Hi, it's been a while huh? I haven't been writing because I've instead been

reading essays and drafting concepts and dialogue for my crappy RPG maker

game. It's been a lot of fun and almost as engaging. I haven't had as much to

write about these past days anyway, as I've been spendgin a lot of time on YGO

decks and games I've already written about, like Super Meat Boy, or haven't

yet finished or played far enough to write on, like Hand of Fate 2. Today,

I'll be breaking the silence for the first time in a while to talk about one

game I didn't finish and one game I never actually played.

First up is Rime. It's and Indie puzzle/exploration game and it is just like

every other game of that type, meaning that it desperately wants to be

Journey. There is no spoken dialogue or narration, and the storytelling is

done through murals. The visuals are flatly colored and hihgly emphasized, and

gameplay consists of walking around and occasionally pressing the interact

button on some stuff. The "puzzles" are dead simple, most of them just involve

pusing a box onto a marked spot on the floor.

The biggest obstacle to your progression is just figuring out where the hell

to go next. Often there is no clear goal or place to progress towards. On one

occasion I had to look up a video walkthrough because the area I could explore

was huge and I didn't want to waste half an hour combing it for the way

forward. For most of the game, a magic fox-dog thing leads you through the

game, jumping past any obstacle and then barking at you until you catch up.

This is a fine idea to guide the player, and the fox stands out visually with

his bright red color, but he's so small that it can be hard to find him after

he's stopped, and the sound of his bark isn't easy to follow in the often

small environments. The only way to know where the fox goes is to follow him

there, which means running after him without ever stopping to take in the view

or admire the setpieces until you reach the next roadblock. I shoudln't need

to explain why this is terrible for a game like Rime. Oh, and if you follow a

little too close and touch the fox, your character is sent sprawling as the

fox runs away. I have no idea why this was done, and part of me thinks the

devs just never programmed something specific for the fox, and any object

moving that fast would cause this reaction.

One of the earlier puzzles involves some wild boar-like creatures eating

melons and blocking your path. TO get them out of the way you need to find a

bush that bears melons, pick one, and use it to lure the boar to a different

spot. A ok idea for a puzzle, but it wasn't executed well. The place blocked

by the boar has no melon bushes nearby, since this would trivialize the

puzzle, but if that's the case then how did the melon get over there in the

first place? Can the boar get melons out of the bush and move them? Was them

picking this particular spot just really bad luck? Why are the boar more

interested in the melon you bring than the one they were already eating? It's

not like they ran out, since they'll sit there eating forever until you bring

a new melon. For some reason, they abandon the melon already on the ground

which they can and have been eating to follow you around with a melon out of

reach. They don't even prod you or try and get to the melon in any way, just

patiently wait around for you to toss it on the ground. For creatures this

docile, it hardly makes sense for them to block your path the way they do, by

angrily squealing at you if you approach.

This puzzle also illuminates a more obvious issue with the game. Your primary

means of traversal besides walking is to jump and climb on objects, but you

can only climb or stand on very specific objects. Even if something is cearly

short enough to jump onto or climb onto, your character simply won't if the

devs didn't specifically mark it as climable. For the baor puzzle, you could

easily climb the tiny wall around the edge of the area you need to access and

circumvent the puzzle, but since the devs don't want you to do that, your

character will just jump around like a retard staring at the wall without ever

even trying to climb it. There are so many obvious solutions here. The

surfaces you aren't meant to climb could have been slick, and play an

animation of the character's grip slipping off. They couldve put something

that a person couldn't reasonably grab on top, like some pointed decorative

stuff. The wall could've just been a bit taller. But none of that is the case.

This issue ties in with not knowing where to go since often places that seem

accessible are not at all since the objects are just mysetriously impossible

to climb.

