maneuver to avoid it.  Not a fan.  Oh, and some enemies will respawn several times. 

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 15 minutes

Rating: **

 

Another one I'm probably not the audience for.  Combines survival elements with Steamworld Dig, which I've always had a harder time getting into for whatever reason.  It also makes you control movement with the analog stick and has really questionable combat.  Visuals are poor, the text looks especially bad on larger display.  It seems go places based on the later screenshots, but I'm not particularly interested enough to see it through.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 45 minutes

Rating: ***

 

Simplistic dungeon roguelike.  You either use your sword or a bow that can shoot the cardinal directions, with a slight arc.  Most enemies don't hit you on contact, just when attacking.  Movement is sort of Celeste-like, so if you like that and a loot heavy roguelike, its a a pretty good time.  There's a variety of bosses, as any good roguelike should have.  My biggest complaint is that all the sprites are so small, it's a bit like hitting a needle in a haystack at times.  Going melee heavy is a recipe to take damage.  It doesn't spoil the fun, but it's enough to annoy.

 

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: **½

 

A Metroidvania no-mans-land.  It's looks good, has decent combat, a variety of weapons, and lets you rescue villagers to aid you.  But everything here has been done a bit better elsewhere.  The map is procedurally generated, and it's not a bad thing on the surface, the generated design just leaves so much to be desired.  It really feels like they could have made a better game if they didn't resort to that gimmick.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 20 minutes

Rating: **½

 

A game that very much doesn't fit my mood at the moment.  Abused child grows up, finds an abadoned baby girl baby in a world where women are disappearing.  She grows up, you become a drug addict.  Others find out about her, she runs away, and go you on a quest to save your daughter from the world.  It's a pretty messed up game that can be quirky, but not often in a fun way.  Combat is a simplistic turn based affair, but the status effects and combo system is poorly explained. 

 

This could easily be a game that could turn out to be something special if I put more time in.  But do I really want to?  Not anytime soon. So it doesn't leave a great first impression.  It's functionally fun, but I'd rather go back to Shakedown Hawaii after this for some humor.

 

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 45 minutes

Rating: ****

 

I had never played Cave Story before today.  A lot of early indies don't really hold up now, being surpassed by concepts that came later.  And maybe the Metroidvania genre as a whole has developed way beyond it, though I'm sure it was a trailblazer for its lighthearted tone compared to Metroid and Castlevania.

 

But this game still just feels great.  I don't always love a floaty jump, but here it works wonderfully with the shooting mechanics.  And its idea of weapon leveling, where you level up each one individually, but lose XP with damage, is delightfully old school and modern at the same time.  I can see why people still love this game.  There's not anything I'd fault it for other than needing to flip vsync on elsewhere, but it's old, so I'll cut it some slack.

[stepee]

2 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

 

Time Spent: 45 minutes

Rating: ****

 

I had never played Cave Story before today.  A lot of early indies don't really hold up today, being surpassed by concepts that came later.  And maybe the Metroidvania genre as a whole has developed way beyond it, even though I'm sure it was a trailblazer for its lighthearted tone compared to Metroid and Castlevania.

 

But this game still just feels great.  I don't always love a floaty jump, but here it works wonderfully with the shooting mechanics.  And its idea of weapon leveling, where you level up each weapon individually, but lose XP with damage, is delightfully old school ad modern at the same time.  I can see why people still love this game.  There's not anything I'd fault it for other than needing to flip vsync on elsewhere, but it's old, so I'll cut it some slack.

 

One of my all time favorites. I have Quote on my keychain.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 20 minutes

Rating: *

 

Biggest positives are some really lovely pixel art graphics and voice acting that absolutely does justice to its inspirations.  And it's free. But that's where the good stops.  Needless survival mechanics that starve you when you run, so you better walk?  Check.  Repeating screen maze-like design?  Check.  Out of tune flute music?  Check.  Combat that's Punchout with an intellivision controller?  Check.  Antiquated SCUMM UI with alternate commands hidden in secondary menus?  Check.  Even pulling the difficulty slider all the way back will still lead to your inevitable starvation, because you can't sleep on an empty stomach, and the wild boar you see won't react to commands to impale it.  No fuck you game.  What a shame.

