Next Fest is still going on and I still have the energy to check things out, so here’s a few more write-ups! And, well, there’s a particularly important one at the end here…
The first game I tried on this go-around was CiniCross, by Hydrobates. It’s a dark fantasy themed roguelike puzzle game, where you must descend through monogram dungeons. As someone that’s gotten an itch for puzzle games through Puzzmo, I was happy to try this out.
The rules for CiniCross is easy to get. Ever play Picross? The game’s a variant of Picross. Just cross off all the squares in accordance to the number hints on the sides of the puzzle. The main twist though is the timer. You’re constantly on a timed mission, and as soon as the timer’s out, you start to regularly take damage. The timer persists through levels and a bit more time gets added when you solve a puzzle, so you better be quick with things, especially since later floors decrease the timer faster.
The main roguelike elements are passives that you’ll gradually build up to help you and active items to use, like a sacrificial dagger that adds a bunch more time to the timer in exchange for HP. The advantages are helpful, though they’re small, so you can’t fully lean on the roguelike stuff. At the end, there’s a random boss that forces an extra rule to play around, and honestly? Fuck the Goblin for fighting my urge to flag unsafe tiles.
Overall, CiniCross isn’t exactly something groundbreaking, but it’s an enjoyable puzzle game. If you like Picross, you’ll definitely like this.
I looked at another puzzle roguelike on the Next Fest docket, DOMiNi, by Death by Chicken. Like laying out dominos on a board? Well, what if that board has traps and you threaten to get yourself stabbed to death by misplays? This game’s for you.
You have to lay out a certain number of dominos on a board before you can move to the next level. When a domino is placed, the effects of the tiles is multiplied by the number of pips on the bits of domino laying on them. A 1/6 domino carefully placed on an enemy and recovery will have you healing 5 health, completely negating the health loss. It seems like a good tactic… but you have to consider what that 6 is next to. As per dominos rule, you can only extend out of that spot with a 6, and if that spot is surrounded by enemies, well, that’s a big unavoidable hit unless you have somewhere else to build out of. Just gotta keep building until you can escape – but be mindful about things.
The game’s easy to understand, though the roguelike stuff will come for your throat. There’s a whole bunch of status effects, and the difficulty of the level kinda shifts depending on what status effect there is. The status effect that reduces the amount of shields you get? Whatever, I’ll gladly take hits of that. The freezing status that instantly kills you if its counter if more than your current health? That’s the thing that killed me the most. There are also potions and charms across the place that can alleviate status effects somewhat, but ugh, freezing is just no fun.
Overall though, I think DOMiNi will be a good time killer. Sometimes it’s too cruel, but well, what can you expect from a roguelike?
The next thing I checked out was The Remake of the End of the Greatest JRPG of All Time. Or rather, The Demo of the Remake of the End of the Greatest JRPG of All Time. I’ll just stick to calling it REGJRPGAT for short even though I love the bit of using long titles like People Who Can Eat People Are the Luckiest People in the World and You Might Think He Loves You for Your Money but I Know What He Really Loves You for It’s Your Brand New Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat. Anyway, this is by Coin Drop Games.
Upon starting the game, you’re thrown straight into what is potentially the final boss battle. Nothing is explained to you and it’s not immediately clear how battle works. Regardless, you’re doomed to lose. You reload from the last save, and I gotta say, whoever was playing before you really should have been saving more often, there’s several more saves after that point. Nice job bozo. Anyway from there, you need to work your way back to where you were… and also figure out how the game even works and what is going on.
REGJRPGAT is less of an RPG and more like a puzzle game. You pick up clues on the surrounding areas to figure out how to proceed and get some kind of handle on the cast of characters. RPG combat has you pressing a combination of buttons to perform a series of moves, though there are secret moves that’ll go off when you input the right combo…
How do you figure that out? By reading game manual pages! REGJRPGAT is very reminiscent of Tunic with you forging an underestanding of the game’s world and mechanics through finding manual pages to skim through. The demo paints this as a much wordier game than Tunic with comedy RPG stylings, but I think it works? The mystery of the game is less about the world, but more about the meta experience of going back into a game you dropped a while ago and trying to remember what’s going on and how things work.
REGJRPGAT adds another layer to the game with developer commentary by the people that hoped to recreate the RPG they loved. Is it legal? They don’t know and don’t really care, and honestly, gotta appreciate that fan dedication. REGJRPGAT may as well be the fictionalized story of Chrono Resurrection… which really makes me wonder how this layer of the game’s story will end…
In the past, I played some games by Nomnomnami. I had a few write-ups on her games, but I took them down when she was hit with grooming allegations. Looking at stuff surrounding it again, I decided, you know what, she made an honest mistake and she owned up to it. She definitely should have been more responsible and should have confirmed the age of her then-partner, but she broke things off when she realized the age.
So, I decided to republish my things on Contract Demon, drowning, drowning, Syrup and the Ultimate Sweet and Starry Flowers. My thing on the [REDACTED] games will stay locked and will never see the light of day, though.
So, speaking of Syrup, we’re looking at Syrup 2: Candy Alchemy RPG. Syrup the candy alchemist crafted the Ultimate Sweet… but she wants more. Syrup’s on that CEO grindset, she has the soul of an empress. She wants to craft new specialty candies. She wants to forage for fresh new ingredients. She wants to fight monsters for rarer ingredients like she’s on a Laois Touden mindset. She wants to do on demand orders. She may not have aimed to grow closer to the people around her, but she will.
Everyday Syrup sets out to do some work in the world, and she can choose who she wants tagging along with her on that day. When you go to areas with a character new to it or certain conditions are being met, they’ll chat things with Syrup. Pastelle embraces magic more and Syrup encourages him despite her dislike of magic, Gumdrop gets to see more of the world, Butterscotch still has an extremely tsundere attituide toward Syrup that I live for, and so on. It’s fun to read, and I liked catching back up on these characters’ deals.
Sometimes you’re going out picking things with friends. Sometimes, you may wanna fight monsters for their rarer junk. You only control Syrup in fights, where she just does simple kicks, use items, and defend. Any companion she has will automatically make a move after her. Partner abilities actually improve as Syrup gets closer to them, so make sure to hang with people. Unless you’re doing a story battle, you can fight multiple monsters in a row, like a true girlboss. Syrup 2′s combat isn’t too complex, but it really doesn’t need to do more. It works perfectly within Syrup 2′s structure.
(Also, I gotta call Butterscotch out for not helping in the first fight I brought her to and letting Syrup eat shit. I mean yeah, that’s part of the narrative, but come on.)
The end of the day is typically when you end up synthesizing candy. Part of me wishes that you can go to the store at the end of the day, but then again, there’s no real penalty to just going to the next day. The store management isn’t on some Recettear type stuff, Pastille handles the economic side of things offscreen. Overall, the game just intends to be a relaxing experience, even if there’s a few narrative things that troubles some characters. I’m normally kinda eh on this stuff, but well, I’ve spent too much of this year looking on the blight side of life. Everyone really needs something cozy these days.
The Syrup 2 demo is… also surprisingly lengthy! There’s a whole lot of dialogue and a bunch of things to do, as simple as they may be. If you want to see something from Next Fest that’s pretty sizable that isn’t a roguelike, this is definitely worth checking out, especially if you like gay stuff.
And that’ll be it for me for this Next Fest! There are some other things that I tried to check out, but my fingers really don’t have the dexterity they used to have. I would have been killing it in Button Mash’s Final Sentence if my hands weren’t screwed up.
Indie Hell Zone 