Compounding both the issues of getting lost and not knowing what you can climb

is the fact that this game has collectibles. These should encourage you to

explore, but trying to explore will often get you lost. You'l lose track of

the fox or where you were going before being sidetracked. Often an area that

looks like it might be concealing a collectible is impossible to acces and

purely there for visual purposes. The collectibles themselves aren't usually

worth findin anyway. There's a whol lot of them, but most do literally nothing

for the player. One type gives you a single still image to expand on the

story, but there seems to be only six of them in the entire game based on the

HUD, while the other type of collectible is four times as numerous and gives

you nothing. There are six items split into for pieces each in this second

category, but  colecting them does literally nothing. Maybe getting all four

of one provides some benefit, but if you miss even one piece of a set (which

you are very likely to do) then the whole thing was a waste of time, so why

bother? The game wants to incentivize exploration with collectibles but the

design of the game otherwise pulls against this in all regards. The reward for

exploration is minimal and you can even be punished for expoloring.

Let's talk a bit about the world your exploring in Rime. You are exploring

through the ruins of a civilization. Buildings are in disreapir and the beings

you encounter are not doing anything productive, just standing around.

However, in playing the game there is little to suggest that the world around

you is in anything but perfect working order. The majority of tech you

discover works perfectly, and the areas traversed feel distinctly like they

were designed for someone like you to come through doing exactly what you are

doing. On some occasions flooring break away bu there is always an immediately

accesible path to the same destination, of you never revisit the area after

this for it to matter. The whole thing feels like a farce, it's just all too

"videogamey". It feels like being lead through a world rather than exploring

one.

Besides all the tech, there's straight up magic stuff everywhere. Huge chunks

of wall appear and disappear into thin air. GLowing statues shoot beams of

energy that fly through the air like spirits This conflicts oddly with all of

the stone and metal mechanisms. If this sort of magic exists, and the can be

controlled so well that it survives in perfect functioning condition through a

complete societal collapse, what's the deal with all the mechanical stuff? It

doesn't make a lot of sense.

Most of the magical doodads are activated by shouting at them, and how your

character is supposed to have figured this out is beyond me. If I woke up one

the shore of some beach and randomly came across magical glowing contraptions,

yelling at them is probably one of the last ways I would try to interact with

them. The shouting mechanic is pretty strange in its execution. You can shout

while moving, but if you shout while standing you're locked in place until the

shout is done. Some puzzles require a number is objects to be shouted at in a

limited amount of time, so this becomes a niusance. If you aren't in range of

an object, your character just hums instead. I guess he can somehow detect the

range of these magical devices and choose to shout or not based on that. One

type of item you can interact with is a vase, which responds to your shout by

breaking. Who in God's name thought this one up? In a society filled with

technology that is operated by shouting, why would people create vases that

break when someone shouts? How was all of their pottery not being constantly

broken? Or was this maybe some sort of avant garde art project for them?

Seriously, what the hell. This sort of thing just totally ruins the world

building of the game. How is anyone supposed to believe that a real society

would do something like this? It's already enough of a stretch to imagine that

a simple on switch would require pushing around multiple boxes and performing

actions with precise timing. The illusion that this world was the product of a

real civilization is stretched thin from the get go, and it can't survive

something like these stupid pots existing.

After a point fairly early on in the game, you begin encountering strange

shadowy beings. They don't appear malicious at all, and back away from the

player in fear. They even poof out of existence if touched. For some reason,

despite this, it seems you are expected to feel some sort of animosity towads

them, as you destroy groups of them on multiple occasions to progress. This

felt pretty weird and I wasn't a big fan.

One thing I really disliked was the climbing. It's basically identical to the

climbing in uncharted, which is to say all you do is hold the stick in one

direction and ocassioannly press jump. You have to move along a single

predetermined path, and it's agonizing. Climbing is so slow, there is no risk

of failure, and nothing happens while climbing. You can already see where

you're going so getting there is just a bore.

Now for some nitpicks, oh boy! In on part of the game you find yourself in a

large white landscape with a ship. You climb on and then transition to the

city. Evenetually the game flashes and you're back at the ship (I guess it was

a vision?) for a short cutscene. Then you just sit there and nothing happens.

