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52 Games Challenge 2024!!!!!

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telly:
Game 1 - Donut County (Switch) - 3 Hours

The first game of 2024 has been finished! I found my time with Donut County to be a pretty enjoyable one. It definitely reminds me a lot of Keita Takahashi works that I've played in the past (the Katamari series as well as Wattam), and the fact that both this game and Wattam were published by Annapurna also says something. I found this game to be really funny with adorable graphics, great music, and fun physics-laced gameplay of dropping progressively bigger objects into a giant hole. The game sports a cute little story with some fun characters and I found the writing, while a bit on the immature side, fit the wacky world that you play in.

Like those other games mentioned, I found that Donut County, while a charming experience, to be pretty light on the actual gameplay. It felt most like Wattam where the gameplay really never takes off beyond the most basic level. You're essentially moving a hole under objects sequentially for about 75% of the game with no real challenge or puzzle-solving to make it more engaging. Unlike Katamari, for instance, your hole can move freely about the map so you don't have to worry about size challenges as you accumulate objects. The latter levels do add some needed challenge and variety, but mostly the game just isn't as deep (pun intended) as I would have liked. Most of the levels consist of only one screen and can be beaten in about 10 minutes or less. And with only about 25 levels there isn't much to keep you playing. Regardless, it still was a very cute, endearing, fun experience and I enjoyed my time with it.

dhaabi:
01. Rusty Lake: Roots || PC || 01.03.24



Leaving the mainline Cube Escape series at its penultimate entry, I had to break to play the next recommended game in the developer's preferred order to play: Rusty Lake: Roots. As another prequel entry, I was curious how it'd compete with the first of its kind and learning its connections to everything else presented so far.

Quickly, it was apparent that Roots is much larger in scope while simultaneously having a higher degree of polish. In short, the game is a much longer and even more narrative-dense experience that's more than twice as long as the longest games before it. Throughout my time playing, it seemed that there was always some strange event occurring in tandem with the series's story.

As the title suggests, this prequel set long ago more than one hundred years than when the present-day games take place. Showing the complicated and twisted connections from past to present, Roots is structured in 33 smaller segments which each take place in a specific moment in time. Instead of one drawn-out event, the narrative is broken into nearly three dozen smaller moments which highlight crucial points throughout history relating to Rusty Lake, the Vanderboom family, and the family's cursed fate. As time moves forward, the branching timeline becomes more elaborate and interconnected through its imagery of a family tree. Advancing through the story one plot point at a time, the player will be given the option to choose which plot points to play first. While all events ultimately need to be completed, the slight deviation from a completely linear experience is welcomed. With each moment of time which serves as a puzzle to solve, an approximate date to when it occurred is shown. However, this is the only time that information can be viewed, so a small but welcoming feature to have been added would simply be to review it. Of course, the family tree itself generally gives a good enough estimate to when events take place, but to be able to review the exact order in which events occur (especially since many coincide with others) would have offered a greater understanding of the story elements.

So, with 33 unique puzzle stages which act as plot points in total, the puzzle design feels a little simplified, at first. Although it's worth mentioning that screens are not static unlike every game up to this point but instead grant the player the capability to span across the environment. At minimum, for those who've played each game before Roots, puzzle design will feel familiar and sometimes reused in some aspects, although not entirely. Be that as it may, I was fine with this small caveat, as I was much more invested in the context behind the overarching narrative. As the game progresses, though, I felt that puzzle difficulty heightened. But, toward the end of the game, a small number of puzzles are quite difficult to comprehend. Since the games feature little text and no straightforward instruction, some puzzles were an actual challenge. For instance, while I ultimately did make sense of the finale's puzzle at first, one last additional aspect appeared which felt tacked on which I failed to comprehend the logic behind its reasoning for the solution. From what I've reason online, I'm far from the only one either. On a high note, though, there is some additional content that's unlocked when revisiting certain stages and complete short post-game puzzles. It was a nice surprise, and the 34th puzzle was a lot of fun to play.

