April! Four months into the new year and I’m pretty pleased that I’ve managed to keep this up as a regular series on this blog. It was a better month than March for certain, as far as video games went. Playing this month’s games felt a lot less like a chore, I think because I wasn’t putting an arbitrary pressure on myself to schedule reviews for games I didn’t feel like finishing, which is what I ended up doing last month to my own detriment. April was all about vibes and what I felt like playing in the moment, and I was happy with that, so I’m gonna try not to impose restrictions on myself like that going forward.
So, with that in mind, I hope the vibes paid off and you get to read about a cool game that sounds neat. Here’s everything I played in April 2024!
What I Finished
To be honest, I’ve had a harder time lately committing to games long enough to see them through to their credits, for a lot of reasons. General work exhaustion, for one, but also the general sensation that a lot of the games I was playing felt very samey in a lot of ways. I was getting tired of games in general for a while, and that sucks because video games are amazing!
Dragon’s Dogma 2 was exactly the shot in the arm I needed these past couple months. It is genuinely a game like no other; an absolute triumph of systems, mechanics and themes coalescing into a singular, beautiful adventure. I haven’t really played anything like it, and I likely won’t again. It’s genuinely incredible, and I’d be shocked if any other games top it this year. Then again, I love surprises.
Speaking of surprises, I wasn’t quite prepared for how insanely good Scarlet Hollow ended up being. The game is a visual novel developed by Black Tabby Games, the duo behind Slay the Princess, one of my favourite games of last year and probably some of the best fiction writing I’ve experienced.
Scarlet Hollow is a little different, given that it’s episodic and therefore not quite done yet. Given the framing device for the story is the week prior to a funeral, where every segment takes places across a single day, it’s safe to assume the game will cap out at seven episodes. So far, only four episodes have been released, with the fifth close to completion, so we’re looking at a good long wait before the narrative wraps up fully. That’s not an issue, though; what’s here already is incredible.
I started writing a much longer segment here, but I want to do a separate post talking about this game and why it’s worth playing if you like visual novels and horror stories, because I sincerely want people to try it, and that’s not gonna happen in a post that gets maybe 3 views max. Don’t worry, I’m fine with that; I do these posts for fun and therapy. Anyways, until I write a larger post, play Scarlet Hollow!!
The rest of my finished games are ones I ended up writing longer posts about, so this section ought to be easier than usual! Open Roads is a narrative adventure game by some of the developers behind Gone Home and Tacoma. It was originally being developed by the same team as those games, Fullbright, but due to reports of poor working conditions and numerous individuals quitting as a result – mostly women – who felt devalued and belittled by the game’s director. The director left the project amidst the Kotaku exposé which brought this to light, the Fullbright name was pulled from development, and the project was restarted with an entirely independent workforce, some of whom still worked on the game prior to this.
It’s kinda heartbreaking to hear about this game’s tumultuous journey to release day, because it’s actually a really lovely story told with care, and I really enjoyed it. Knowing the background after the fact, I can see where the corners might have been cut to get this game out the door, but I think the result is a hyper-focus on telling this story and sparing no fluff, and it really succeeds in that. Oftentimes, limitations in an artistic work can lead to interesting creative choices which help rather than hinder. I think that’s what happened here, and I’m very fond of it. Here’s my full review if you want to hear more!
The other games that occupied my month were the FAR duology: Lone Sails and Changing Tides. They’re a couple of narrative puzzle platformers from 2018 and 2022 respectively, which I’d somehow not played until now despite this being exactly the kind of game I tend to fuck with. And yeah, I fucked with them! I’m gonna link my review of the games here and let that speak for itself, but TL;DR: they’re really good!
What I Started
Unlike last month, I actually played a lot more games in April! I tried at least some indie games, and those were mostly hits!
I started off by trying out In Stars and Time. It’s a game I’d seen before on the PlayStation store and seemed neat. I was especially sweet on the visuals, which are entirely monochrome, and the character designs looked really endearing. Plus, I’m a sucker for a good lil RPG, so when it showed up in a Steam sale, I was willing to give it a go.
The game opens in a quaint little town with a few funny NPCs. Pretty standard indie RPG fare, though what stood out right away to me was going into the menu and noticing that everyone was already level 45, and this was the end of the journey for this party. Much of the early fun of this game is hearing about bits and pieces of your adventure from your friends and other folks in the village repeating the tales.
Actually, I kinda got the impression that I wasn’t the main character of this story. That would be Mirabelle, a disciple of the Change God who the townsfolk seem to believe has been blessed with the divine power to defeat the King and save the world. You’re the team rogue, Siffrin: a lockpicker, trap detector and key finder, who seems quite happy to slip into the background of any conversation.
However, you aren’t playing as Mirabelle. You are Siffrin, and there’s good reason for that. I truly think this is one of those games that’s best if you go in knowing as little as possible, so I don’t want to give away the core conceit that ties the game together. I will say that considering I was expecting this to be a breezy little adventure is finish in a couple sittings, and the reality is much more complicated, and far more impressive.