After a few seconds a prompt shows up for you to turn the camera, and some

really ugly and poorly modeled clouds can be seen rolling in, and the game is

back to a cutscene. Why put the player back in control for such a short period

so they can turn a freaking camera? There's not even a clear signal that the

game has transitioned out of the cutscene. It was just so pointless and

stupid, especially knowing it would have likely been easier to keep it all as

one cutscene. Another really anooying and dumb part comes in an area where you

have to climb a block in the wall and slide through a little gap behind some

wood. If you just hold to the side, like usual, the kid stops moving. I

assumed this meant I couldn't progress and went back to look for a way to

remove the piece of wood. After a while I returned to the video walkthrough,

only to see that after the game stops you, you just need to let got of the

stick and then press to the side again. What? Why is this a thing now? I know

it wasn't a fluke because it happened to me when I tried both times and it

happened in the video too. Talk about confusing the player. I can't see any

reason for this either. I assume it was a glitch, and what an annoying glitch

it was. There was an area that I guess was supposed to be a maze of sorts with

like twelve doors and only one leads forward. THe only punishment for choosing

the wrong door is wasting your time as you loop back to the maze area. I guess

the game was padding for time here. Last nitpick, often when climbing your

character will clip into the wall. There were also clipping issues with lots

of the foliage in the fields.

I didn't get all that far into Rime before I just wasn't enjoying anything

about it. The only potentially interesting thing, that being the story, was so

slow to develop and I was just lisetning to youtube videos on my phone as I

boredly slogged through the game. I quit at this point, and I don't expect to

pick Rime up again (I plan to refund the game if I still can). Rime

exemplifies the worst elements of this type of indie game. I gameplay is

rubbish and the devs expect a drip feed of visual storytelling to keep the

player engaged in an otherwise worthless experience. How about making a short

film instead? Oh, but I guess it'd be hard to pad as much time when something

of interest needs to be happening at all times, and you can't just throw in

"""puzzles""" that anyone with two brain cells to rub together can solve, or

climbing sequences that amount to QTEs with no time constraints to waste 5 or

ten minute every so often. In the several hours I played Rime for, there was

about 15 minutes of noteworth content. The game holds its audience in contempt

and expects them to swallow a load of nonsense just so they can experience

some artsy fartys pretentious story. Go play Journey or Abzu if you want a

good visual storytelling experience in a game, and don't waste any of your

time with a game like Rime.

That got really negative at the end, huh? Well there's no breaks on the

neagtivity train today because the next game I want to discuss will also have

a lot of words devoted to the negative elements. This game would be Lisa: The

Painful RPG. It's an rpg maker game and the sequel to Lisa the first, another

RPG maker game, although the two have little in common. I watched a 100%

playthrough on youtube, since I figured I would enjoy this more than playing

myself (it also saved me 10 bucks). I simply don't enjoy JRPG style combat

consisting only of picking moves from a menu and featuring no enemy health

bars. I also hate random encounters, and I wouldn't want to need to look

everything up or play the game through many times to find everything, so a

youtube playthrough was clearly the way to go. I skipped past random

encounters and through the boring parts of long fights which probably boosted

my overall opinion of the game. Before I get into the negatives, I want to

give the game some praise. There are some very nice elements. Most notable is

the music, with several real standout tracks, like Dandy Boy and All Hail the

Fishmen. There are a lot of clever and creative ideas for enemies and strange

situations the player can get into. The art is not exceptional but servicable.

