xeneth.design

     Frustrated at my inability to make any meaningful headway in the unconventional deckbuilder Party House , I blew the digital dust and pixellated cobwebs off a cute little number that goes by the name of: Rock On! Island (April, 1987, 1P, Strategy) "Rally your cavemen and defend your cave from waves of attacking dinosaurs." It's not easy to tell in the art, but the main character of  Rock On! Island  is technically a girlboss chieftainess named Zola that's calling all the caveman shots! This is actually a shockingly normal tower defense game with the minor twist that you're controlling an upgradeable hero unit capable of helping out all your stationary turret guys. I'm pretty sure this capable protagonist factor is regularly a thing in 3D tower defense games that have been hybridized with shooters and RPGs, like Sanctum , Orcs Must Die! , and Dungeon Defenders , meaning what freshness this title has comes more from applying modern patterns to a more classi

[The hour grows late. Too late for blogging. You've got to post something.] Time for a somewhat painful progression check-in. I continue to tinker with the games I'm already interested in, much to my own chagrin. Gold-ing and cherry-ing cartridges is always going to be appealing thanks to my completionist nature, but there are still plenty of games I absolutely should have dusted off by now and haven't. Some of those red "complete" games up there still manage to pull time occasionally: Bushido Ball (Best Time... 00:09:47.528 , Fighters Used: 6/6 , Fighters Won With: 5/6 ) I've managed to win the tournament without continuing as five of the six characters, but the final and most technical fighter, Yamada, requires a very different approach and muscle memory. He can only dash forward or backward, and while his spear gives him excellent vertical coverage, it's predicated on great timing. Those bombs are powerful, but require setup and prediction to master. Th

     I've been grappling with a couple of the  UFO 50  puzzle games of late, namely Camouflage  and Block Koala . "Find the order of operations" puzzlers like this appeal to me a lot because they tend to sport clean, nostalgic single screen designs. In practice though, I'm not some sort of Baba is You  level conqueror of such challenges; the levels that demonstrate mechanics are a breeze, but it's easy to get overwhelmed later and have part of the problem slip through my mental cracks while trying to grasp the big picture. Maintaining play momentum on all these games has meant the strategy thus far consists of puzzling out a level or two and then bouncing out to something that requires more practice, and less... staring at a grid and thinking. Still,, the way every level of progress counts and is saved can feel like a progressive balm out here in a scorching sea of arcade-style games. A large portion of UFO 50 's catalogue is about sitting down and performing

[Since you're too busy exploring Vainger  at the moment to edit your notes down into anything intelligible, we'll once again have to make do with a pile of your unvarnished observational ramblings...] SEASIDE DRIVE somehow knows that it's spooky season?!      After fancifully writing about the transition between the first and second level, I break on through to the end of the game and discover that level three is 2 spooky 4 you : Blood red homing skulls Cheeky tongue sheet ghost shooters Ghastly chain chomp specters Cyclopean charging tombstone golems THE MOON itself turns out to be one eye of a celestial angry face wielding a master hand!? Grandma made me some pies!  (If you know, you know) Why are the majority of the  Seaside Drive  credits posted in the form of first and last initials? A nod to Japanese companies trying to obfuscate roles to make poaching more difficult? Maybe by 1989 other companies were fictionally sniffing around UFO Soft. (This is the final year of

     Sticking with this project is becoming pretty challenging. Sure, fifty days is a long time, but the current point of friction is specifically that other cool games just keep on releasing. I'd love to take a UFO 50 break and binge on other stuff, but the next blog entry can't randomly be about Zelda or indie horror! No wonder I played so much freaking Night Manor  instead of blowing the pixel cobwebs off any of these 20 remaining titles; apparently, I've got an undiagnosed case of the October spookies! [Twenty games seems like quite a lot to have grayed out at this late stage. What's it going to take to get that menu fully lit up?] Alright, as an exercise, I'm going to use the sort function to randomize the main menu, and the first five unopened games in the order are gonna get played. The catch is, I only get a single life or continue before having to move on. "Game Over" means try something new. First impression gauntlet go! Rakshasa (1P, Platform

  Porgy (March, 1986, 1P, Adventure, Shooter) "Strange happenings near the coast! Dive deep and get to the bottom of what's fishy in the sea." "The first title released under the new UFO Soft brand." I've been diving into this "sub-nautic adventure" lately, in search of a UFO 50 title that pairs well with podcasts and second screen content. The whole setup and presentation of an oceanic researcher trying to get to the bottom of why all the local sea life have become video game enemies is very charming! I'm perhaps slightly less charmed by the submarine's brand of anthropomorphization. It reminds me of the Cars  franchise, with its giant eyeballs in place of viewports. Of course this is what makes the yellow sub look a bit like a titular porgy fish in the first place, so I may just have to chalk this up to my usual brand of overthinking things. Unlike the Disney vehicles, this one has a human pilot inside and she does the talking, but I don