Appreciate the consistently thorough and on-theme updates. I have a few of my own:
I currently have a playthrough of
Horripilant running on my Switch 1 while my Switch 2 is solely for
Dragon’s Dogma 2. I can’t imagine I’ll be playing much else this month but I will try to sneak
Fatal Frame 5 into the mix. I also have
Gloom Gate loaded on my Playdate, which just dropped the first two games of its third season. It’s just horror-themed enough to warrant discussion.
Horripilant is an idle dungeon crawler, which is probably something I should have known going into the game but only realized upon booting it up. I am kicking myself somewhat for doing “vibe checks” based on what I see and read promotionally before reading reviews, but considering most folks who play games don’t really know how to write a decent review, I tend to stray from the idea. With that said, upon starting the game you get a fairly rote introduction to some exponentially scaling cookie-clicker mechanics, all wrapped in a highly dithered, modestly macabre dungeon crawling aesthetic (complete with a big old face in the wall). As these sorts of idle games don’t appeal to me a great deal, I looked up some user reviews to see if the gameplay iterated on itself in any sort of meaningful way. While that has been teased (a number of reviews say the game leans more on its point-and-click elements once you’ve “overcome” a certain amount of the idle dungeon crawling), I’ve yet to make it there, having only progressed through around 50 of the presumed 1000 floors o the idle dungeon. The way to become stronger for this endeavor is not through leveling your character, but rather improving your gear, which requires either material grinding via click or through the use of passive minions. Certain equipment upgrades require high amounts of material, which might mean you need to upgrade your storage, which requires a material amount of meat, which can only be collected by slaying enemies in the dungeon. The systems all fold back in upon themselves, with an additional idle dungeon material that can be used to reset your entire player state with additional “quality of life” bonuses that allow you to collect materials faster, start the game with a set amount of basic materials, or boost the numbers reflected in the equipment upgrades.
…It’s terribly dull.
The only reactive or interactive part of the dungeon crawl is selecting items (which aren’t very useful) or hitting “weak points,” which can occasionally spawn and need to be triggered to deal extra damage. They aren’t very useful when you’re mowing down enemies in a fraction of a second (which is what this game becomes by your third reset or so), and you eventually get an upgrade that allows you to auto-click on material grinding, so it really does just feel like a program designed to engage your heat-sink. I am curious about the point-and-click aspects of the game (which are teased early on to a frustrating degree) but I haven’t really reached a point where that feels like its been added to the fold. I might leave the game running for an hour or so this evening to grind materials but I also despise that sort of game design… something something insanity something something different results. I want to stick with it but I am already getting the sneaking suspicion that I am "missing" game elements because the game itself purposefully obfuscates interactive elements in the "adventure" portions, my least favorite form of game design.
On a much more positive note, Gloom Gate is such a triumph. Sure, it’s not a game that uses the Playdate’s most iconic hardware feature to its greatest extent, but it is a genuinely moody and systems-rich game. I mean, it’s a 1-bit Punch-Out RPG, but in all the ways one might hope such a thing would fit in their pocket. While I do think that the parry mechanic being tutorialized before the block and charge attacks is a bit surprising, the fact that you have as many resources available to you relatively early in the experience and how enemies really do seem to have nuanced methods of approach and attack patterns is a level of variety I never thought I’d see in a Playdate game. Oh, and did I mention the characters and environments are rendered in 3D…?
Aside from its genuinely impressive presentation and solid gameplay, there’s not much in the narrative or music department, but for a bite-sized experience, there’s still a lot to love. I don’t know if I’d rank it over Fulcrum Defender, but the Playdate now has a nice collection of killer apps (approximately 24 in my estimation, not all are a part of official seasons) that could sway a potential niche console owner.
Obviously,
Dragon's Dogma 2 is somewhat spooky but I'm only about four hours in. I don't have much to say.
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