Girls Screaming in Chinese

Those crazy kids and their ruling! Story driven tactical RPG that punches well above its weight, you wouldn’t know this was the work of a single developer.

A few days, Friendly Necro was going over all the mobile games on which he’s worked. I was wondering why mobile games just didn’t stick with me, and I remembered this strategy tactical one I played a long time ago and I just couldn’t remember when, or why I stopped. I hardly ever remember why I stop playing mobile games. I just stop. And then I remembered that the Apple Store keeps a history of everything I’ve downloaded… and then I found it… Brave Nine…? ...

If I’ve scheduled this right, this should be going live right about the time people are arriving for Game Night. With the help of Open AI, I wrote a short play we can perform about deciding what to order out for dinner. We’ll see if I have the guts to actually insist people perform it, but… who knows… Game Night for Hamlet DRAMATIS PERSONAE CLAUDIUS, the King of Denmark GERTRUDE, the Queen of Denmark HAMLET, son to Gertrude, and Prince of Denmark OPHELIA, daughter of a courtier A DELIVERY PERSON ...

It’s that time of the month when I pull out the old atlas and scour the world for my Kickstarter projects! Where could they be this month??? Let’s find out together! Star Scrappers Orbital First up is Star Scrappers Orbital, a game designed by the same fella that designed Terraforming Mars, a game that we have had hundreds of hours of fun playing – it’s right up there with the top board games I have ever played, and a purchase I never regret. It’s described as an “engine building, worker placement” game, which only means that it’s made in Europe, where they love that kind of stuff. This game is being shipped to me from Portugal, and is currently sitting somewhere in a warehouse in Köln, waiting for a jet to the USA, I assume. It’s scheduled to arrive next week, sometime. ...

I looked at all the RPGs I’ve played this year, trying to pick the one of them all that would be the best of the year. Several stood out, but I couldn’t pick just one. I guess if there were a game that I felt worth spending hours of my life playing, that proved its quality, maybe? Outer Wilds (PS4; finished January 26) This indie game about a hapless astronaut who is trying to stop their sun from exploding in (looks at watch) 24 minutes made a huge splash when it came out last year for all the right reasons. The clockwork solar system our astronaut lives in is full of puzzles everywhere you look. The lore is amazing. The physics are on point. And every 24 minutes, the sun explodes and you start from the beginning again, but you still have retained all you learned. ...

Banner of the Maid has been my constant gaming companion over the past several weeks. In short, Banner of the Maid takes place in an alternate fantasy version of the French Revolution. Napoleon has fended off a British incursion and is now in Italy fighting against an Austrian invasion. Almost all the important NPCs existed in our reality, but in the game reality, there are the Maids – heroes imbued with divine powers whose powers arise when France needs them. The first, most famous Maid was Jean D’Arc. With France consumed by revolution, new maids have arisen. ...

Queen Antoinette, one of the famed Maids of France, was no longer able to hold back the tides of populism in Revolutionary France. While Pauline Bonaparte, with the help of her brother Napoleon, struggled to free Italy from the horrors of an Austrian invasion, things were falling apart back home. Welcome to the post-Revolutionary world. The Monarchist faction, led by the remaining nobles in exile and General Rose, have taken to the hills and have formed an “enemy of my enemy is my friend” relationship with the Austrian invaders. Pauline’s war has expanded now to two fronts. ...

My opinion of this French Revolution-themed visual novel/tactical strategy game keeps rising as I work my way through the campaign. Once you get past the fact that the main army commanders are all teenage girls, there’s a decent story there, and the battles are just over the top. The current campaign has us coming to the rescue of one of our artillery generals who found herself surrounded behind enemy lines. The smart thing to do would have been to withdraw and cut our losses; instead, our protagonist, headstrong Pauline Bonaparte, chose to perform a daring rescue. ...

The more I play Banner of the Maid, the more I’m enjoying it. The plot is picking up, with plenty of side quests that lean more into the Visual Novel side of the game. As an example: One side quest involved raising money by going to an auction house, buying items cheap, then selling them for a huge profit. Problem with that strategy is arranging with other bidders for them to bid low or abstain entirely to get the best price. Taking what you’ve learned about the various factions in the journey so far, you have to find allies who will help you – and avoid those who see through your scheme and plan to only give you the worst deals imaginable. ...

I was a little frustrated the last time I played Banner of the Maid, the tactical RPG for the Switch (et al) about a fantasy retelling of the French Revolution. I hadn’t leveled my characters evenly and it became clear I was never going to be able to beat a certain fight as I had no opportunities to grind my poor performers to higher levels. The other issue that really killed my interest in the game was not being able to take screen shots. Not in the prologue, not in the cut scenes, not ever. The capture button, when pressed, displayed a little box on the screen saying that screen captures were disabled. ...