General Gaming Snap judging pixel art indies

[stepee]

On 6/21/2024 at 9:39 PM, crispy4000 said:

 

A few posts up.  It's good, apparently a lot of people on the roguelike subreddit swear by it.

 

I kinda wish it wasn’t rogue lite because I always do but I played through about 3 bosses last night and it’s pretty sweet! It looks and plays beautifully. The loop is you do 10 stages and then a boss. This kinda works for me because it just makes each attempt like a megaman attempt.

 

It feels fantastic to play so Ill def poke at it further.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: ***½

 

It's basically the same game as the first one, just slightly more polished mechanically, but much more polished visually.  So by rating this higher, it's all for style points.  It's basically my ideal looking retro 16-bit inspired game.  Back when people complained about Shovel Knight looking 8-bit, this is the kind of thing I was thinking of.  If only the sound design matched, it's another case of an NES-style chiptune track not meshing tonally with the art.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 45 minutes

Rating: ***

 

Heavily plot-driven platformer.  You better be okay with raw pixels since the game likes to show extreme closeups of its characters, it gets quite ugly. Meanwhile the visuals outside of those (frequent) cutscenes are actually quite nice.  The pacing is quite bad compared to say, Evan's Remains, which tricks you into being a visual novel.  Horace presents itself as a visual novel that tricks you into being a platformer.

 

Still, there's something intriguing here.  The game controls quite well I feel.  There's some interesting anti-graviity mechanics I haven't quite seen done like this.  And the story is so unabashedly British, there's not many good analogs to it in the medium.  It's also supposed dip in and out of different genres, movement concepts, and parodies.  It won't be the first game I'll return to, but I could see it being one of the more unique games of the bunch.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 45 minutes

Rating: **½

 

Perfectly competent Meat-Boy like platformer.  You can double jump, fire shots, climb vines, etc.  Most stages are multiple screens, and you're checkpointed at each screen.  Also for some reason, every enemy killed remains dead on retries.  So it's more lenient than these games are generally.  There's hidden items in each stage, usually behind invisible walls.  Overall it's fun, but supposed to very short, so I'm not sure it's worth seeking out when it doesn't do anything so original.  Maybe with better music I'd put it a bit higher

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 20 minutes

Rating: ***

 

This is everything you'd want of a Donkey Kong arcade sequel, outside of an expansion of the coin-op concept seen in DK '94.  Controls wonderfully, has music and sound design that pops, seems decently well balanced.  I just don't have the patience personally to see it through.  But if it sounds like your jam, you'll enjoy it.

 

Oh and don't forget, the toilets jump, lol

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 45 minutes

Rating: ***½

 

Absolutely bonkers in the best way.  It’s clearly influenced by Undertale, but takes the fever dream moments of that game and ups the ante considerably.  ‘Combat’ has the veneer of a rhythm game, but is all about dodging the incoming rhythms left and right instead of hitting them on a beat.  You can also jump, which is harder to time, and won’t work on everything that comes at you.  What you see in the screenshot above actually isn’t that typical, instead most encounters are just filled to the brim with post processing distortion effects.  It’s wild, sometimes hard to follow.  This is definitely a game where you’ll be changing the difficulty on the fly as you find out what’s too hard.  It also isn’t afraid to switch up the combat mechanics in unexpected ways, but still based on movement and rhythmic dodging.

 

The only major downside is that the songs go a bit too long, even with checkpoints.  I only had one encounter where I had a pseudo attack.  It would feel better if there was a way to fight back, perhaps with some associated dynamic element.  It’s foo early to judge the characters and writing, though supposedly doesn’t hit Undertale’s highs.  But with the other creativity on display that’s no big deal.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 15 minutes

Rating: *½

 

Ooof, it's real bad.  Mechanically, it feels very amateur hour.  Your character sprite it too large, and your bullets are too small.  Jumping does this thing where it drops you like a rock as you start to fall.  The enemy design is terrible, including the titular "mercury" enemies being floating orange damage spounges.  No weapon powerups to be found in my playtime, in spite of it being a feature supposedly.  Lots of rote pattern memorization.

