Epanalepsis is a figure of speech defined by the repetition of words at the start and end of a phrase. For example, “The king is dead; long live the king.” Repetition and time loops are key features of this point and click adventure of the same name, spanning 60 years and three different characters.
Since I was a teenager, I’ve been suffering from anxiety. Sometimes it’s perfectly manageable and other times it is debilitating. My life has been peppered with incidents caused by my anxiety – dropping out of a drawing course my Freshman year because I was getting so stressed out from it; breaking down crying in the airport the first time I had to fly by myself; being too anxious to eat in the dinning hall of my dorm while studying abroad; not being able to sleep through the night because I was so freaked out despite nothing being wrong with my life – the list goes on but I’ll spare you the details. So when I first read about Sym from Atrax Games – a game that aimed to illustrate what it’s like to have an anxiety disorder – my interest was definitely piqued.
Rockets shooting through space, leaving long luminous trails as they bombard each other. Beats pumping as you try to shoot down your last opponent. ROCKETSROCKETSROCKETS is a single and multiplayer 2D shooting game that has just left Early Access and launched officially on May 1. But does the gameplay reach the same heights as the lightshows and music?
At first, it might seem like there’s not much going on in Earthtongue. You’ve got some mushrooms and bugs growing. But then as time ticks on and new fungi and bugs come to inhabit your little planet, you begin to realize just how much diversity there is in this little vivarium simulator. Balancing out all the herbivores and predators and fast growing fungi and carnivorous fungi can be tricky but getting to watch the neon spores and growths spread across your planet is surprisingly fun and addicting.
My first experience with Crypt of the Necrodancer was in a dark back room at the first Bit Bash Chicago event in September 2014. In a tiny, cramped room filled with Killer Queen arcade machines, on one wall Crypt of the Necrodancer was being projected. In front, two Dance Dance Revolution dance pads were sprawled out and hooked up to the game. It had one of the more reasonable lines compared to all the other games set up, so my friend and I decided to wait. He got a go first and I watched carefully in an attempt to figure out how to play before I got up there and embarrassed myself. Finally when it was my turn up, we managed to get through level 1 of Zone 1 and got to the first dragon mini boss before we both died. Along the way I haphazardly sliced at enemies and accidentally dug my way through walls, trying to move my feet to the beat.
Before I was a lynx mom, I was a badger mom. By the time my badger cubs were big enough to fend on their own, I had managed to save three of the original five of them. It was an emotional task filled with perils. But I did it. So I thought I would be able to handle being a lynx mom well enough.
How wrong I was.
The Shelter series is an emotional rollercoaster. But whereas the original Shelter is like a wooden roller coaster, Shelter 2 is like this coaster (yes, there are flames that shoot out of the ground near the end). And it’s because of that increase in intensity that I just couldn’t get very far in the game. I played for a little over an hour but my little cat-loving heart just couldn’t take anymore. Think of this as more of an extended Impressions than a Review.
In rymdkapsel, you build a space station using Tetris blocks. And like Tetris, you have a preview in the corner letting you know what shapes your different building elements will come as. By fitting different sections of your space station together you can utilize space in a more effective way. Sometimes that comes across in the form of taking up less space in the game setting and sometimes it just means that your workers can get to where they are going faster. Predictably like in Tetris, those long thin pieces come more infrequently than you would like.
What if the floor was jelly? Ian Snyder’s answer to that question is a fanciful, giggle-inducing romp with physics. After two years of working on the puzzle platformer, it was finally released in January 2014. As a rule, I get easily frustrated with platformers. I’m pretty terrible at them for whatever reason. Despite this, there are a small number of platformers that I really love and The Floor is Jelly has wiggled its way into that distinction. If I had to pick one word to describe this game it would be “delightful” because that word can describe any aspect of this game: art style, music, game mechanics and level design.
I had to pull myself away from Eidolon in order to write this review. The day I got the game I didn’t even realize I had played for hours until I heard the door open when my husband came home from work. I looked around and realized that night had come and the house was already dark. I was so absorbed into the game and story that time just passed by.
Sometimes you just need to zone out, listen to some good music or your favorite podcast, and lose yourself in the flow of a game. I tend to forget this sometimes, so this past week I indulged and let a preview copy of JUJU from Flying Wild Hog be that game. And it felt really really nice.