After finishing this lengthy game (compared to all other entries thus far), I was quite impressed, overall. I'm hoping that the crucial details revealed through Roots hold some substantial weight to what's next in the final Cube Escape entry.

kashell:
I attended a lovely game night where we enjoyed some more Jackbox Games both new and old.

4. FixyText
The idea is neat, but the execution is slightly frustrating since there is no delete key. It can get chaotic in both a good and bad way when others are texting over each other. I doubt we'll play this again but kudos for trying something new, modern, and relevant.

5. Timejinx
Trivia! And it deals with something I have a knack for: years. You simply select a year in which something occurred. The closer you are, the less points you get. Person with the lowest score wins. Some bonus rounds and moments were tossed in for good measure. I won, so that was extra fun for me.

6. Talking Points
Improv meets a TED Talk. A personal favorite of mine, especially when you're with the right group of likeminded friends that have no qualms getting into the bizarre, the filthy, or a combination of the two.

7. Role Models
This was the most fun  to revisit. You categorize everyone based on a slew of unique themes. It's fun hearing why folks categorize you in certain places. It's even more fun when someone new joins the group because it helps get to know them.

Cartagia:
2. Super Mario RPG

A very solid and faithful remake with some fixes in localization, a lot of nice quality of life changes, a pretty good update on the visual style (in gameplay, the cutscenes are more hit and miss).  The big problem is that they added two things that trivialize the difficulty: the ability for timed attacks to hit all enemies and a kind of limit break group attack.  No combat encounter had any level of hardness. The only time I needed to use items was when I was focusing on filling out the monster compendium instead of killing enemies.  A shame, because it's still a fun and funny experience,  it's just fulfilling, like empty calories.

dhaabi:
02. Cube Escape: The Cave || PC || 01.07.24



To begin, something to correct is that Cube Escape: The Cave is not the final Cube Escape entry as I previously stated. However, is is the final entry in the Cube Escape Collection compilation. Nevertheless, I was quite excited to see what I thought was the concluding entry to this sub-series of escape-the-room style of puzzle games.

As for The Cave's narrative, it concerns the Vanderboom family and their connection to the elixer of life that is the key item causing some members' eternal life, though one which comes at a high cost of others' deaths and sacrifices. In short, it is a cursed path to take for one's selfish gain. Something I've found interesting while playing through the eleven games so far is that the player-character changes. At times, the player acts as the game's central character, often times untold directly, whereas other times you seem to be a presence directly interacting with the environment which influences characters. It is a subtle difference but one which I welcome.

Midway through the game, the player is actually taken to a new room full of its own puzzles and actions to complete, thus dividing the game into two unique sections. In this second half, I truthfully found just about everything to be confusing early on. Full of unexplained numbers, dials, charts, levers, and icons, this section is immediately overwhelming. Because the Cube Escape games generally have pieces of the solution to each puzzle scattered around the entire room, I felt extremely lost without any direction. But, with a little help from a guide every few steps along the way (usually at a step's starting point to give me better direction), I was able to complete each puzzle. Out of every game so far, the end puzzles in The Cave felt most ambiguous. I almost never knew what to do next to begin the puzzle-solving, but once step was overcome, the puzzles themselves were without issue. Something else to briefly mention is that, unlike the previous four or five games, this game didn't force me to use pen and paper. If anything, the most challenging part of the puzzles was the very first step.

At first, I was surprised by the game's "to be continue" screen despite what I (wrongly) thought that The Cave is the final Cube Escape entry. Even if this were true, though, the Cube Escape sub-series exists in the larger Rusty Lake series, so it doesn't matter either way. With the game's ending involving both Dale and Laura, I'm still unsure how they're exactly connected or why Dale is a part of the events at all. Like always, hopefully that information is revealed in time. Or, perhaps I've overlooked some detail.

By this point, I've finished playing through the Cube Escape Collection compilation which compiles the first nine Cube Escape games into one package. Moving forward, I assume that sequel entries will all have a higher level of quality and polish to them, but I'll have to find out for myself in the near future. Something I do know, though, is that the latest (and currently final) Cube Escape entry is a mix of game and short film, so that is something I greatly look forward to once I reach the point to play it.

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