I’ve been playing a lot of games lately and I really haven’t been sitting down and writing reviews of them! Well, that changes tonight.
First up, the game pictured above:
Winter Burrow
You’re a mouse. You had parents, once, but they were forced from their farm and went into the city to find work. They didn’t have much luck finding farming, but in order to save their child – you, they went to work in the mines, where they were worked to death. Having no other option, you sell their few remaining belongings and head back to the family farm – a mushroom farm carved into an old tree trunk. You remembered your aunt lived somewhere nearby.
You arrive in the dead of winter, and the farm is in ruins. Building a fire is your first task, and then making some basic tools until you can find your way to your aunt, who offers you significant help. You eventually build up your family mushroom farm, upgrade your home, and make a new life amidst the snow and potentially deadly insects.
It’s a very comfortably paced game. You can cook a variety of mushroom dishes, sit in front of the fire knitting new clothes, have tea with your doting aunt. I played the demo; I expect that the full game eventually moves on to the other seasons, but given the name, perhaps it never does.
Death by Scrolling
One might have expected the next game from Ron Gilbert of Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island and Thimbleweed Park fame would have been a point and click adventure game, but nope, his latest is Death By Scrolling, a somewhat Vampire Survivors-meets-Hades auto-shooter.
You’re dead, so that’s out of the way – what a relief! Unfortunately for you, you don’t quite have the cash to make it out of Purgatory to your final destination – Charon charges luxury cruise rates for a two minute raft ride. You need to race through portals to different worlds within Purgatory and dash relentlessly upward lest the ever-pursuing flames of Hell catch you… or the Grim Reaper comes calling, because just stranding your soul here in Purgatory wasn’t enough for it, apparently.
The game is fun* and* funny. It’s a quick play, and you can buy permanent upgrades during the run to slowly give you ever more tools in future runs. And, NPCs will leave comments about your run at the end :-)
Alabaster Dawn
Juno is the last of the Divine Warriors, warriors blessed by the gods and given divine weapons. Unexpectedly, the gods withdraw their blessings and the Divine Warriors are defeated, all except for the very least of them, Juno. She awakens into a cursed land, and with her divine companion Cabbage, has to find the root of the curse and the reason the gods have withdrawn and bring life back to the land.
Alabaster Dawn is an action RPG that has you swapping between melee and ranged often during a fight. You upgrade your weapons and your skills. The boss fights aren’t terribly hard to figure out – this is nothing near a “Souls”-like, although it does have some similarities, in that resting to heal respawns many monsters. But, there’s been little reason to backtrack so far, so that is probably not a real issue.
The story is pretty good, so far, and I very much enjoy how the world comes alive after you kill a level boss. I’m a little over grimdark games; a game that brings light to a dead world is a very nice change.
Solasta II
A few years back, two games were poised to bring D&D, Fifth Edition, to the modern computer role playing game player. Baldur’s Gate 3, and Solasta. BG3 won that particular battle with its character interaction and branching storytelling. Solasta’s story was somewhat more mundane, but it provided an extensive toolbox to make your own adventures, picking up some of what Neverwinter Nights put down so many years ago.
They’re back with Solasta II. In the demo, with a premade party, the characters interact more, and are more connected to the plot. I’m certain your custom party would fit into the plot as well, though I think the scenario they dropped us into was at least a little bit into the game, as we already had at least some history with the NPCs.
The combat is tactical, there are many ways to face each issue, I think it’ll be fun. I played through the first game a couple of times and spent a good amount of time with their dungeon creator, I can’t wait to see how they’ve extended it here.
Mario Kart World (Switch 2)
I bought the Switch 2 for Pokemon Legends: Z-A, but I couldn’t have that console and not get its flagship game, the latest in the Mario Kart series, Mario Kart World. I have to be honest: this game blew me away. It is so much fun. I have to compare it to another game I played recently, Sonic CrossWorlds Racing, and there is no comparison. Both games have lots of different rides, characters, secrets-filled levels and constant action, but MKW just does more.
The tracks are callouts to the classics, plus new tracks inspired by famous Nintendo video games – the Donkey Kong tower level is hilarious fun. Not to mention the “free roam” racing, which reminds me of the Forza Horizon games. You’re running around in your cart, playing havoc with the normal traffic, when you see a P button that will start you on an immediate adventure – sometimes racing, sometimes doing tricks, sometimes a time trial, sometimes chasing a treasure goblin.
Game lives up to its hype.
Pokémon Legends: Z-A
You’re gonna get pretty tired of things beginning with “Z” and “A” by the time you finish this game. Just saying.
Z-A is the second in Nintendo’s “Legends” series, and like the previous one, Arceus, Z-A leaves behind the turn-based battles of the mainstream games for real time combat and picking abilities and swapping Pokemon on the fly.
You play a new visitor to the Paris-adjacent city of Lumiose, centered around the ornate Prism Tower. Like its namesake, it is a city of lights, especially a strange sort of light that is turning normal Pokemon into rogue mega Pokemon.
Unusually for a person who lives in the Pokemon world, you arrive in Lumiose City as someone who apparently doesn’t know what Pokemon are, wasn’t aware that much of the city is given over to Wild Zones where Pokemon roam free, and that every night, Pokemon trainers battle to be promoted from rank Z all the way to rank A to become the very best trainer in the city.
While talking to a kid trying to shoot a promo video for the hotel he works at, your belongings are stolen by a Pokemon, and you are plunged into the story of the city.
Hotel Z is run by the three thousand year old man Az, and has no guests – until you came along, anyway. It is also the home base for your new friend Urbain’s trainer clan. (Urbain if you are playing a female character; Taunie if you’re playing a boy). Team MZ has been secretly tasked with uncovering the mysteries surrounding the sudden appearance of Mega Evolutions, and the connection to the city-wide urban renewal efforts. The only way you’ll be able to solve this mystery is by raising your trainer rank from Z to A and forming a well-balanced team of Pokemon by training them in the nightly battles.
It’s quite a bit different from Arceus, with a plot that bears some similarity to that of Pokemon Scarlet/Violet. The game opens up via the mechanisms of special scaffolds that allow you to get to initially locked areas of the city, as your parkour skills grow.
In the few hours I played, I raised from rank Z to rank F, but the remaining ranks are not going to be that easy. There’s a huge difficulty jump that requires you to have powerful mega evolutions for your best Pokemon to be unlocked, and not every Pokemon has an available mega evolution, which means more nights battling to level up a Pokemon with the correct moves that can be mega evolved.
It’s a fun enough game, but I’m not feeling the same open world thrill I felt in Arceus, perhaps because it is limited to the one location. The real time combat is pretty fun and values good preparation over tactics, and it means I have been looking up the fights rather than just going in blind. That worked in the ranks below F; now stuff is real, and the E fight is going to be a struggle with my current crew.