Nindies

01
Jan
2019
Minit

Minit

A Minute Review for a Minute Game

Greatness doesn’t need a large package. Jewelry and money fit into small boxes. The single steak dinner tastes better than the cheap buffet. A tab of LSD packs a wallop. Quality video games don’t always come from triple-A developers and contain hundreds of hours of content. Like Gorogoa and Limbo, Minit radiates briefly but brilliantly like a pigeon on fire.

It is a flawless specimen, a delectable slice of instant gratification. However, some people enjoy scarfing down twelve-packs of tacos from Taco Bell as opposed to savoring a six-ounce sirloin, so Minit isn’t for everyone. Thus, I present a quick survey to see if Minit is a match for you, a review captured in 60-word chunks without too much filler.

What is it?

Imagine a top-down NES version of Majora’s Mask, reduce the timer from three days to 60 seconds, and you have something resembling Minit. Our hero discovers a cursed sword which ends his days after a minute. You respawn at home at the beginning of each day, and it’s up to you to use your meager time to break the curse.

In order to adventure outside of the confines of your house, you’ll have to find items (like coffee, money, gardening gloves, and flashlights) to overcome obstacles and access new areas. You’ll stumble upon simple enemies and puzzles, but with your unlimited lives, the challenge comes from overcoming them within your time constraints and finding clues pointing toward your next objective.

What’s good?

  1. Minit extracts all filler to leave pure cocaine. No needless NPCs, barren landscapes, or repetitive quests. Just fast-paced progress and addiction.
  2. Two additional missions can be unlocked which change the gameplay: a harder, 45-second “New Game+” and an easy, no-timer mode.
  3. The visuals are stark and unique, and the soundtrack makes sweet love to your ears without risk of syphilis.

What’s bad?

  1. It’s short, like an hour if you just beat the main mode on any percentage, you heathen.
  2. If you ignore the timer mechanic, the game plays like an average adventure game. It’s kind of like how Harry Potter is about child abuse and neglect if you take out the magic.
  3. It has black-and-white graphics, which is awkward because that’s segregation.

What’s the verdict?

Just like a review with an arbitrary word count, experimental games live or die based on whether the experiment justifies mutilating a tried-and-true mechanic. These quirky games also tend to appeal more toward critics than the regular gamer, like the much loved and abhorred Gone Home. For those who can appreciate ingenuity over longevity, Minit passes the quality assurance test.

Arbitrary Statistics:

  • Score:  8.5
  • Time Played:  Over 5 hours
  • Number of Players:  1
  • Games Like It on Switch:  Kamiko, Blossom Tales:  The Sleeping Kings

Scoring Policy

Posted by Solomon Rambling in Review, 0 comments
04
Nov
2018
West of Loathing

West of Loathing

But Just East of Simply Amazing

I don’t need video games to get my fill of comedy.  I have TV shows, anime, and my success as an online writer for that.  Sure, Mario + Rabbids, Human: Fall Flat, and Death Squared all induce giggle fits, but I bought them for their gameplay, not their humor.  Video games just don’t seem to offer the same hilarity found in other entertainment mediums.  I’ve even devoted a video to this concept, discussing how few games manage to focus primarily on comedy and still play like an interactive experience.

West of Loathing (WoL) is a comedy gold rush while somehow remaining a competent RPG, echoing the quality of Paper Mario.  Unlike many popular TV shows, WoL doesn’t rely solely on situational gags, outrageous comparisons, or raunchy humor.  It’s not above those jokes, but it builds its foundation on satire, silliness, dry wit, and stick people.  In this sense, the game has more in common with Bojack Horseman than it does Octopath Traveler, and that should’ve been how I opened this review.  God damn it.    

What is it?

In a move that frightens all 20-something-year-olds, your protagonist decides to be an adult, leave home, and venture west to take care of himself. You choose one of three character classes (melee, magic, or ranged attacks), select an ability (lock-picking, foraging, bartering), and shove off. You’ll encounter a tutorial town to ease you into the game’s mechanics, and here you’ll also select your partner and horse to accompany you for the rest of your adventure.

The world of Loathing contains just about as many anomalies as it does jokes. Ever since the Cows Came Home, folks all over the West struggle to rebuild what the hell cows destroyed. An unseen necromancer now terrorizes the townsfolk by resurrecting the dead. A mysterious collection of futuristic technology lies dormant under the earth’s surface. Goblins mill about the land, speaking a language completely comprised of present participles. A guy named “Cactus Bill” turned into a cactus man after he drank too much cactus juice. This all is how nonsense became the only thing that makes sense in Loathing.

