Playlist (February 2020) (Patreon)

Hello! Time for your new Playlist video, with three reviews of games I've played recently. This month we've got simulated pixels, magic signage, and fancy foxes.

Noita

So, Noita is an interesting game. It’s a Spelunky style roguelike platformer. This time with a focus on ranged warfare, as you use magic wands to cast spells at bad guys. But there’s one thing that really sets this game apart from all others: its focus on simulation.

The game’s developers say that every pixel is simulated. Which basically means that water flows naturally, lava spills down stairs, wood burns and then breaks realistically, explosions can carve giant holes out of rocks, and raging fires lead to smoke. It is, honestly, very impressive. 

And in terms of gameplay, it really opens itself up to clever plans - like, I’m gonna throw some oil down, and then hit that lantern to drop it onto the oil and burn the baddy. And also to unforseen madness - like, oh, that oil was also leading to an explosive barrel and now suddenly everything is going boom. Whoops. If you thought Spelunky’s systems were bonkers, wait until you try this.

I think the developers are slightly struggling with finding how to wrangle all of this and turn it into interesting gameplay. The systems in Spelunky feel like chaotic elements that go to undermine an otherwise tightly designed platformer - Noita is, often, just chaos incarnate.

And that’s before you take into account the wand crafting system. So basically, you pick up wands and then between zones in the game you can take the spell runes that are attached to these wands and mix and match them to make new ones. Some runes are actual attacks - like a fireball - and others are modifiers - like one that splits your attacks into two. Combine them together to make a two-way fireball. Sidenote: the UI for all of this is terribly cryptic and right now you’ll need a Wiki to understand half of what’s going on.

Anyway, it becomes possible to make absurdly game-breaking weapons that split into two and then create more bombs after that - and everything you just cast causes rain to appear. And now everything’s blown up and you’re submerged underwater. Chaos! 

It is, admittedly, a lot of fun. But in my opinion, it’s more like a toy box than an actual game right now. Still, it’s in early access - so I look forward to seeing what the devs do with it over the coming months. 

The Pedestrian

The Pedestrian has a killer concept. You know those signs with a little person on them, indicating a bathroom or an exit or whatever? Imagine if that person came to life and then could explore those signs. And if they went through the exit door on the sign, they’d actually appear on another sign elsewhere in the world.

And so this is a game where you’re playing a cute, streamlined, 2D puzzle platformer game on signs, which exist in a detailed, rich, and fully 3D world. It’s gorgeous to look at and the magic trick never really loses its lustre over the short 2 to 3 hour run time.

Of course, a lot of it is just set dressing. These signs could be on blank backgrounds and for the most part the gameplay wouldn’t change at all. Which does beg the question: how important is the look of a game? How much are we swayed by gorgeous graphics? Luckily, the puzzles themselves in The Pedestrian are pretty good so it’s very much worth playing even if you ignore all the pretty artwork. 

The main concept in this game is that you can zoom out to look at all the signs near you. And then you can rearrange them, and create connections between the doors and ladders on the signs. Then you can zoom back in and navigate your little stick person to the exit. 

Initially, it can feel a bit… tedious, I guess. You’ll essentially solve the puzzle in the zoomed out view as you work out which connections to make and where. And then you’ll just have to go through the predictable process of executing the idea in the zoomed in view. However, new concepts are soon introduced which necessitate a bouncing back and forth between zoomed in and zoomed out, which is more dynamic and keeps a better rhythm between puzzle solving and solution execution.

However, I do have to admit letting out a sigh when entering certain puzzle areas. These puzzles have lots of moving parts and there’s quite a long time at the beginning where you’re just figuring out the layout and the options before you get to the actually good bit - which is the catch, the assumption, the logical sidestep - all that fun stuff I talked about in my video on puzzle design. That’s certainly here in a number of puzzles, but it’s buried under a fair bit of busywork.

But for the most part I enjoyed this game. I played it in a single day and it didn’t overstay its welcome. I can recommend this one, for sure. 

New Super Lucky’s Tale

So, for context, Lucky’s Tale was a VR game. Super Lucky’s Tale was a non-VR reinvention of the idea. And New Super Lucky’s Tale is the Switch port that adds some extra levels and other content. 

And New Super Lucky’s Tale is a game that is, by all measures, completely fine. And that’s about as much praise as I’m willing to give it.

In play, the game is similar to stuff like Super Mario Odyssey and A Hat in Time. You’ve got these small open ended worlds to explore, and you’ve got do some light platforming, puzzle solving, and combat to get around the stage and find all the collectibles. You’ve got one main goal to reach, but you’ll also get rewarded for finding loads of coins, collecting the letters that make up LUCKY, and discovering a hidden area. 

Between these 3D, explore-em up levels, the game also throws in some side-scrolling platformer bits. Some auto-runner bits. And some block-shifting puzzle levels that are - horrible. Sorry, this is a tangent, but I have to rant about this. So it’s easy to push these blocks into an unwinnable situation, forcing you to reset the puzzle state. But this actually reloads the entire level, prompting a quite significant loading screen. So what should take seconds actually takes like a minute, and that immediately put me off from doing any of those levels ever again. 

Anyway. The game makes it feel pretty good to move about, and Lucky does have a signature move: the dig. This lets him burrow underground and then launch back up again - which is good for flipping over turtles or sneaking underneath gates. And using the dig in mid-air makes Lucky launch forward at a 45 degree angle. This does make it possible to clear large gaps by jumping, attacking in mid-air to get some extra lift, and then digging. It’s nowhere near as good as the hat throw combos in Odyssey, but I’m really trying here guys. I’m trying to find something interesting.

Because, ultimately, this game just feels so flat. It’s really predictable, the level design doesn’t engage or surprise, the humour is safe, and the gameplay is super easy - I ended the game with like 50 extra lives. You could argue that the game is designed for kids, and yeah, sure, but then there are these quite tricky bosses. Though, maybe I only found them hard because they’re so long and drawn out that I got impatient and started making mistakes.

Anyway. Maybe Super Lucky’s Tale worked okay on other consoles. Where platformers are rare and the quality level is reasonably average. But when you’re rocking up on Switch, home to games like Super Mario Odyssey and Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze - well, that’s an extremely high bar to clear. Lucky certainly doesn’t manage it.