[stepee]

1 minute ago, crispy4000 said:

 

Time Spent: 20 minutes

Rating: *

 

Biggest positives are some really lovely pixel art graphics and voice acting that absolutely do justice to its inspirations.  And it's free. But that's where the good stops.  Needless survival mechanics that starve you when you run?  Check.  Repeating screen maze-like design?  Check.  Out of tune flute music?  Check.  Combat that's Punchout with an intellivision controller?  Check.  Antiquated SCUMM UI with alternate commands hidden in secondary menus?  Check.  Even pulling the difficulty slider all the way back will still lead to your inevitable starvation, because you can't sleep on an empty stomach, and the wild boar you see won't react to commands to impale it.  No fuck you game.  What a shame.

 

This really does sound like a marvel in poor game design 

[crispy4000]

It's my own personal 90's adventure game nightmare.

 

The wasted potential is the worst part of it.  I've enjoyed adventure games where you can die, like The Legend of Kyrandia.  But this is just dumb.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 45 minutes

Rating: ****

 

Taps into a part of my monkey game brain I never knew existed.  After years of playing tile based games you think you've seen it all, but Necrodancer changes everything with its rhythm-based gameplay and enemy movement pattern focus.  Even if you're more familiar with traditional Rogue-likes, there's still the cadence aspect that gets you to think differently on the fly.  Lots of unique characters to play as, including one that removes the rhythmic element if you so wish.  There isn't anything I'd fault it for, so it gets my full recommendation.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: ***

 

Strategy RPG riffing off the power rangers.  You can select a few different characters with unique attribuutes and customize their colors, but can't go back once your team is set.  Characters can team up against enemies, which seems to deal more damage than using each character individually.  There's some kind of jumping off character mechanic similar to Mario & Rabbids, but it seems highly contextual to use, which gave me some trouble in a mission that wanted me to do it 3 times in a match.  Overall, it seems like a decent game, but the presentation of its tactical elements leaves something to be desired IMO.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 20 minutes

Rating: ***½

 

I had to go back to the first game briefly just to confirm that my impressions of Bleed 2 were correct.  Everything is dramatically improved: the visuals, the air dash controls, the bosses, etc.  Perhaps the most significant change is your increased bullet size.  It no longer feels like you're needing to thread a needle quite as much to hit things.  On top of that, you can swing a sword to deflect most projectiles, done by 'smashing' the analog stick.  More twin stick shooters could learn from this.

 

I still have my gripes about the game being designed around a slo-mo meter, and it's apparently very short (7 levels long).  Maybe that's not totally fair to take off for, but still, I blew past 3 levels in 20 minutes.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: **½

Played a bit of this years ago, thought it would be interesting to return to after playing some of the others here.  While there's a lot to love about the visuals and soundtrack, the game is incredibly cryptic with text clues that would feel unfair even for an escape room.  So much so that I can't imagine having much fun with it without a guide.  There's a few G&G-isms that also don't help matters: jumps where you can't change momentum, and walking off ledges leading you straight vertically down.  You can get used to it, but that combined with the difficulty of the puzzles make it an acquired taste for sure.  I wonder if the sequel is any fairer.

[stepee]

4 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: **½

Played a bit of this years ago, thought it would be interesting to return to after playing some of the others here.  While there's a lot to love about the visuals and soundtrack, the game is incredibly cryptic with text clues that would feel unfair even for an escape room.  So much so that I can't imagine you having much fun with it without a guide.  There's a few G&G-isms in here that also don't help: jumps where you can't change momentum, and walking off ledges leading you straight vertically down.  You can get used to it, but that combined with the difficulty of the puzzles make it an acquired taste for sure.  I wonder if the sequel is any fairer.

 

This sounds exactly why I’ve avoided this series!

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: **½

 

Nice little Earthbound-like RPG.  Your main character can morph into different forms, which you level independently like a Job system.  The graphics are simplistic but quirky, maybe not quite to Earthbound's pedigree but close enough.  It's a nice little throwback that has its own style.

 

It's the rougher edges of the package that drag it down.  Performance is oddly an issue, I couldn't keep a stable 60 on my lower-end PC so there's judder everywhere.  I've heard similar things on a Steam Deck.  Movement is mapped to the analog stick, and at least one button doesn't have a controller mapping.  Also, terrible name.  Don't spoil your central conceit in your title.  Even if it's the most stock indie twist that we've all come to expect.