This game is set in a fascinating fantasy world that is, for lack of a better descriptor, so insanely transgender. I never stopped wanting to know more about the Change faith, the different countries the party originated from, the weird Vaugardian customs…rarely am I so excited to hear more about a game’s world like I am here, and the game’s design facilitates a curious player looking to learn more. The party themselves are also really cute; an oddball mishmash of dorks and weirdos brought together by circumstance and becoming unlikely friends in the process. I love them all dearly. I haven’t finished the game yet, but I would very much like to, so that’ll have to wait until May.
What likely won’t make a repeat appearance next month, however, is Noita, not because it’s bad though. I’m not usually very into roguelikes; I like them fine, and often enjoy the format, but a lot of them lean too much on their gameplay and not enough into storytelling for my liking. Hades is, in my mind, one of the good ones, melding narrative and mechanics beautifully, making me want to go back for more of both.
Noita, on the other hand, is basically just gameplay. I’m sure there is a story or lore hidden in here somewhere, but from what I’ve played, it doesn’t seem important. However, that hasn’t stopped me from absolutely loving it, despite everything. The main gimmick of Noita is that, in the words of its Steam page, “a world in which every pixel is physically simulated”. It’s difficult to describe what that means in words, because in many ways the mechanic speaks for itself, but I’ll try. Basically, it means every object is made up of individual pixels, and those pixels can be separated in all sorts of ways. For example, if you lob a bomb into a wall, the explosion will leave an accurately rendered crater rather than simply removing the affected object entirely On top of that, each pixel has an assigned property which will react differently when combined with other properties, such as fire touching wood, leading to more fire, or oil rising to the top when mixed with water.
It sounds incredibly simple, but it’s a technical marvel in practice. It also makes for some truly chaotic moments where shit will react with other shit and cause a series of dilemmas that more likely than not result in your little magician guy getting obliterated. The game is also really punishing if you try to play it as a straightforward magic action game, encouraging you to tinker with the systems and find creative avenues to beat foes and navigate the winding underground. Beyond all that, some incredibly sound design and carefully placed musical cues result in vibes that are just immaculate.
I’m extremely fond of Noita and everything it’s doing, so why won’t I talk about it again? To be honest, I get the impression that this is pretty much the whole thing. Everything I like about it will remain that way, without much evolution. That’s not a criticism, really; it just shows how strong the foundations are here that I’m not interested in dragging it for that. I think I’ll be playing it for a while yet, so I’ll let you know if it surprises me later on. But if it stays the same, I can’t say I’d be disappointed by any means. The vibes are just that good.
On the topic of vibes, very few games can hope to defeat Below, the 2018 survival roguelite game by Capy Games. Their catalogue isn’t especially illustrious, but they’ve found success in a few titles. I was stoked about this game all the way back in 2013, when it was announced during Microsoft’s E3 conference. I wasn’t really into those kinds of games – I was unfortunately a devout FIFA girlie back in those days – but something about it clicked with me. This was around the same time I was exploring the artistic potential of video games with titles like The Walking Dead and Papers Please, so I was definitely on the hunt for new flavours.
So, I waited patiently to hear more and…nothing. Behind the scenes, development on the game had stagnated and in 2016 was delayed indefinitely so the team could finish other projects. It eventually released at the end of 2018, by which time I’d basically forgotten it existed. Cut to April 2024 and I finally decided to give it a go, and it’s really good!
What I enjoy the most about Below is how hands off it is. It’s a game about figuring out the way the world works, and adapting your abilities to suit it, and it’s so much fun to exist in the space. Not to mention, it’s a super vibey experience. Jim Guthrie’s brooding score captures the ominous task ahead of you, and also the little moments of light in between the stretches of darkness. The dude is a master of his craft, and I’d recommend checking out anything and everything he’s made in the past.
The survival mechanics initially felt like an arbitrary inclusion, and to a certain extent they still do, but I do acknowledge that they add a tension to the experience that would be lost were the game simply reliant on its admittedly simplistic enemy types and combat options. The threat of hunger and thirst breathing down your neck means you can’t relax too much, and makes choosing which way to go at a fork in the road feel incredibly consequential. You can’t realistically explore every single part of the map on every run through it, and Below knows this. It wants you to make tough choices informed by your circumstances, and live with them.
Overall, I’m actually really fond of Below and I’m quite surprised by the mixed reception it was met with upon release. It’s a really confident and demanding game that asks a lot and returns to you knowledge for future runs. It’s possible that a lot of people don’t find the gameplay loop very rewarding, but as someone who adores adventure games for the simple act of adventuring, it’s all I need. I look forward to playing some more.
What else, what else? Let’s rapid fire a couple games I’ve either written about already or don’t have much to say about. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is a new JRPG I’ve been sinking my teeth into lately and I’m definitely a fan. I wrote a whole post about my early thoughts on the game which you can read here. I played like 30 hours of Fallout 4 and have shockingly little to say about the experience. I think that game is really fun and I enjoy the time I spend with it, but at a certain point it does devolve into an amorphous slop game where most of the missions involve mindless busy work. This is my second attempt at playing this game and I’m pretty sure I tapped out at the exact same point in the story, so make of that what you will.
And that’s about it! April was definitely a more productive month for me in terms of playing games and writing about them, so I’m pretty happy with it overall. I’m hoping that May brings ever more lovely opportunities, especially since there’s a nice big window of big games not releasing, which means I get to dig through my library a little for some gems. Until then though, sayonara!
There Is No Sleep 
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