Friday 30 August 2013

Maldita Castilla

Was bored today and browsing through a thread of LPs of "hard games", thus stumbling across this little gem, inspired by Ghosts n Goblins (which I never actually played)



Anyway, it looks pretty neat and is apparently free so should be checked out!

Monday 26 August 2013

Nonet Concerto Distortion

Nonet Concerto Distortion

New action game on DLsite which is at least halfway playable by an English-speaker, although I'm missing an awful lot of the details and settings. Main menu runs on arrowkeys/ZXC and the actual game part is 3d-person 3d with WASD and left/right mouse buttons to shoot. I think you're a magical girl running around a labyrinth blasting stuff. Also has PvP which I haven't tried. More than that I can't really tell you, sorry.

Friday 16 August 2013

School Days

So, this game. I'm not playing for the infamy or with a walkthrough, I'm just blundering through it and thinking about the technical/narrative underpinnings. My first full run made a reasonable amount of sense. However, backing up and changing one key decision, everything's falling apart... and not just in the mad yandere way. Events seem to unfold in an inconsistent manner. I'm not sure if I'm just making weird choices so my point balance is making it all fall together oddly, or if there are actual bugs, or if the game is SUPPOSED to make this little sense.

So obviously a little spoileryness following....

(Note that I haven't read walkthroughs and have no idea how much of the game is fixed and how much is playthrough-dependent.)

Example 1: By the time of the festival, Kotonoha and I were pretty much on a break. We said we weren't going to see each other for a while. She wanted to get back together properly and wanted me to go around the festival with her, but didn't quite manage to say so. I went around the festival with Otome (in front of Kotonoha, it's not like she didn't know) and then ended up dancing with Sekai at the bonfire. End of episode. I figured this was clearly breaking up with Kotonoha, since we were already apart and I had completely avoided her festival romance plan. And I thought I was possibly starting a relationship with Sekai.

Next episode begins with me having mad orgies with Sekai while refusing to be seen with her in public (wait, what?) and considering Kotonoha my girlfriend and doing romantic things with her (wait, what?) So, between episodes, the situation drastically changed in ways to make me more of a jerk, none of which I had actually said I was doing. How does that make any sense? It would be one thing if the game decided just that I hadn't explicitly broken up with K yet, but to make us actively get back together and hang out all the time again, between episodes, just to make me into a two-timer, seems pretty unfair!

Example 2: So Kotonoha comes over to see me. I explicitly choose that she CANNOT come into my house and that I love Sekai. Next scene, Kotonoha is inside my house (wait, what?) and throwing herself at me, and I'm claiming to have never slept with Sekai (not only is this going against the choice I just made, but Kotonoha SAW us having sex earlier!) WHAT.

Thursday 15 August 2013