[dualhunter]

I often regret RPG maker games because it can be such a pain to get the controls to be serviceable. Best bet is to use an Xbox controller (more buttons seem to work than the Switch Pro controller) and look up a recommended button mapping. I enjoyed it overall but the board game minigame ruined the pacing a bit and I could be bothered with post game boss fights.

[crispy4000]

19 minutes ago, dualhunter said:

I often regret RPG maker games because it can be such a pain to get the controls to be serviceable. Best bet is to use an Xbox controller (more buttons seem to work than the Switch Pro controller) and look up a recommended button mapping. I enjoyed it overall but the board game minigame ruined the pacing a bit and I could be bothered with post game boss fights.

 

I can see all the things that could make it good.  I was wavering between rating it a bit higher, but the judder is what pulled it down for me.  This is a first impressions thread after all.  Even for RPGMaker stuff, I don't remember To The Moon or Lisa having these issues.

 

If you enjoyed it, I recommend checking out Jack Move at some point.  Undertale aside, its probably the strongest of the indie JRPG-likes I've tried so far in this thread.  You could snag that plus Coromon & Moonlighter (or This Way Madless Lies?) for $5 right now.

 

Build your own RPG Bundle - BundleFest Edition | Fanatical

WWW.FANATICAL.COM

 

[crispy4000]

Since I just name dropped it, might as well follow through with it next.

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: ***

 

Another hard one to judge from the onset.  As a turn based game, I really dig the mechanics here.  You have a list of moves that you can only use again if you've rested for a turn, unless otherwise specified.  It's a neat system that makes each member of your party feel very unique.  Enemies have resistences you can exploit, no need to scan them with anything to know.  Items are pooled and shared, and recharge at the end of battle (like your health).  In-battle graphics remind me of Shinning Force, which is an awesome throwback.  I just don't know how much I enjoy the rest of the window dressing.  I've got no history with Sailor Moon, and don't think it makes a good case for it plotwise from the onset.  There's also vocals by a suspect singer that pops into the soundtrack now and again.

[stepee]

44 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

Since I just name dropped it, might as well follow through with it next.

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: ***

 

Another hard one to judge from the onset.  As a turn based game, I really dig the mechanics here.  You have a list of moves that you can only use again if you've rested for a turn, unless otherwise specified.  It's a neat system that makes each member of your party feel very unique.  Enemies have resistences you can exploit, no need to scan them with anything to know.  Items are pooled and shared, and recharge at the end of battle (like your health).  In-battle graphics remind me of Shinning Force, which is an awesome throwback.  I just don't know how much I enjoy the rest of the window dressing.  I've got no history with Sailor Moon, and don't think it makes a good case for it plotwise from the onset.  There's also vocals by a suspect singer that pops into the soundtrack now and again.

 

Fucking shit do i love that art style

to death. Love the work you are putting in here so much. I would never touch this. But love hearing about it.

[stepee]

Ever think of doing a youtube channel? :P

[crispy4000]

8 hours ago, stepee said:

Ever think of doing a youtube channel? :P

Too much time and effort for me currently as a parent. I get an hour or so to play games each night now that aren’t E-rated.  I’d rather blast through more of these than spend that time editing.

 

Trying to get through the 16-bit list before Not-E3 begins.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 45 minutes

Rating: ***

 

Point & Click adventure in a cyperpunk setting, where everyone essentially jacks into the matrix with their VR headsets to view reality differently.  Visuals, cutscenes and animations are stunning, especially considering its all done without bloom or other modern rendering techniques.  If any of this sounds appealing the game is probably worth a shot (especially if you snagged it for free on GoG).  But it also hearkens back to some very esoteric puzzle logic, and maybe there's just a bit too much 'tude to the writing so far.  I'm reading that gets worse as the game goes on, but still, the style points carry it, and for an adventure game that isn't such a bad thing.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 15 minutes

Rating: **

 

Bubble popping and splitting game akin to Super Pang or Buster Bros, with the gimmick of gravity shifting to the sides of the screen.  It believably emulates the style of a gameboy game, and even has these fun interactive borders on the side.  So presentation is solid, but gameplay-wise, its bland and one-note, and basically just an endless arcade game.  The movement is far too slip-slidy for something precision based.

 

If you want something better, check out another indie game called The Bug Butcher instead.  Still an acquired taste, but that's about the best you'll get for a game of this sort.  It's multiplayer too.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes?