While that's all I have to say on the positive side, I don't dislike the game

per se. These elements go a long way. However, there are some problems, mostly

with the story. The story is set in a post apocalypse where all women are

dead, leaving humanity to slowly die out. Brad Armstrong, the main character,

finds a baby girl left outside and decides to raise her in secret with his

friends. One day, Brad leaves the house for a while and returns to find one of

his friends dying, who tells him that someone kidnapped the girl (now called

Buddy). The story for the rest of the game revolves around Brad trying to find

and save Buddy. While a whole lot of stuff happens, there is no real through-

line for the overwhelming majority of the plot. You simply wander from screen

to screen, moving to the right until the nest thing happens, and most of these

events have no direct bearing on the plot of searching for buddy. This

certainly weakens the overall story, since it just feels like a parade or

random events that happen to Brad, occasioanly interspersed with bits of the

main plot, but even these bits are usually just "Brad finds Buddy, she acts

hostile, Brad passes out or something and wakes up to find her missing". This

exact thing happens about three or four times before the end of the game, and

it gets a little old. I think the creator had a lot of cool ideas for stuff to

have happen but no real way to connect everything, so a vague journey across

the land become the main plot and everything else was just layered on top.

The story is a tragedy, but not a well done one. I understand the desire to

tell a tragic story. Tragedy is underexplored in the modern era, where most

stories seem intent on making the audience happy because the creators fear

their work won't be profitable otherwise. Even mostly sad stories tend to have

happy endings. There is therfore a lot of untread territory with tragedy, but

a good tragic story requires more than just a serious of unusually cruel and

sadistic events befalling the protagonist. Lisa doesn't really achieve this.

Much of the bad stuff that happens to Brad has no real reason to happen and

doesn't play a larger part in the story. For example, you can have both of

Brad's arms cut off and nobody in the story will even acknowledge that this

has happened. Sure, I understand that Brad not mentioning it could just be

part of his stoic character, but why wouldn't Buddy or any of his friends or

party members make even the slightest aknowledgement of it? Last I checked,

having both arms lopped off is kind of a big deal.

By far the biggest issue in regards to the problem of tragedy for the sake of

tragedy is with Buddy's role in the story. It turns out that she was not

kidnapped, and instead ran away of her own volition (who killed Brad's frined

then, and why did he lie and say she was kidnapped? I might have just missed

this somehow but I don't recall there being any explanation for this). Brad

was apparently too overprotective of her and she wanted to go out into the

world. This is something that was already addressed earlier, where Brad

catches her leaving the house and pulls her back in. She is seen crying, and

Brad makes a mask for her so he can take her outside. Buddy gets mad and Brad

every time they met during the main story and criticizes how he raised and

treated her. When Brad says he didn't want anyone to hurt her, she even goes

as far as saying that he hurt her the most. This is just downright ridiculous.

Even if Brad was overbearing as an adoptive parent, his actions are easily

justified. Of course it should be expected that a young girl in a

postapocalypse wasteland with only men left would be under huge risk or being

raped or otherwise sexually abused. These fears are not unfounded either, as

almost every character Brad meets who mentions the girl says something about

wanting to have sex with her, often fighting Brad to the death over this. One

character is heavily implied to have molested her, another cuts off her nipple

(although Brad can choose to scrifice thee party member's lives instead), and

a third man scrathes her face deeply with metal claws. Buddy even stays with

Marty Armstrong, Brad's father, for three days, and claims that he was a

better father than Brad. However, Marty is already known to have been a

horribly abusive parent to Brad, and sexually abused his own daughter Lisa to

the point of driving her to suicide. Marty says that he's changed but the

player is shown no evidence of this, and we can only assume Buddy stayed

within the small cave Marty was living in those entire three days since her

boat was wrecked and the cave is on an island with nothing else but the cave.

How is this any less restrictive than living in the cave under Brad's house?

Clearly the dangers of the world are very much real and a threat to Buddy. In

the DLC for the game, we see some of Brad's more questionable parenting, but

the base game should stand on its own, so I won't accomodate for the DLC here.

This means that the worst thing Brad is seen to do is not let Buddy go outside

without a mask. we also know Brad takes drugs and drinks, but we are never

shown any negative consequences of this in regards to his parenting. How Buddy

can interpret her situation the way she does is pretty unbelievable as well.