 

I don't actively hate the thing when playing, and the music and general aesthetic could be worse.  But this one definitely goes in the trash bin.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 15 minutes

Rating: **

 

NES style beat'em up.  If it felt fair or controlled well, I'd be more up on it.  But you can't do combo attacks until you land a half dozen hits on an enemy, which is hard considering how stubby your arms are, or how efficient the enemies are at get-up attacks.  There's nasty sprite flickering as you attack - if they're in front of you in the view window, it's difficult to see exactly what's happening.  Some enemies can only be hit with jump attacks, and the license feels largely wasted.  Or maybe it's just worse that this game exists because of it.

 

Play River City Ransom or Double Dragon instead.

 

 

[Keyser_Soze]

How could you betray @silentbob like that!

[stepee]

Honestly why is it even an 8bit game? It should be 90s 16bit and like super 90s.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: ***

 

Heir apparent to Ghosts & Goblins.  You have a basic sword swing as as well as the ability to throw spears, which have a longer but satisfying wind up. (You can also create platforms with them)  Rolls, downwards thrusts, and an automatic sword-swing double jump are part of your toolkit.  It's a fun time, I actually think it feels more fair than classic G&G.  But its still a game that's probably more fun to watch than play, unless you're a masochist or excel at retro games generally.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 45 minutes

Rating: ****

 

As thrilling as a comedic adventure game could get.  It was a stroke of brilliance to go the crime drama direction, and there's early moments of this that genuinely surprised me.  It's not quite as zany as Monkey Island, at least not at the start, but you can see the footprint.  Like those old games, the backdrops here are very evocative.  I thought I'd mind the big-head-mode characters, but it ended up winning me over as part of the charm, and as something different than everything else out there.

 

Definitely one I'll be returning to, so it gets my full rating.  @Firewithin was right on this one.  I'll need to get to Return to Monkey Island as well some day.  (or at least Monkey Island 2, since I only beat the first one)

 

 

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 45 minutes

Rating: ***½

 

There's only a few negatives here, as a DKC like.  Your forward attack slows your momentum slightly at its end (which you can avoid by jumping to cancel).  The music isn't outstanding.  Enemy sprites are quite large, but the hitboxes must also be quite forgivable when stomping on them.  While the Yoshi Island-like masks transformations are great, they're not all that novel.  And it's somewhat jarring for me here to see Donkey Kong gameplay with a vaguely Sonic styling to the terrain.

 

Otherwise, this is exactly the game you'd want it to be.  Colorful, fun platformer that really gives you a sense of accomplishment without being overbearing.  I don't think it sits on top of other games like the DKC Returns series or Impossible Lair, but its the very next game I'd recommend based on what I played.  Maybe Windswept changes that once it's out, I think it controls a little better, but who knows.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: ***

 

Not bad at all.  You'd think for a game based off a guy who makes fun of shitty games, it would be more unfair.  But checkpoints are laid out everywhere, and it mostly controls well.  There's moments you can tell the game trolls you, but maybe not overtly so, which feels like a missed opportunity.  The AVGN humor is there, take it or leave it, but it didn't bother me.  I'll admit the "Fuck it" button instead of quit gave me a chuckle.

 

The second game might control slightly different than the first, I think the jump is higher?  It also has a wall jump that feels kind of bad, but still is workable.  Some enemies are damage spounges, but you can usually hop over them easily enough.

 

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: *½

 

Tries to be a platformer akin to the DOS 2D Duke Nukem games.  Problem is that those were never good, and this is no better.  You beat levels by finding the exit, sometimes needing to shoot a force field generator to open paths, sometimes needing to find elevator shafts that can elevate you higher.  Jumping moves completely linearly, which is intentional, but still bad.  It's not quite as bad as Project Mercury, but it's safe to say you can avoid it unless you haven't had enough DOS platformers in your life.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: ***

 

Pixel art Might & Magic with RTS-lite combat.  If you're a fan of M&M (my history is limited) this supposedly apes a lot of how the overworld works.  I could see myself getting into it if I had the time, but the UI really feels kind of bad from a TV setting, even when zoomed in via the options menu.  I'd imagine Steam Deck would have similar issues.  I died pretty quick in the tutorial zone, I think it also has a problem illustrating what strategies to go for, and not feeling like a menu dump from the onset. 

