Month: July 2015

Posted by: TepidSnake (Twitter: @SarahSSowertty)

Helen’s Mysterious Castle is.a Windows RPG, created in RPG School 2000 by Satsu (who’s made several other small-scale RPGs) that was translated and released on Playism in 2014. Normally this isn’t my sort of thing as I am completely terrible at RPGs- I almost never complete them- but with a recommended playtime of about 4 hours, I figured I might actually finish this one. As Helen, a girl who can’t remember her origins and can only speak in ‘?’ and ‘!’, you set off to find your way off the floating castle she lives in. The story isn’t too special, although it’s got a lot of charm and a lighthearted tone that still sticks around even after the serious parts of the plot kick in. That said, the story is told in a neat way- a lot of details are things you have to find yourself after you’re allowed to read the game’s signs and books, and a character who joins later has expository chatter for every room in the game.

Where the game shines is the battle system, which is simple to pick up but has a lot of neat little details that make fights really fun! Each weapon you can use is set to a ‘wait’ timer- wait the allotted time and you’ll use it, but every enemy attack also has this timer, so they’ll go first if your wait time is longer. The four core weapon types have different attributes tied to this wait time- bows are weak but have short wait periods, swords have medium wait times but let you defend, shields don’t attack but reduce/nullify damage taken while you wait, and spells are powerful and pierce through shields but have long wait times. As a result, the battles are pretty engaging as it’s a matter of timing and planning ahead- with the right move choices, you can conquer any foe with little damage!

The way the game handles its inventory and levelling-up systems is a little different too- you earn EXP during battle but use this to level up your items (except stat-boosting ones) which you can only have eight of at a time, and raising a weapon’s level can make it more powerful or reduce its wait time. Later you also get access to a blacksmith who can refine items (including stat-boosters) to make them even stronger. There’s only a handful of each type of weapon and item, but there’s enough differences between them that you’ll pick a favourite. This simple inventory stuff ties in with another of the game’s strengths, that it’s super-friendly, with a lot of features added to make the game easier to get to the end of- you’re very clearly prompted if you want to fight or run before a boss battle, a room you find later in game keeps any items you’ve had to drop so you can get them back, and dying restarts you either at your home or the inn with a steak ready for you which permanently raises your HP. While this doesn’t make the game challenging, the fact that you have to plan a little for battles and figure out strategies for each enemy means it still feels satisfying to progress, there’s just a few safety nets to help you along.

I often find that I enjoy short games a lot more, and Helen’s Mysterious Castle is a gem of a tiny RPG, with the one downside being that it can sometimes be easy to have no idea where to go (as a hint, there are some areas where you can go into the walls, and these are usually telegraphed in some way) but aside from that this is an easy recommendation to try- it’s available from its Playism page. Beyond the cut, we just have a few extra screenshots of other parts of the game, and while I’ve done my best to avoid any spoilers, if you’d like to go in completely blind then go no further!

( Just some choice moments and enemies from the game beyond the cut! )

Posted by: softchassis

 Sometimes the simplest games are the best ones, and Gekitotsu Yonku Battle (which can be roughly translated as “Four-wheel Crash Battle”) certainly fits that bill– Irem’s NES output seemed to range from unique and complex like Sqoon to just simple and fun like Gekitotsu Yonku Battle.

In what could be described as a “vehicular combat game”, all you do in Gekitotsu Yonku Battle is drive your Formula One car into other Formula One cars.  Any time the front of one vehicle collides with any other vehicle, the latter vehicle gets knocked away.  How far the vehicles get knocked away depends on the car’s speed.  Knock an enemy car into an obstacle such as a wall, and that car will take damage until it explodes, and the same goes for you!

You start each of the game’s levels with a quota of rivals (teki) to destroy, though this number can be decreased by picking up special flags.  Every few stages is a bonus stage where you have to pick up a number of flags under a time limit.  You also unlock more cars as you go along, though the differences between the cars is mostly cosmetic.

The challenge arises through the increasingly complex stages, which get more and more congested with walls to get bumped into, as well as oil slicks that make you lose control of your car.  As an additional challenge, when you get knocked away, you don’t regain control until your car loses all its momentum, meaning you can bump into one wall and keep sliding and bump into another wall.  This can combo a lot of your health away, and before you know it, you’ve lost!

There isn’t much more to the game than that!  It’s a simple little time waster that I stumbled upon on one of those online NES emulators in middle school that wasn’t blocked by the school’s internet filter.  Give it a try if you have some time to kill and just want to play a silly little game with fun sounds and visuals.

comments
Source: rainbowgames DW

Posted by: softchassis

When I was in Middle School, I bought one of these, one of those unlicensed “[impossible number]-in-1” NES on a chip controllers with tons of NES games on it. I saw it in a little toy shop in a mall, hooked up to a TV as a display model, and even though these kinds of things had been around for ages, this was the first I’d ever heard of one or seen one. It was such a novel concept to young teenage me, someone who had grown up on emulators because we couldn’t afford many games.  How did they manage to squeeze all those games into one controller? Amazing! I of course know better now, but I still remember being amazed all the same.