She has lived with Brad and his friends for years, ever since she was an

infant, and never suffered anything noteworthy enough for the game to mention

besides being sad that she couldn't just walk around outside (this, of course,

would be the case regardless of who her parent was if they had any intention

of keeping her safe). Upon leaving Brad's place, virtually every man who hears

of her existence decides that they want to rape her, she is physically hurt

and scarred for virtually no reason, and has to constantly run and hide. Brad

also subjects himself to a huge amount of pain and suffering while trying to

rescue her with no ulterior motive. Given all this, only a complete idiot

could say that Brad hurt her the most. Physically speaking, it is objectively

untrue, and emotionally speaking, it makes no sense from almost any reasonable

perspective. It really seems like the dev just wanted the story to be as a sad

and tragic as possible, so Buddy acts in a totally unreasonable way just to

metaphorically kick Brad in the balls. Yes, it's true that Brad could have

chosen to kill three men instead of Buddy losing her nipple, but not only is

it unreasonable to demand this for Buddy, it is also her own fault that she is

in such a situation in the first place. Brad also knocks her aside when he

attacks his father, but again, Buddy put herself in the situation, and Brad's

actions are likely caused at least in part by having taken a large amount of

Joy a bit earlier; this also being Buddy's fault since she was held as hostage

to force Brad to take the drug. As much as Brad may care about Buddy, her

total rejection of him cannot be seen as anything other than outrageously

selfish or simply stupid. Brad should probably recognize this to some degree,

but his character does not appear to. I won't hold that against the game since

it could just be said to be Brad's obsession with his "second chance" after

what happens to Lisa causing him to seek Buddy's approval over everything,

including any kind of reason.

Maybe this is supposed to be the real tragedy; that only one girls is left in

the world and she's just a mssive bitch. I mean, it kind of makes sense that

she would be a bad person given that she is revealed after the credits to be

the duaghter of Dr. Yado, the man who caused the apocalypse and created Joy.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree in this case, I suppose. But even

were that the intended message, it still doesn't really work for me. I can't

feel that bad for Brad when the big tragedy he suffers, Buddy's rejection, is

so comopletely irrational. If his own emotional response is meant to be the

tragedy, then that's simply a character suffering due to his own flaws, which

isn't all that tragic anymore. Neither way of viewing the game makes it easy

to emotionally connect. I can't take Buddy's rejection seriously and would

give up on her if she was so irrationally hostile to me. I can't connect with

Brad's obsession over his second chance either because nothing even remotely

like his situation has happened to me or almost anyone. Especially once it has

become clear that Rando is a good person who could take care of Buddy, and

that she would like this, I feel like any normal person would let her do as

she pleased at that point. Rando is friendly to Brad, too, so really there's

nothign wrong with the situation. Brad could keep in touch with Buddy if he so

desired. Instead he attacks and kills Rando, who was his adoptoed son. I don't

get it. Such irrational actions prevent me from conencting emotionally. Who

would kill their own adopted son, who likes and respects them, and also wants

to help care for Buddy, especially after Buddy has already totally rejected

them? Since I have to assume the answer is almost nobody, then how is the

audience meant to relate to Brad when he does this?

At the end of the day, the game's story feels like a cheap attempt at making

the player feel sad. It's the tragic equivalent of a jump scare. It may evoke

a basic emotional response, but it's incredibly shallow and doesn't have any

staying power. Jump scars have become notorious due to the popularity of

horror films, but tragedy being as unerexplored as it is, this type of cheap

tragedy is not common. For this reason I believe many people will be inclined

to think less critically about the game. While a jumpscare may make you feel

scared, most will agree that it isn't "really" scary. However, while Lisa: The

Painful RPG may make the player feel sad, I do not think so many people will

recognize that it isn't "really" tragic.

Again, I want to reiterate that I don't think the game is bad. There is a lot

of really good stuff going on here for such a small game that's worthy of

praise. I'd like to see more stuff from this dev with less emphasis on story

and just flex his muscles with what he does best: weird stuff.