 

Still, this seems pretty cool.  I like the real time combat, it's pretty low maintenance, even if its sometimes hard to get a read on what's happening, both in battle and otherwise.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 3 hours

Rating: ***

 

Like Risk of Rain, this is another indie that gets talked up a bit too much IMO.  Really, it was just early on a bandwagon: the revival of couch co-op arena games by indies.  Visually it still looks quite polished, with subtle shadow effects and their trademark squash and stretch when jumping, later used in Celeste.  The presentation is what still keeps it at 3-stars for me.  Gameplay-wise, it's a bit vanilla, but controls well and works in a multiplayer setting.  Dashes and wall jumps do add a little bit to its depth.

I'd recommend Astro Duel 2 or Samurai Gun ahead of it, or Boomerang Fu if we're going outside of the pixel art realm.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 45 minutes

Rating: ***½

 

This game is a bunch of neat ideas bundled into one highly original package.  The central conceit is that your character can see the future.  Projectiles and enemy motions are shadowed to you about a second before they happen.  That's neat, but not even the least of how hard the game leans in.  Prince of Persia time rewinding?  Yep, it's there, and uses enemy energy drops to build meter for it.. You soon learn that each save room is saved as a moment in time, and there's a Radiant Historia-like timeline with time points you can travel back to with enough energy.  That means the level design can give you literal dead ends to fuck with you.  Most suit upgrades will stay persistent if you warp back in time, others like max health upgrades won't.  Go left instead of right and reach a different save point?  Timeline split.  And when you think that's all,  a Majora's Mask-like failstate kicks in, where you'll have 20 minutes before the world explodes, avoidable by warping back to previous moments of time.  There's switches you can enable on one side of the map to affect the other, so shit gets serious quickly.

 

It's unfortunate the production values aren't quite there. Same with the controls, which are serviceable, but not quite as good as you'd want.  It was part of the Racial Justice Bundle on itch.io a while back. I very much recommend checking it out if any of the above sounds interesting.  This developer is now on my radar.

[crispy4000]

I'll be off for a trip soon for about a week, so I'll be taking a short break from this thread.  My goal is to get through the rest of the list by the end of the year. I think I can accomplish that.

 

Summer is kind of an ideal time for me to play games in shorter spurts like this, but I may prioritize playing more games to completion after that.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: ***

 

Competent Zelda:Four Swords-like with roguelike dungeons.  It doesn't reinvent anything, but feels fairly good to play (and better with the analog stick).  I only wish pausing to see the menu didn't interrupt every other player.  And if you die in a dungeon, another player has to carry your skull until they find a one-use revival totem.  I had more fun playing this outside of the dungeons than in them, which is kind of a problem if that's your game's hook.

[crispy4000]

Technically I don't own it, since it's on Netflix on mobile, but I can't help gushing about it:

 

 

Time Spent: 5 hours

Rating: ****

 

This was my mild addiction during my vacation.  A Whodunnit where you see each murder scene as a vignette, and have to use your deduction skills to figure out what happened.  They don't even outright give you names of characters most often, you have to piece that together, then start trying to make sense of the pieces.  What's brilliant about this game is that it's not a linear path towards the solution.  You chip away at the details, and might arrive at certain conclusions in a completely different way than someone else.  It's simply that well designed.  I disliked the art at first, but it grew endearing in its own way, and fits the absurdity of its characters and through line.

 

I've made it through 9 of the 12 main scenes, will also get around to the DLC which is also included on Netflix.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: **

 

I recalled it being bad based on a demo I played, but had to revisit it to fully remember.  Here's the problem: the revamped graphics make your character look one tile tall, when in actual boundary box terms, he's two.  So any of those nooks and crannies you think you can squeeze through are a no go.  Your punch animation also is somewhat off compared to the retro graphics mode, making the original visuals easier to judge.  You will play better in retro graphics mode.  So what's the point of the visual revamp, to screw you up?  There's too much bloom anyways.

