xeneth.design

     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...

    At various times over the last month, I've been up late wracking my brain for what the next day's blog post should be about. In between prodding at several in-progress posts that have yet to cohere with an editing stick, I'll curse my foolishness at having not constrained the project to something orderly and sensical like, "play as much of a single game each day as you can, and just write about your impressions." Never mind that some of the weirder, more personal or experimental posts wouldn't exist! At least each day would be pre-scoped. Well, this thing is what it is at this point, and every now and then, I'm simply overlooking a part of the whole dizzying experience that I really should've been writing about... LIKE THE SOUNDTRACK     I can only assume this is because it's been such a constant companion throughout the process of writing all these posts. I'm constantly idling in one game or another while writing or editing. In fact, right...

  [Look at you, designer. You're a mess after all that intestinal spilling about your early failures to get back on the proverbial horse. Woefully behind on blogging, and not playing nearly enough UFO 50 , which this project is ostensibly all about...]     Apologies for the disruption; ol' day 39 here might just have to be a short high level check-in about how things are progressing. With Campanella  thoroughly coffeed out, I've been turning to its sequel a bit. I've gotta say, Campanella 2  makes a heck of a lot more sense when your UFO piloting skills aren't costing you any hit points just travelling between locations in these big levels! I'm still working out what most of the items do though trial-and-error, and the fuel management game is... interesting. There seems to be a lot of mechanical weight placed on the timing and order you collect stars in, and there may be some tricky advantages to getting as much done on foot as possible. Problem is, in tiny Min...

      Getting caught up in the work-like rhythms of this project has perhaps caused it to become slightly  less personal over time. There was initially a lot of frustrated "whatever, I guess this is what I'm doing now" energy that sort of burned off as I began to focus on what made each UFO 50  game special; broadly, these games are far  more interesting than my own problems and limitations as a game designer. Well, playing what amounts to a more focused console version of SimAnt  has put me right back in my feelings today. When I wrote about my reaction to playing CombatAnts  for the first time, I wasn't fully ready to unpack some of those memories and experiences. Apologies in advance for once again getting way too real about my past... So when I say that StarCraft had a huge, but not necessarily positive, impact on me as a teenager, I mostly mean that it changed me in several ways, but not into someone that generally enjoys real time strateg...

    When I first played Campanella way back on Day 7 , it was such a struggle just to keep the UFO from running into walls, let alone earn enough lives to make it past World B. The controls are good and responsive enough that it was clear this was my fault, but BOY did it take some time to get where I am now with the game. In my most recent run, I deftly collected all forty steaming mugs of coffee and defeated the final boss with over   thirty  extra lives to spare! The way Campanella  handles feels so precise and buttery smooth once you internalize the muscle memory for how much thrust you need. Without this excellent gamefeel, there wouldn't be nearly so much heft to the UFO Soft fiction of this being the title that really solidified their status as a game studio; not just some department inside of LX Systems, Inc. Being the eventual inspiration for the studio name is load bearing, in the lore sense, so I can tell an effort was made to make you feel the impa...

    So, I've had a bit of a hard time getting into Rock On! Island . This is partially because I don't generally play a lot of tower defense games; I've never touched any  Bloons TD , which from the outside seems like it must be seminal given the number of sequels and its placement on digital storefronts. Long ago, I probably took a little dip in  Defense Grid  and thought, "Neat!" before returning to the rivers and lakes that I'm used to. It just isn't a series of waterfalls that I tend to migrate up casually, and there simply has to be a way to escape this TLC metaphor I appear to be trapped in! All I'm saying is that I'm a tower defense scrub - ENOUGH! I've lost a bunch, and have slowly been learning weird tricks like putting chickens next to fires or spending meat while the dinos are active. Things that would have let me start kicking this game's butt MUCH sooner had I known about them. ...but that's just how UFO 50  is, right? We...

     This has come up a couple of times now, but I'm on record as claiming that " UFO 50  is haunted by the spirit of golf games." Let's dig into what that means. Why does it feel like "video golf" is some sort of mechanically animating force across multiple titles? Did Derek Yu stumble across a Neo Turf Masters  cabinet at a very influential time in his life? Does he hear " ON THE GREEN! " in a high-pitched digitized voice as he drifts off to sleep at night? [You have this strange obsession with Neo Turf Masters  despite never having played it. In fact, you haven't really tried to get into any golf game other than Ribbit King since getting your ass kicked in Mario Golf  on the N64 by the coffee shop stoner girls you used to work with... Make of that what you will!] Now that I've at least come to grips with all fifty games, what better way to go hunting in the proverbial rough than to interrogate their designs one-by-one in search of go...

       Well, that wasn't so bad after all! I've been struggling to juggle writing and editing time here with actually playing more UFO 50 , and part of that has been apprehension about the various games I don't seem to be inherently good at. It's easy to make challenge mountains out of molehills though; once I actually sat down with OverBold  and focused, getting the gold cartridge on this one came relatively easily! Of course this is by spending a ton on upgrades and never increasing the risk/reward more than once each round. Nailing the cherry might take a lot more practice and strategies I haven't even considered, but that's probably for another day. "The second game to star the space pirate Alpha. A third game is already in the works... Get ready!" Now that I think about it, is that theoretical third Alpha title actually one of this set of 50? Glancing through the ones fictionally released after Overbold , that's looking like a no. This really ...

     UFO 50  is really making me want a Steam Deck. Anecdotally, the games are such a perfect fit for a handheld platform that many people with high anticipation picked up the hardware as a sort of "christening purchase" for it; feels like I've seen a fair bit of "my brand new Steam Deck is great for playing  UFO 50 " on social media, (though to be fair, I mostly follow games journalists and indie game devs). As the owner of a Miyoo Mini Plus, I can certainly attest to handhelds feeling like a natural fit for exploring games of the past, (or just games that feel  a little like games of the past). Part of it must be the small screen making things look nice and crisp. Many old games were originally played on what would be considered pretty small televisions by today's standards. And without the help of a real-time signal processing device like a Retro-TINK, the pixel art of yesteryear looks very strange to me when rendered in gigantic, crisp 4K. I would say t...

[Until one of these many different posts you're partially through the process of writing becomes post-able, I suppose we'll just have to make do with another pile of disorganized notes about why you think you might be struggling to get into some of the better games in the collection...] UFO 50  games that have been "resistant to more play despite..." (discounting the usual friction that comes from lacking the skillz to do more than practice, practice, practice) Party House (0 Scenarios Beaten...) My approach may simply be too linear: Assumption that scenario 1 "Alien Invasion" is the easiest is logical/likely, but the goal/pattern might not necessarily be the most fun to repeatedly attempt Being unable to make a "Dancer Strategy" work shouldn't prevent me from trying others The game plays faster than I do: Spammier inputs Less thinking - (analysis paralysis rearing its head once again) Unwillingness to "play by the rules:" Refusing t...