So, I bought the little controller, and I probably spent an equal amount of time–if not more–playing it as I did my Wii. I learned about a few neat NES games I would’ve never heard of otherwise through this little controller, such as the (in my opinion) superior version of Tetris by Tengen, Yie-Ar Kung Fu, Karateka… but the game which wowed me the most, which I still play to this day on occasion, was Sqoon.

Sqoon is a horizontal shoot-em-up like Gradius, except in a novel-for-the-time twist, you control a little pink submarine underwater instead of a spaceship in space. Aside from having a unique setting, Sqoon is also a fairly unique shoot-em-up all its own.

A little intermission on the title screen, complete with an SOS in Morse code, says that Neptunians have invaded the Earth and are melting the ice caps. It’s up to you to pilot the Sqoon submarine and beat back their assault, before it’s too late!

In actuality though, it seems you may already be too late! Each stage starts out with a peaceful little tropical tune as you travel over an underwater city, appearing to be based on various locales from across the world.

Still, those Neptunians have to pay. How does Sqoon fight these alien invaders? Well, you have two weapons at your disposal in Sqoon–a torpedo that shoots straight ahead, and a depth charge that travels diagonally towards the sea floor. While the torpedoes and depth charges can both hurt any biological enemy, you need to use the depth charges specifically to destroy flashing things which your torpedoes have no effect on.

The main enemies in the game are the Neptunians, which are cute little alien things which travel in all sorts of unique ways. These big one-eyed creatures travel in a loop-de-loop across the screen, for example. The enemy patterns keep the game fresh and interesting.

Towards the sea floor is a container with a flashing cap on it, which we need to destroy with the depth charges. What’s in the container?

Captured earthlings! We need to rescue them before they drown or get eaten by the killer whales which always follow Sqoon around.

Once you have 9 earthlings aboard Sqoon, a ship appears on the surface of the ocean where you can deposit them. Your reward is either a stronger weapon or more fuel, the latter of which you can also get from bombing crabs with depth charges.

And that’s the basic formula of Sqoon–shoot alien sea creatures and free their captives. The levels get longer and longer and the enemy patterns get more and more complex as the game goes on. Being an early NES game, it’s very arcade-y, but it’s a lot of fun! The colorful yet grim setting is also a neat anachronism which I think adds to this game’s charm.

Sqoon doesn’t appear to have been very popular at the time, as it hasn’t had any re-releases or really any mention at all outside of its initial release, which is a shame as I think it’s one of the better horizontal shoot-em-ups out there.

comments
Source: rainbowgames DW

Posted by: jackvambrace

Wine and Roses is and RPG Maker game published in late 2012. You play as a trio of exorcists under the employ of Luc Francisco, Lord of Fort Adder. The fort has been taken by monsters and spirits and such, cursing everything and everyone in it and leaving Lord Francisco a skeleton.

The game presents as a typical top down jrpg, with some uniqueness. There are no random encounters, instead each enemy you can fight is visible on the map, allowing you to choose when and what you fight. When you win a fight it disappears forever. and you are gifted upgrades, loot, skills, and story tidbits. It feels kinda like Megaman, you fight a boss and get a new weapon or power and most of the time another enemy is weak to your new equipment.

During the fights you control the three exorcists, Carmanth, Argent, and Nynavae. Luc is incapable of fighting in his skeletal form, so he instead offers advice and color commentary on the fight as it progresses. This is used as a gameplay mechanic to kinda help you figure out what to do against some of the tougher enemies, but it is also used a storytelling element. Luc is usually not being a smarmy jerk he sometimes offers insight into his past and personality, I really liked this part of the game.

The maps are laid out so that you can pretty much go everywhere at the outset, it reminds me a little of Demon Souls. Some fights are definitely easier at the start (I think the ice sector was way harder than the rest) but you can try whatever you like. If you lose a fight it just boots you back to the map where you were, so there’s no real penalty for losing. This may be the most forgiving and inviting RPG I’ve ever played.

At the end of it all Wine and Roses was fun to play. On top of that, it was funny, emotional, and challenging without being off-putting. Only real complaint is that it’s short, maybe four hours, although there is a fair bit of replay if you like toying around with the exorcists loadouts. I recommend this to anyone who likes rpg’s or silly skeletons with dressed like red mages.

comments
Source: rainbowgames DW