 

It's not a great game in of itself either.  The first level starts with you heading down a virtually scrolling stage, oblivious to the pitfalls below you if haven't memorized the safest routes.  And the controls are kind of garbage to begin with.  But wait!  There's a fix in the options menu that will made your character not slide on the ground.  Unfortunately that doesn't fix or fit with the jumping physics.  Furthermore the game warns you that you can't reach some areas with it enabled.  Oh, and there's an 'easy' mode where the hitboxes are smaller.  All of this is a sign that the original game needed retooling, not just a new paint job.

 

Play Monster Boy the Dragon's trap instead.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 45 minutes

Rating: ***½

 

Roguelike x Dynasty Warriors, but with some novel twists.  First thing you notice is the very distinctive art style, it's essentially a 3d game that's cel shaded and downresed to look like pixel art (in stills).  But the real interesting bit is that you receive powerup scrolls from fallen foes that can be assigned to any one of your action buttons, and upgraded if you have multiples.  In essence, there's a programming logic you can use to come up with new attacks, maneuvers, spells, dashes, jumps, etc.  You can also start each with the movesets of any of the commanders you've killed as a base skillset to build from.  It's the kind of thing that makes it one I'd return to, even if I'm not sure how the rest of its roguelike elements hold up. 

 

The one definite downside is the music.  It's 8-bit, and even then, merely just okay.  If they went for a Sega or Capcom arcade game vibe, I could see myself being more much enthusiastic about the game overall.

 

It's still free on Amazon Prime Gaming as of this post, so go get it if you haven't.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 20 minutes

Rating: ***

 

Looks and feels like it intended to be a 2d clone of Sonic.  But this one is surprisingly okay, more than a lot of 16-bit knock offs.  It slows the pace down slightly from standard Sonic, gives you unique powerups like dropping bombs or a slower fall speed, and forgoes the ring system.  There's also a wall bouncing mechanic when you spin dash.  It definitely doesn't give the thrill of a Sonic game, or the production values of Kaze, but I can still respect the effort here.  The music is terrible though, that drags it down considerably.

 

It was in both the Ukraine and Palestine Aid itch.io bundles for anyone interested.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 40 minutes

Rating: ***

 

Mega Man, but you trade in your blaster for melee attacks like a platform fighter.  Plus a Bionic Commando grappling hook, which deals minimal damage but scoops up weakened enemies to be thrown.  I like it, not sure I love it.  Some hitboxes are hard to judge.  You need to get up close to enemies at times, which can be a point of frustration when clearing certain platforming gaps.  (Thankfully you don't lose lives in bottomless pits)  And there never seems to be enough enemies on screen to chuck defeated ones into.  Sometimes I just jump, throw, and hope for the best that something is hiding off screen.  Grapple hook swinging feels better in other games, like Grapple Force Rena and Grapple Dog.  There's some kind of charge up system for special moves that I'm also a bit skeptical of: it's based on pick-ups or landed hits if a passive bonus is equipped. 

 

They absolutely nailed the Neo Geo Pocket inspired art though.  Same with the slick UI presentation and music.  The vibes gets as close to Mega Man as you'd expect, including picking robot bosses and respective stages.  There's some upgrade systems between levels as well you can use to change your moveset a bit.  I could see this game ending up a lot better than my rating suggests in the long run, all the ingredients are there for a good game.  But it would need to coalesce better than it comes across to a new player.  That's also kind of what's fun about it: it's a mish mash of platformer bits that feels familiar and different at the same time.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 1 hour

Rating: ***

 

I'm slightly conflicted about this one.  One one hand it plays wonderfully.  It's a roguelike action platformer with fluid motion, a little less punchy feeling than Blade Assault, but still has a really good flow to its momentum.  I also really like that its a bright colored, not depressing looking roguelike.  There's way too many that lean into high challenge = dark colors and tones.  There's also a good amount of customization and persistent upgrades, story bits between runs like Hades, and choices to make durring runs.  I also think its a stroke of brilliance that every enemy telegraphs their attacks, with red shaded areas or skulls appearing where hits will land.  The one boss I fought and beat was also a lot of fun.