Gameplay, itself, is split into three parts: combat, puzzles, and exploration. Combat plays much as would you expect from a typical turn-based RPG. You have your standard attacks, specials which use AP, and items. Puzzles can be as simple as figuring out which part goes where, but a fair amount tasks you with deciphering witty word play, cracking codes, or remembering clues from previous conversations. Exploration plays a key part in finding side quests and quality loot. Keep to the beaten path, and WoL becomes a straightforward, short journey. Wander off this path to dive deep into the game’s lore and ludicrous humor.

What’s good?

  1. West of Loathing’s entire genome consists of great comedy. Often, humor is added to a game to make it more entertaining. However, the game, itself, is usually serious to a degree. As such, the humor grows from the content (ex. my jokes stem from my straightforward critique). In WoL, however, the content comes from the comedy. The developers began with a stick-figure gag and crafted a fully-functioning world of crude but expressive doodles.  Their parody of the generic RPG combat system reinvented combat, where absurdity determines power.  By satirizing everyday life, WoL transforms busywork (like fetch quests) into comedic sketches.  You may drown in text throughout the game, but it is at least a happy drowning.
  2. West of Loathing features a compelling combat system in which what you do outside of battle is often more important than your actions in the battle itself. You have an expansive list of skills and attributes to upgrade, and unless you invest carefully, you can end up with a hodgepodge of semi-functional abilities. Your stats are further buffed by potions, food, and drinks, but you can only consume as much as your liver, spleen, and stomach will allow. By ensuring your cowpoke is healthy, fed, and slightly tipsy, you’ll find you can steamroll past your enemies.
  3. Heading west offers a hefty journey, taking most players at least ten hours. Although WoL’s average play time pales in comparison to that of the typical RPG, the game still includes a substantial number of locations and side quests.

What’s bad?

  1. Despite creating such a novel combat system, WoL doesn’t implement it to its full extent. For the first act of three, the combat feels rewarding and challenging. However, as you grow beefier, you’ll swat down enemies like they’re preschoolers in a game of dodgeball. When you do encounter a complex fight requiring proper preparation and strategy to avoid death, you’ll wonder why most battles are won only by the strength of your pinky toe.
  2. Some of the puzzles will test your sanity. Unless your brain is as big as your ego, you’ll need nothing less than a workforce of nerds to solve them. One riddle requires you to remember the Naval semaphore code you learned from your grade school Military Communications class. Another asks you to recall specific measurements from a previous description you skimmed through and now can never access again. These brain teasers make you think hard, and by “think hard” I mean “look up everything on the internet.”
  3. West of Loathing could have done so much more with its lore. Although inherently comedic, the game delves into some dark places, but you only see glimpses of them in snippets of dialogue or small side quests. I enjoy happy romps as much as the next person, but I also like unfathomable sadness and destroyed families, you know?

What’s the verdict?

West of Loathing employs some of the most unusual humor to form an engaging and funny Western RPG. From bureaucratic ghost towns to D&D-obsessed soldiers to the constant presence of death that reminds us of own mortality, the world of Loathing bursts with satirical content. Those who abhor reading, RPGs, or merriment will likely not enjoy the game, but those looking for a nontraditional adventure will devour it. It’s no Red Dead Redemption with stick figures, but it carves its own path to the West just fine.

Arbitrary Statistics:

  • Score: 8.5
  • Time Played: Over 15 hours
  • Number of Players: 1
  • Games Like It on Switch: The South Park games, Undertale

Scoring Policy

Posted by Solomon Rambling in Review, 0 comments
31
Oct
2018
Treadnauts

Treadnauts

A Pleasant Panzer Party

Like a Swiss Army knife, the Nintendo Switch carries a couch multiplayer game to cater to just about any social situation. For large casual crowds, the Jackbox Party Packs or Super Mario Party can eliminate those long awkward periods of silence.  Games like TowerFall, Puyo Puyo Tetris, and Crawl can appeal to your geeky friends on game nights. The likes of Snipperclips, Overcooked 2, and Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime set the mood when you and your buddies enjoy both cooperation and high blood pressure. Even when you’re desperate for anything, there’s 1-2-Switch.

Treadnauts strives to blast a niche for itself in your multiplayer library by throwing you and your compatriots into a bunch of tanks to shoot and stomp each other into smithereens.  At first glance, this “competitive platform fighter” may look like a simplistic romp due to its basic premise: destroy the most tanks or survive the most rounds. Although it does boast accessibility, Treadnauts also offers surprisingly intense matches in which dexterity and acrobatics determine the true tank champions.

