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52 Games Challenge 2024!!!!!
dhaabi:
49. Soupsoup || Mobile || 12.21.24
While wanting to play another hidden object game for mobile to pass idle time, I found myself attracted to Soupsoup. Admittedly, the bulk of my playing experience was during the springtime of this year, but I did revisit it shortly before collecting my thoughts.
Generally, Soupsoup adheres to the basics of the hidden object puzzle genre without deviating much, which means that players must fully rely on a careful eye to study the game's complex and often chaotic environments. To help provide some sort of direction, descriptions which add context and clues as to where the object to find may be are present. To a degree, these hints do help, but there are a majority which provide no benefit and instead are only commentary for the illustrated scene. Puzzles are designed by various creators, so how a creator decides to write their object description differs for better or for worse. With a detailed game like this being built for smaller screens, the ability to zoom in and out in addition to changing screen orientation is also available, but the ability to enlarge the preview image of the hidden objects themselves can't which often made looking for them much more difficult. And while the majority of hidden objects are aimlessly scattered throughout the illustration, a fair number of them are only revealed after interacting with the environment. There's no indication as to whether objects are actually embedded into the image or need to be added, so fully solving certain puzzles was more difficult than it should have been. Something else I'll briefly mention here is that it's irritating how the hidden object column resets its position every time an object is found, so the player is forced to cycle back through to where they previously were to know what to find next.
As mentioned above, stages are incredibly varied in design and art style as a result of all sorts of artists being involved. To me, this is the game's biggest strength as most puzzles felt unique from one another. And because of this, certain puzzles are designed to more difficult as a direct result of art styles. Subtle animations are employed in various places in a majority of puzzles, including objects that have already been identified too. Across the game's many stages, certain artists will be repeatedly featured, but very few feel similar to each other. A small yet thoughtful aspect added is the decision to credit each artist with their name and social links on the stage select screen which will direct players to their webpage.
Being a free game with free weekly updates, Soupsoup focuses on the amount of stages more than the amount of objects to find, although I suppose that's relative to other hidden object games I've played before. Stages of the game are divided into sections from the main menu, with 23 sections in total (at the time of this writing) which average around twelve puzzle stages in each. So, needless to say, there is a lot of content available since most puzzles average around 25 objects to find. It's also worth mentioning that the game grants players freedom the access to solve puzzles in whichever order they'd like to, for the most part. Of course, the game's objective is to build long-term player engagement rather than providing a game with an ending. In a way this model is nice, but my preferences don't involve prioritizing any one game for an indefinite amount of time.
After counting just now, I completed exactly one hundred stages before abandoning Soupsoup. At the time I stopped playing earlier this year, I was at about the halfway point to completing the available stages, but that's certainly not the case anymore. I've thought about maybe coming back to the game to play through one or two stages sporadically, but I ultimately decided not to since I know I'd become too focused on it again.
kamikazekeeg:
32 - Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore (PC 2024) - BEAT - Random pick up but the sale going made it worthwhile enough to pick up at the moment as just something small to jump into. Loved the idea of this when I first saw it, which is someone taking the idea of the awful CD-I Legend of Zelda games, Faces of Evil/Wand of Gamelon, and making a game that embraces goofy style and gameplay, but make it playable and fun. And they nailed it. It has silly, over-expressive, pixel art (I think they found a fun cheat too by using 3D models with a pixelated outline for some scenes, which was probably very time saving), a light-hearted and goofy tone, and gameplay that mimics what was trying to be done, but platforming is tight, action is responsive, and it's not super unforgiving challenge wise.
I think the only real negative I have is that most bosses are way too easy. A couple have decent, basic ideas, but can get you if you aren't careful, while others are complete push overs. I think the last boss is actually the easiest in the game. I'm kinda unsure if that was meant to purposefully anti-climatic or not, but I was kinda prepping for a big fight that utilized everything I earned, but you just don't lol
Other than that, the game is great, I love this idea of taking something bad and making an original game out of that is actually good. I'm positive I saw something similar to NES Zelda 2 being made, but I'd love to see it happen more often as it's a great way to pay homage to the old games, but it's not just rehashing already great games that have been done a ton of times already. We already got enough games that are retro throwbacks to Metroid, Castlevania, Mega Man, Mario, Ninja Gaiden, etc...
Cartagia:
Probably my last title of the year, I hadn't played Vampire Survivors since spring of 2022. Finally got all the DLC in one go with the Winter Sale, and I just have to say: it's the perfect Steam Deck game.
I've put in at least a dozen hours since Friday. So many cool new levels, characters, powers, etc.
Maybe the best value per dollar I've ever seen at MSRP.
kamikazekeeg:
--- Quote from: Cartagia on December 23, 2024, 02:39:28 pm ---Probably my last title of the year, I hadn't played Vampire Survivors since spring of 2022. Finally got all the DLC in one go with the Winter Sale, and I just have to say: it's the perfect Steam Deck game.
I've put in at least a dozen hours since Friday. So many cool new levels, characters, powers, etc.
Maybe the best value per dollar I've ever seen at MSRP.
--- End quote ---
I've put nearly 100 hours into the game since I bought before it's 1.0 release, and I think I've spent maybe 10 bucks in total for the game and all of its DLC since release...maybe up to 15 at the top, full price, it's a wildly high value per dollar lol It's such a goofy game, because it's almost not a game, but it's just so weirdly satisfying to run a level or two. I think the Castlevania DLC in particular is their best yet.
If you like that and want something similar eventually, Holocure is free on Steam, it's basically the same game, but with anime/vtuber girls, but it's just as good. And that's "free" as in it's a fangame and they are purely doing it for fun, not F2P with microtransactions lol
marvelvscapcom2:
31. Guitar Hero Smash Hits. - I know these may seem corny for a list like this but they on average take 10+ hours to complete. And a game is a game lol.
I cant wait till next years 52 game challenge. Idk why I slept on this so long. I guess I never considered myself much of a game logger. But It really does help complete games and stay focused on doing so rather than bouncing from title to title.
Working on Gris now. Colorful game. Pretty soothing. I
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