 

I really dislike the UI though.  The way you earn charges to use special abilities is poorly communicated in it.  You cycle through 4 of the abilities when used (you can also swap between them with one of the triggers).  Each ability can be upgraded, enhanced, and/or changed with a different ability pickup.  There's a bit of Samurai Bringer's coding system to it to it, but here it just comes across as obtuse.  Even more considering you have a second character specific ability that runs on a typical cooldown meter, as opposed to whatever melee-hit/cycle-through charging system the others use.  All pickups and interactions are mapped to three of the trigger buttons, with one of the inputs requiring you to hold a button.  It ends up being more problematic than it should to make simple selections without fucking it up.  Lastly, the characters and enemies can either be presented with or without a black outline.  They're not quite detailed enough to look good either way, though everything moves fluidly.

 

I still think it’s a winner overall.  It's quite fun in spite of the ways it trips over itself.  And I'm sure its learnable, just a pain in more ways than it should be.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: **½

 

Missed potential is the way I'd put it.  It's a roguelike hack & slash that takes a bit from games like Secret of Mana and Terranigma.  But it doesn't quite fit the bill in either respect.  The roguelike elements are weak and don't vary each run enough.  Combat feels alright, not great (depending on the character), but gets the job done.  Some spells take opening a pause menu for, which is pretty unforgivable today I think.  Plot is poorly presented after the opening sequence, and everything feels too dark.  The big shame here is that if they just tried to copy Secret of Mana more, maybe improve the combat a little bit, it could have been something special.  Instead, it's just a basic roguelike dungeon gauntlet.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 20 minutes

Rating: ***½

 

Another surprisingly good party game, and a great concept too.  It plays like you're deflecting Ganon's ball attacks in a 2D Zelda, but on brooms, and with a bit more wiggle room to the timing.  You can hold the ball a little to charge it up, making it faster and bigger and letting you chose the angle of release.  You can also fire arrows, which either neutralize the ball until someone else hits it, or can briefly turn your opponents into a chicken that can't hit the ball.  Lastly, there's super move pickups that sometimes appear according to the design of stages (ie: hit something with the ball a couple times to release one).

 

It's simple, but it just works, like an area battle Pong of sorts.  And the way it animates and feels is really, really solid.  I'm a little surprised this game got so little traction.  It's another pick up from one of those itch.io charity bundles.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 1 hour

Rating: **½

 

Snappy little hack & slack dungeon crawler with little else to it.  It's a fun little Gauntlet-like, but I think games have evolved beyond mindlessly mowing down swarms of enemies and picking up trinkets.  Your stamina meter recovers a bit too slowly, I would have preferred it to charge faster over time than for their to be stamina drops.  It feels okay, looks okay, and there's nothing especially wrong with it, but eh.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: ***

 

Visually its quite strange with a mix match between pixel art (for anything that can be destroyed) and a handpainted style for everything else.  Get past that initial oddiness, and it's a pretty enjoyable beat'em up that controls well, with a suprising emphasis on ranged attacks.  You don't feel locked into combos, being hit genuinely feels like your fault.  There's plenty of upgrades between stages, and you can replay old stages if you want to grind.  Where is sort of falls apart for me are the cooldown meters.  3 of your four actions, including dodges, operate on a cooldown.  They were nice enough to put an indicator near your character, but it's still quite messy looking, and puts a damper on your ability to chain them.  I also can't get into the story presented here, or the music either.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 min

Rating: **½

 

They must have looked at Hyper Light Drifter and said it wasn't crazy looking or sounding enough.  It's a pretty straightforward riff on Zelda 1 otherwise, with a few more interesting powerups.  As far as it plays, I actually think it might be more fun on the surface than Hyper Light, it reminds me of swinging around a light saber in Jedi Survivor with how loose it is.  But all the pixel effects are just too much to be palatable, unless you really enjoy the acid trip look.  Or sound, because the music is equally strange with how heavy it lays on the synth.