The developers strayed a little far from realism when designing the tanks. The war machines push forward relatively slowly on their treads but miraculously can climb walls and hang from ceilings. Holding ZL removes your traction entirely and sends you sliding across the arena. Each tank carries up to three shells which gradually refill over time, and tapping or holding X fires a straight or angled shot, respectively. The tanks can double jump, and firing mid-air sends them in the opposite direction of the shell. Using this recoil, you can reliably keep your vehicle in the air with consecutive shots.

The character select screen provides a space to practice with the controls, and once you’re ready, you and up to three humans/computers can move onto the arenas. You choose from four themed locales, each of which contains 10 unique stages (plus four unlockable ones) which cycle after each round. The variety goes a long way to keep the gameplay from going stale, and the developers fortunately added an option to mix and match stages between locales after the game’s release date.

Each round, itself, typically lasts under a minute. A single shell obliterates an opponent, and your treads can accomplish the same by crushing your enemies underneath them. In terms of defense, you’ll rarely outrun your attackers on the ground, but both your bullets and your treads (with enough momentum) can destroy enemy shots.  In the air, you can be nigh untouchable with proper shot placement.

Most players will have a grasp on the basics after two or three matches. After an hour or two of playtime, you’ll be comfortable with maneuvering through the air, positioning yourself for a stomp, or countering shots at you. However, even several hours into the game, you may never feel entirely in control of your tank. Treadnauts aspires to replicate the maneuverability of the cars in Rocket League, but the controls don’t provide that precision.  Aiming your tank mid-air can feel overly sensitive, resulting in misplaced jumps or shots. More frustratingly, your controls are reversed when your tank is upside-down. Your left is its right, and although this would make sense to anyone below the equator, it’s plain unintuitive for the rest of us.

As such, Treadnauts is better geared for casual competition as opposed to hardcore bloodbaths. However, you can customize your matches to play just about any way you want. Like a child with no fashion sense, you can mix and match whatever modifiers you like, such as slowing the gameplay, enhancing your tanks’ mobility, giving everyone jet packs, making everyone invisible, eliminating all in-stage items, creating teams, or replacing shells with lasers. If editing your own rules doesn’t appeal to you, Treadnauts offers preset rules like a no-frills competitive mode or “Sherman’s Chess” in which your bullets can freeze mid-air, creating a minefield out of the map.

As you play, you gain experience points, and each level up grants even more modifiers. The thrill of unlocking new content eventually turns into a chore as you realize one level equates to 6-7 multiplayer rounds.  The customization options enhance the gameplay and stand out as the main highlight of Treadnauts, so it’s confusing that the developers locked much of the content behind arbitrary point values. Unlocking everything can take up to ten hours or more, and grinding levels may wear at your sanity before you reach your goal.

For those who appreciate the cold isolation of a single-player mode, Treadnauts’ Target Test tasks players with destroying a smattering of targets under a set amount of time. Across the forty stages, you’ll need to slide, fly, and shoot perfectly to nail a gold or platinum medal. These medals yield considerable XP, but the time limits demand such flawless execution that you may struggle to even rank silver. Coupled with the aforementioned control issues, achieving the coveted gold on each stage takes dedication, payloads of time, and a bottle of aspirin. Without online leaderboards, Target Test will have little appeal to many players and leave you longing for other single-player options.

On the presentation side of things, Treadnauts adopts a light-hearted, cartoony look which sports quite a bit of character, from its overly distinctive tank pilots to its celebratory champagne shots to its snarky comments between rounds. The music complements the tone well enough but is usually lost amongst the sounds of explosions, engines, and the tears of the fallen. The game runs smoothly for the most part, but four-player matches can experience occasional frame rate issues.

Conclusion

Amongst the multitude of quality multiplayer Switch games, Treadnauts offers a quirky and inventive experience best enjoyed in 4-5 round increments. Its immediate accessibility engages new players in its frenetic action, and the huge menu of modifiers creates a substantial amount of variety for dedicated gamers. Even with competent bots and Target Test, this game isn’t for those going solo, and it asks a bit much from its players to fully master the controls or unlock all the content. Despite this, Treadnauts mixes the right amounts of chaos, skill, and strategy to liven your social situations with friendly competition and celebratory shouting matches.

Arbitrary Statistics:

  • Score: 7.5
  • Time Played: Over 5 hours
  • Number of Players: 1-4
  • Games Like It on Switch: Rocket Fist, TowerFall

Scoring Policy

Posted by Solomon Rambling in Review, 0 comments