I’m going to be honest, I have trouble focusing on things from day to day. That even extends to this site because I’m never sure what to focus on for Content(TM). And well, most of the time I’m doing review type posts, but sometimes I want to do news type posts for takes or introduce games that I think would be interesting like I used to do with stuff that I get emailed (never email me).

So, I decided to fix that problem by doing posts like this from now on. Why focus on one thing when I can quickly write about a bunch of things? Why worry about what type of content to cover when I can just get out as much of it in one go as possible? And so, we have Assorted Interesting Things, which I will hopefully do regularly.

A COOL BUNDLE

With big triple-A games grinding their employees to dust for the sake of games that either don’t turn out so hot and/or are too long for any reasonable person to go through, a powerful sentiment was unearthed: wanting shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less. You can obviously find a lot of games reflecting that sentiment on itch.io, but in the wake of Cyberpunk 2077 being Cyberpunk 2077, a bunch of developers teamed up to make a big bundle to uphold that message and see if anyone’s taking that message seriously.

And so, we have “The Shorter Games With Worse Graphics Bundle.” Featuring 32 games across 26 developers, you can get a variety of stuff for a mere $20. Or you know, you can always pay more if you want. The bundle features things like Big Green Creature’s grungy yet goofy post-apocalyptic RPG TRASH PLANET and @98Luisma’s PS1-esque adventure game The Crystal Golem.

The bundle ends on January 3rd, so there’s plenty of time to help the creators meet the noble goal of $6969.69 and hopefully beyond!

OMORI

A game that I’ve long thought to be a cryptid was finally released: Omori. Omori is a game whose development is led by popular internet artist Omocat and it’s about a boy named Omori stepping into a surreal colorful world. Besides Omocat’s pre-existing clout, “surreal RPG Maker games” was a big trend around the time of its Kickstarter, which made it a guaranteed success that made 10 times its original goal.

However, development took a real long time. The Kickstarter was run back in 2014 with a demo only being put out in 2018. However, the wait is finally over. Back in November, one last trailer was put out to announce its release date of Christmas 2020. So, Merry Christmas! Omori‘s real, it’s here, and maybe it will be our friend?

It’s a game I’m curious about and I want to pick it up for myself. As I said earlier, development started when surreal RPG Maker games was in vogue. Now, those games never stopped being made, no matter what some clickbait youtuber says. The actual problem with that genre nowadays is more of a marketing thing, because a lot of the big Youtubers that covered them in their heyday like PewDiePie are mainly just focusing on the guaranteed hits nowadays. So I’m wondering, with a big profile game like this coming out, will it have a Youtuber crowd like it would have had back then? Will surreal RPG Maker games make a comeback in the general public consciousness?

But yeah, Omori’s out now with a promise of console ports, with it coming to the Switch to make up for the fact that it’ll definitely never come out on the 3DS as originally promised.

INTERESTING THINGS FROM ITCH.IO

When I’m not working through my backlog, I scroll through itch.io looking for interesting things to cover. Unfortunately, I’m never sure what to focus on and don’t have all the time to cover the things I’m interested in. So, to get around that while still introducing these games to people, I’m going to be showing quick trailers and blurbs. Maybe one day I’ll return to these games for a bigger look? Who knows?

Talk to Strangers is a game by Post Mortem Pixels, who I actually previously covered on here with their previous game, NEXT JUMP: Shmup Tactics. In Talk to Strangers, you play as an unfortunate salesperson working on behalf of the Sunny Mornings company, trying to sell products door-to-door.

It’s a management game where besides figuring out the best way to sell to a house, you also have to manage your mood. Like any other worker, you have Rage and Depression to suppress. Will you go all in on sales at the expense of your health? Or can you try to live a balanced life in an increasingly hostile world?

Lutong Bahay: Lola’s Home Cooking is a an educational game made by Senshi.Labs, a Filipino game development company. The game aims to educate people about the history of some Filipino dishes while teaching how to make them through basic cooking minigames. Currently, the game only exists as a playable proof of concept, but I think it’d be really cool to see a full game arise from it!

Spooky Chase is a platformer by Burning Goat Studio, where your worse enemy is yourself. As you play levels, enemies spawn in copying your movements. Besides forcing you to keep on your toes, you have to become mindful of past movements when backtracking, which is especially a problem on endless mode where a new one spawns with each flag collected.

Snap the Sentinel is a game made for the 7 Day FPS Jam by TehRealSalt. With his home getting polluted and terrorized by a vengeful business owner, Snap the Sentinel sets out to raise some shell. It’s a run and gun FPS if the stylings of a mascot platformer was dropped into it, with a cute yet radical mascot toting a gun against low-poly robots.