 

I also encountered a bug where the screen would randomly flash black, and I could only fix it by turning off all the shaders (defeating the point) or moving across two screens.  That takes it down further for me.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 20 min

Rating: *½

 

This must have gone free at some point after it was in my library for some time.  I never paid money for it to my knowledge, it must have been a freebie I picked up somewhere.  Image scaling for large displays is poor, there's no controller support, it looks messy and the UI is dated, and its a multiplayer-focused game that's largely dead.  You can either swing your sword or put up your shield as a knight, or be an archer and fire shots that are likely to miss.  It controls like a much less polished version of Broforce.  There's some kind of build phase in the multiplayer, but with combat being so basic, I'm good not fiddling with it any more.  Oh, and the vsync toggle also caps to 30fps.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: ***

 

There's nothing really wrong with it and its enjoyable to play, but is too well worn in its roguelike tropes.  You beat a randomly generated enemy arena, salvaging parts to requip and upgrade between boughts.  Your playable character ends up being an amalgamation of what you pick up.  I don't feel like the special attacks are very well balanced, almost everything seems really bad compared to the one that heals you.  Best set up seems to be a long range gun that does a lot of damage, then a crowd control gun to deal with minions close by.  There's no dash or dodge here either, just a temporary shield.  Enemies are all based on the same parts you collect, and everything ends up looking a little samey.

 

Overall, I'd probably rate it lower if it didn't feel as nice as it does to control.  It'd be a decent time as a co-op game, which it supports.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 1 hour

Rating: ****

 

A side-scrolling Metroidvania Pokemon game.  There isn't some magical formula here that made me think it's a stroke of brilliance to combine the two, but rather, the subtle polish that won me over.  Combat is very snappy and satisfying.  You get three monsters at a time, and each performs actions in your turn.  Unlike Pokemon, each monster type has its own skill tree you can apply points to as they level.  There's also an equipment system for each monster, food you can feed them for further upgrades - they only retain the last three food items they ate.  Your monsters each get map skills, like a hover to your jump, and the UI to swap between them is painless.  Monster catching is frictionless, you just get egg drops on occasion from defeated monsters you can hatch in your inventory.

 

While the pixel art here isn't the absolute best I've seen, it all blends nicely in its 16-bit style.  The only real negative so far is the music.  It's serviceable, not great, and hopefully improves in later areas.  But beyond that, it's a very fun game I'd like to continue, so it gets full rating.  It made me genuinely excited to play a monster catching game again, which is a huge deal for me.

[stepee]

On 8/10/2024 at 5:47 AM, crispy4000 said:

 

Time Spent: 1 hour

Rating: ***

 

I'm slightly conflicted about this one.  One one hand it plays wonderfully.  It's a roguelike action platformer with fluid motion, a little less punchy feeling than Blade Assault, but still has a really good flow to its momentum.  I also really like that its a bright colored, not depressing looking roguelike.  There's way too many that lean into high challenge = dark colors and tones.  There's also a good amount of customization and persistent upgrades, story bits between runs like Hades, and choices to make durring runs.  I also think its a stroke of brilliance that every enemy telegraphs their attacks, with red shaded areas or skulls appearing where hits will land.  The one boss I fought and beat was also a lot of fun.

 

I really dislike the UI though.  The way you earn charges to use special abilities is poorly communicated in it.  You cycle through 4 of the abilities when used (you can also swap between them with one of the triggers).  Each ability can be upgraded, enhanced, and/or changed with a different ability pickup.  There's a bit of Samurai Bringer's coding system to it to it, but here it just comes across as obtuse.  Even more considering you have a second character specific ability that runs on a typical cooldown meter, as opposed to whatever melee-hit/cycle-through charging system the others use.  All pickups and interactions are mapped to three of the trigger buttons, with one of the inputs requiring you to hold a button.  It ends up being more problematic than it should to make simple selections without fucking it up.  Lastly, the characters and enemies can either be presented with or without a black outline.  They're not quite detailed enough to look good either way, though everything moves fluidly.

 

I still think it’s a winner overall.  It's quite fun in spite of the ways it trips over itself.  And I'm sure its learnable, just a pain in more ways than it should be.

 

I got this on humble and excited to try it!