Rating: *½

 

I literally feel asleep playing it.  The neatest trick it pulls is that it totally lacks VO for the first 15 minutes, then suddenly everything starts being read to you fully voiced.  Problem is the game won't stop speaking at you.  Its a visual novel masquerading as an adventure game, but even then its just overly verbose.  You make dialogue choices, and can expect a big long answer no matter how trivial the topic of conversation is.  It dangles adventure game mechanics in front of you, just for you to be stuck in conversation loops for way too long.  Supposedly that doesn't get any better.  The blank real estate on the screen feels like a bit of a cop out as well.

 

Try Virtaverse instead.  Night and day difference.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 40 minutes

Rating: ***½

 

Excellent DSiWare port that still leaves a strong first impression today.  It does this cool foreground/background transition thing I don't think I've seen before in a Metroidvania.  Better yet, it can go several layers deep.  I'm a fan, especially considering it breaks the 'left or right' tedium so often felt in sidescrollers.  The pixel art animation here is Metal Slug level, just superb.  Combat is a bit simplistic, I'm not always the best judge of when her hair strikes, especially when jumping.  And the 4:3 aspect ratio makes it feel a slightly too cramped, which is more a fault of the level design here IMO.  There's also not a lot of consistency to the outer edges of screens, as to whether they'll scroll you to a new place, or block you with an invisible wall.  But overall, it's quite a fun little game from what I've played so far.  The animal transformations are the cherry on top.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: **

 

Puzzle platformer found only on itch.io I picked up in one of those charity bundles.  Look pretty great in screenshots, but so much of the tileset is reused it's actually a bit disorienting to play.  You can use a magic want to virtually control blocks with different movement patterns.  Dotted lines mark tiles that blocks can move through.  It's a neat mechanic, but the game still feels like a series of push block puzzle rooms with often convoluted soltions.  More pet peeves: your character moves super slow, the music sucks, and the view window updates at an irregular framerate (42fps).

 

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 20 minutes

Rating: **

 

I didn't know what to expect booting this up.  Some kind of punchout-like game mixed with stat upgrade mini-games?  I was very off the mark.  It's a time and stat management game mixed with an autobattler.  Graphics look good, but the gameplay isn't my sort of thing at all.  It flies too close to survival meters to be all that engaging for me.  It could be okay for you if you really dig tycoon stuff, but to me, it's boredom in a pretty package with stats and line charts.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: **½

 

You're a cop patrolling your assigned street, writing tickets, cuffing crinimals, wheeling and dealing.  There's tasks assigned each day, in addition to semi-random events and story beats that drop as each new day passes.  And those limits tend to be the most problematic part.  You need to pick and choose from what objectives and events to tend to, since there's never enough time in the day unless you figure out how to speed run it or something.  Pixel art looks pretty okay from a distance, but this is another game where it goes for extreme close ups as you enter buildings and the like.  Story isn't great either, dilogue has excessive cussing, etc.  But I can't say I've played anything quite like it before, so it's probably worth checking out if you already own it.  (was a Prime giveaway for GoG)

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 10 minutes

Rating: *½

 

Not much of a game here to be had.  You thumb through tabs in your browser, taking requests for organs which you buy and resell.  It's a lot of combing through green text to see what people want, scrolling through lists to find a match.  Stylish presentation, but that's about all that's here.  It functions, it’s a time waster.

 

 

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: **½

 

Completely serviceable puzzle platformer where your goal is to kill yourself in each level.  It's an interesting twist that occasionally leads to some creative endings to stages.  Problem I have with is mainly is that it's still glorified push block puzzles most of the time.  And in spite of your character movement feeling okay, there's often a lot of real estate to cover.  A run button would have helped this a lot, and maybe led to some more interesting challenges.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 20 minutes

Rating: *

 

An updated version of a MS-DOS roguelike.  The developers must have spent a lot of time trying to get it up to modern standards, but every bit of this game still ends up feeling like inside baseball.  The tutorial is poorly presented, constantly asking you to memorize what specific keys on your keyboard do.  I think at one point it literally told me to hold down control and hit two letter keys simultaneously.  The UI shifts between graphical visuals to MS-DOS menus in your inventory screen.  This seem emulated or something, whatever it does, going to your inventory absolutely kills the framerate and mouse responsiveness.  At the start, you explore caves with endlessly respawning monsters who do practically damage to you.  Once you level up, there's ~20 different stat upgrade options, none of them explained to you.

 

There could be something kind of great here if you dig in I suppose.  But I can't be bothered.