xeneth.design

     Been thinking about the "challenge structure" of UFO 50  lately. It's a three-tiered system applied to every game: Gift - This is the easiest to earn and generally unlocked for playing enough of a game to "witness the core of the thing" Gold - This is awarded for "beating the game," which obviously varies a bit depending on structure Cherry - This is the completionist tier for "doing everything,"  which doesn't necessarily demand perfection but is highly likely to show you all of the regular content... Slightly controversially, this objective isn't visible in the menus until you've earned Gold on that game I think I'm going to be forced to agree with the decision to hide the cherry info, given even my guesses or assumptions about the nature of the objective has already had warping effects on my play; I'd have golded Rock On! Island  days ago if I stopped quitting missions every time my cave takes a single point of...

[This is the home stretch, designer; you're falling way behind on the comparatively simple task of playing and beating high quality games there, bucko...]      If there was ever any doubt about what an awful game journalist I'd theoretically be, this project has dispelled it. My personal gaming habit of flitting about from title to title, playing enough to feel like the design shape of them is clear; that's about as far from knuckling down and digesting the content as butterflies are from locusts. This has been a very thorough education in how multiple UFO 50  reviews can simultaneously contain quips about it being " a terrible review experience " and also lines referring to the game being " a joy to play ." Turning exploring the collection into a job or task is like tunneling one layer deeper into the dreamscape, where the application of my own "design research pollinator" pattern feels inadequate when applied recursively, not to mention every...

     WarpTank might be one of the most charming and thought-provoking games in the collection for me. It almost feels weirdly laser-targeted to surprise and confound my specific taste. Take the initial presentation, for example; the minimalist title screen and sparse sci-fi aesthetic will trigger my love of Metroid , right? Well they would, if the music wasn't immediately zigging out on a jazzy café jag instead of zagging into moody atmospherics. Then, some later game tracks are more like what I was expecting ... before going full carnival mode once again! One of the tricks they're using to make WarpTank  feel like an older game than it is involves limited animation and scrolling. Your vehicular character is allowed only a single frame of animation between each tile it occupies, and the camera snaps to the tile grid in a way that makes the game less visually smooth. Straining your persistence of vision a bit accomplishes the goal of making it feel less like 2024,...

     I'm having a bit of a bad time here with the sixth title in UFO 50 's constructed chronology, Mortol . It's not just a lack of run optimization to build up a reserve of extra lives, though. The whole theme of sacrificing people to advance is reminding me of the real world problems affecting my chosen profession. This isn't some scathing criticism of the game's core design gimmick or anything; it's an interesting enough twist on the challenges and demands of a puzzle-platformer, (even if the sequel, Mortol II  feels more pointed.) No, the rotten mood I'm in is mostly to blame. Two more studios had layoffs today; Happy Halloween! And I hear tell of yet more positions being cut at websites and publications that ostensibly cover games. The idea was to use this project to get back into some sort of structured habit and then return to the job hunt, but it's hard not to feel apprehensive. Even if I manage to make it back into the industry, will I be thrown...

     Rather than making a bunch of tired Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy jokes, I just got a much better idea! One of these days I'll learn that not everything needs to take the additional time to have some sort of catchy title attached, but how does " The Struggle Game Roundup " sound? [With blog topics like these, it's obvious you're writing and editing too much and not playing enough...] The plan is investigate a few of the UFO 50  titles that seem like I should  be done and dusted with by this late stage in the project, and pick apart what barriers I'm encountering, whether they're issues with the games themselves or just things that expose some of my personal hang-ups. Onion Delivery With the deepest apologies to fictional programmer Chiffon Bola, I've been trying and failing to convince myself to take another bite of this particular vegetable... My biggest internal point of comparison is Campanella , given both games confronted me with an in...

     Man, oh, man does it ever feel good to finally get the gold cartridge on Magic Garden! And what a vindication of my ability to pick up on vaguely Sapphic vibes, given the tone of that post I wrote long before seeing how it ends. [The, *ahem* rivals-to-friends tone implied by the character designs were not exactly subtle , but you're unusually dense when it comes to such things, so perhaps that's why it feels like some sort of prediction feat from your perspective...] I didn't score highly enough to get the cherry, but this should loosen the grip of cuteness that I've been subjecting myself to at the start of every play session for several days now. It starts with a puzzle or two in Block Koala , which has only resulted in clearing something like twenty of what I hope  is fifty block pushing puzzles. I'm not exactly a Sokoban slouch per se; I've yet to get properly stuck on any of them, but they're only going to get harder. After that dose of pastel ch...