February 13, 2024 (Originally posted on Neocities)
Despite having a busy weekend, I found time to play a few demos. I didn’t play any VR demos this time but there were still weird games.
Harold Halibut
This was the biggest download but that’s apparently due to the high-quality graphics resulting from scanning in handmade props. It looks like a fairly convincing stop-motion marionette kinda deal, though combining the stop-motion lip sync with the smoother marionette motions seems a bit weird because I’m not sure how in realistic terms they would be having stop motion mouths on a marionette while it’s moving. Despite that minor nitpick, the game does look pretty good overall. The story involves living as a lab assistant on a generation ship that crashed on an ocean planet and has settled in with a water-based corporation acting as the government and all its bureaucracy, a pretty typical British sci-fi setting, complete with some cheeky humour and such. The gameplay is generally point and click but with a controller recommended so it’s not a complex interface, mainly just walk over to things and click on them. There is a sprint button at least because the walk speed is a bit slow for any backtracking. It might have an interesting story unfolding and the pacing and cutoff point for this demo is pretty well-done, though it is a slower-paced one overall. Also the small amount of puzzles I encountered were largely talked through by NPCs, aside from having to decipher how a drain control computer worked which I worked out fairly easily through understanding UI language. This could be a pretty neat game to unwind with, though if you plan to pick this one up, anticipate reserving a AAA-sized chunk of drive space just in case.
Lightyear Frontier
Farming simulator, but with mechs on an alien world. Cool concept, and the gameplay seems to generally work by being able to do most things in the mech while being on foot for very specific things like entering small caves and such, but I’m just not in a mood for a farming game right now. At the moment I’m waiting for Slime Rancher 2 to be nearly done before I dive into that. On that note, I feel like the process of watering and sucking up water should be done with the same tool ideally instead of two separate ones like this game. It would make things more efficient and less having to swap tools with equip animations between them each time. Maybe it’s an upgrade for later but I feel like it’s pretty important in general. Also perhaps combining the seed guns with another vacuum. Long story short I think I’ve just been spoiled with prior experience using the vacuum gun in Slime Rancher. There are also random artifacts to find in this which also unlock cosmetic type items in case you want some kinda ancient-futuristic furniture. Also I’m pretty sure this is more meant to be multiplayer with co-op to get more things done during short days.
Summerhouse
From what I played, this seems like a 2D house stamping tool to make a 2.5D kinda model to look at. Pretty small thing here. Not really my thing though, I was kinda thinking it’d be more 3D. I just downloaded this one on impulse to see what it was. If it turns out I missed a way to make it actually fully 3D or some way to at least move the stamp parts to different Z layers then that wasn’t made clear to me.
Pacific Drive
I figured I should at least give this one a look given it’s apparently a fairly anticipated release along with its demo being popular. While it’s not really a genre I’m feeling at the moment, I can see some appeal here. The gameplay is generally taking this beat-up-looking vehicle on runs to randomized routes to search for items to advance any plot there is as well as supplies. The vehicle is said to be some kind of living entity within the supernatural zone located somewhere in Washington state this game takes place in, though I didn’t see that kind of behavior in the demo. The demo also only covers the intro and a tutorial run so I didn’t see any further mechanics I’d heard of looking through the page and the settings including “quirks” of the vehicle that probably evolve later on to benefit or detriment. Mainly I noticed a lack of traction when driving but that could have just been bad tires. Also I appreciate how I was able to easily swap between a controller for driving and the mouse and keyboard combo for running around on foot. There were some weird entities of sorts I did see, like random mannequins on the side of a road I avoided completely due to that whole horror trope, and then this UFO-looking junk pile that attempted to grapple my car and slam it into some rocks. It’s a generally neat presentation but again I’m not sure this game is for me.
Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip
In terms of driving games, here’s another demo. The titular Terry wants to drive to space, to the point of wanting a job without pay just because it offers a car. Namely being a taxi driver but lacking a passenger seat. Long story short, this game feels a lot like Simpsons Hit and Run. From how the cars feel a little floaty to drive to there being just one song that plays while driving while music on foot is fairly limited, as well as how running over random pedestrians causes them to flop and roll around like cylinders instead of actual ragdolls, and how it’s possible to drive other people’s cars by riding along in them instead of being in the driver’s seat, plus the ability to smash the heck out of NPC cars and still be able to ride them around. I wasn’t expecting a game to pull from that specific approach but it’s an interesting one. Of course the world is fairly wacky overall from the character designs to any interaction with an NPC. I feel like this game would be a fun diversion to screw around with for a bit while figuring out how to drive to space.
Those sure were some demos. While modern gaming in general seems to be burning a whole lot of people out, at least there’s some interesting stuff out there still. Most recently there’s been a long-awaited Portal mod I’ve been playing through when I have a moment and anything else I’m looking at getting back to is either some older big games, some strange indie stuff, or maybe some more recent big games from last year and such. I’m still on track to having my Game Pass expire this fall so maybe I’ll see what I feel like doing over there more before then. At the very least it pretty much paid for itself with the points I got out of it and what weird games I was able to check out.