What Did We Play Yesterday?

I've been trying out a New To Me classic, Kid Icarus. I like this game, and I'm sorry I didn't discover it sooner! I would have dug this one back in the 80's. I went into it cold and the game doesn't tell you anything, so I dug up the manual which is very informative. The main character, Pit, must traverse Angel Land across four levels to obtain the three treasures, so he can help the goddess. The password stores strength, possessions, hearts, and points. I've mostly been bumbling around but now that I've read the manual I'll give it a proper try this weekend.

I've been playing Timewasters a bit every day but I don't always remember to take a screenshot. More recently I've been playing with Luna, who's primary power is the Wolfgang, and Doc, who utilizes the stasis field, and combining those two particular weapons. I got close to the endgame with Luna, but it's hard to defend against late-stage enemies with Stasis and Wolfgang as the primary weapons. I'd upgraded Stasis to include the Boxing Gloves with mixed results, because as fun as it is to fly around with massive boxing gloves attached to your ship and bop enemies, it's easy to make mistakes and lose shielding, even if you have boost upgrades. Stasis plus Nova has been a much stronger weapon combination for me, and when I work on Doc's champion medal that's probably what I'll do.

I was having a bad time, and after trying and failing to calm my brain down I started digging through my Steam library trying to find something that would distract me. Mountain isn't a game, it's a toy. You poke it and look at it, and spin it around, and occasionally, something unexpected happens.

So I flipped the mountain upside down and examined the roots. I zoomed out and admired the peace of space. I zoomed back in and touched trees and flocks of birds escaped, so I kept doing that. I figured out how to play music and made some songs. Eventually, an umbrella popped up, and I poked that. I was circling the mountain and just sorta vibing when I heard a car horn, and a bus floated through the sky and landed on the mountain. I poked it, and it beeped.

This game did exactly what I needed it to do, and about 25 minutes later I felt so much better. IDK if I'll ever play it again, but this game did exactly what I needed it to do in the moment. That is the value of experimental games, or game-like toys, or game experiences. Some reviewers have called Mountain a digital pet rock or a rock tamagotchi and that's a good description.

Continuing to whip my way through HoD. I found these White Dragons particularly cool. They wrap around the columns and jump from one to the other. They are described as "are the fossilized remains of a long-necked dinosaur animated by a demonic force" which is kinda goofy but whatever.

The castle layout in this game is not great, as I've mentioned before, and sometimes there are long lulls between save points. The game sort of gets around this by having a quicksave feature that saves all stats/progress, but respawns the player at the last save room on shutdown/restart. So if you do some crazy backtracking for an item (hint: you will) you could utilize this feature to avoid having to trek alllll the way back. The GameBoy Advance had a software-based sleep system, but it's not utilized by this title.

Milestones in Time Wasters, including encountering whatever the hell that thing was (I was paranoid the core would blow up and one-shot me, but it didn't) and unexpectedly beating the game with Ravebow. I also unlocked a few more captains, including Wolfgang (who has multiple drones) and Doc (who starts with my beloved stasis field). Looking forward to digging into those.

I lost about an hour of progress in HoD (boooo) so I had to replay this part of the castle, but that gave me a chance to revisit the room Juste feels compelled to decorate. Most of the level design and enemies aren't memorable, but some of the skeleton creatures have interesting designs. The skeleton spiders are pretty cool, but they never attack--they only retreat. Another oddity is the floating eyeballs... they won't hurt you if you walk right through them.

Time for Time Wasters! Unlocked Ravebow, whose lasers are a mixed bag at first but can be upgraded into satisfying passive weapons.

In a bit of a metroidvania mood and played this new-to-me GBA game with Jonta Guitar's and sorrow's color hack. This is a fairly mid game more on the metroid side with dual castles and a few quirks. At one point, Juste stumbles across an empty room and decides, "This room needs decorating." The enemies pretty standard but there's a legitimately creepy "Scarecrow" that are bouncing impaled dudes.

Angel at Dusk remains trippy and incomprehensible. If you want to vibe with bodyhorror, it cannot be beat.

Decided to give Gunlocked another try. I have enjoyed some shmup survivor-likes, like Time Wasters, but the pacing on this one is off. I played a round, but it didn't grab me.

I was in a Digseum mood and ended up beating it after about 3 total hours gameplay. Lots of satisfying clicking at the end there, and it doesn't overstay its welcome.

Gave 20 Minutes to Dawn a spin. It's a twin-stick survivors-like with minimalist graphics. I enjoyed playing it, but it didn't grab me the way VS does and the twin-stick aspect created a bit more overhead than I generally want while I'm chilling with this type of game. I'm not sure if I'll play it again.