xeneth.design

     One of the things I was expecting to want to write about once I'd tried out all the UFO 50  games was another big rundown where I stack rank them all based on personal preference, or some sort of "Top Picks So Far" roundup to mark the blogging project's halfway point... Instead, I find myself mentally and physically exhausted at the prospect. Over the last month, I've gotten just a taste of what it must feel like to review video games for a living. Sure, I've written Steam reviews before; who among us hasn't? Writing about how your play "shook out" to a deadline, though; totally strange and different beast. I wonder how the public's view toward reviews and release coverage would change if most gamers got a taste of what it's like to do a little stint in the content mines. I was at least peripherally aware of how covering games alters your relationship with what is ostensibly an entertainment product, because I've been paying at

Only three more games remain un-played! The grand blogging project is half over as of today, so it would be an... auspicious post upon which to have finally laid hands on every single UFO 50  title... CombatAnts (1-2P, Strategy) "The evil red ants have taken your land! Fight back and defend your queen!"      Playing this game unlocked a memory of something I haven't thought about in years ... Starcraft was a formative game for me, sort of in all the wrong ways. Digging into why is far beyond the scope of these initial explorations, but basically I'd forgotten about the very first mod I ever made; a custom 1v1 PvP  SimAnt  map. The little green food balls in CombatAnts  took me back to playing SimAnt  on the Super NES using the mouse that came with Mario Paint . Vivid recollections of designing and scripting a caste birthrate control system using a lurker unit trapped in a triangular corner of the map came flooding back. I'm not sure if these memories made me pre

Five unopened games remain. Time to marathon some first impressions before crossing the halfway mark on this blogging project... Elfazar's Hat (1-2P, Arcade, Shooter) "Elfazar is hailed as a great magician, but his captive animals are ready to strike back!"      When I say that this is "just" a new Pocky & Rocky  spiritual successor, but starring an escaped stage rabbit and pigeon instead of a shrine maiden and tanuki, understand that's in a tone of utter delight, not derision. The existence of Elfazar's Hat  really felt like a surprise, thanks to a quirk of UFO 50 's main menu attract mode; you see, because I've been spending so much time between games writing and editing blog entries, I've seen all of the fifty little snippets of games playing themselves looping. Because this game happens to be represented there by its between-level bonus stage and not its core gameplay, I figured this was going to be an isometric auto-scroller with lo

     A while back, I experimentally set the CRT Effect setting in UFO 50 's options to "Soft," and haven't looked back. This isn't really the time or place to get into it, but my desire for a really high quality upscaler with fancy filters and processing like the Retro-TINK 4k seems to be rising... To have any hope at all of completing initial "first blush" explorations on all fifty games before the project's halfway point, I gotta get blowin'! (Off the digital dust and pixelated cobwebs, of course.) Rail Heist (1-2P, Platform, Strategy) "The most infamous train robbers in the west pull off a series of daring heists."      The written tone and immediate mention of angels and demons makes it very clear this is set in the same "gothic west" world of Lonestar that  Grimstone  does. Sure enough, the woman in the lead position of my party in that game is here to help with getaways in Rail Heist , so I guess now I know where she ge

If I'm going to write about my experience starting Grimstone , I should probably explain why I'll be referring to it as a " Narrative Party Role Playing Game ," (or NaPa RPG ) and not a " Japanese Role Playing Game ," (or JRPG ). The whole impetus to come up with something like that and stick to it for as long as I have is certainly worthy of its own standalone article down the road, but for now... In video game circles, when we say "JRPG" these days, we don't really intend the "J" to stand for "Japanese" most of the time. Except when we do! It bears thinking about, because while these subgenre descriptors are useful for talking about the medium, they're usually design coded, not culturally coded.     Long story short, way back around 2016 I read an interview with a Japanese developer describing why the term "JRPG" didn't makes sense from their perspective and felt a little hurtful and limiting (it may have

A mere ten games remain unopened at this point. I really need to rip the band-aid off and take at least a cursory look at everything before the twenty-five day halfway mark on this project. I keep hoping that the scope of this thing will somehow feel smaller once there aren't any more "what on earth even is this" titles looming... Waldorf's Journey (1-2P, Arcade, Platform) "Waldorf didn't go looking for adventure. He was just trying to enjoy a nice nap..." I'm not entirely sure what to make of this yet. There's something very "flash-game-coded" about it, but as someone that never drank that  deeply from the NewGrounds watering holes in the 90s, I'm struggling to back that impression up with any substantial references. A UFO 50 meta-animating force is starting to take shape though; this game is haunted by GOLF, of all things. Waldorf is as much another golf ball as he might be some sort of Flappy-Angry-Walrus-Icarus. It sure felt li