Zarf Updates

The common thread this time is "the id". I don't mean the games are horny; they're not. (Although PSI has "flirt" dialogue options.) I mean somebody wanted a specific thing and made a game that catered to it. You want a style of puzzle that videogames don't do much, or you want a building-climber with zero risk of falling, or you want 3000 books piled on the floor. Here you go.

• Puzzle Spy International
• Murder at the Birch Tree Theater
• Gecko Gods
• Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library!
• Legacy of Kain: Defiance: Remastered

Puzzle Spy International

• by Travel-Friendly Cake -- game site

A short puzzler made up of Hunt-style puzzles. That is to say: basically paper-and-pencil puzzles where you get a lot of clues and maybe a grid and no immediate idea what to do with it all. But when you start putting pieces together, a pattern emerges, and then a final solution. Neat! This form is very familiar to me as a Boston resident; in fact, some of my friends are off doing a BAPHL as I write this. (I skipped it for Open Studios.) However, the form is not common at all in videogames. I hope this becomes more of a trend.

PSI (yes, the letter "Ψ" is their logo) is short and on the easy side. Hints are available to make it even easier. That's fine! It's a pleasant day's spy-themed entertainment. With just a hint of dating sim for flavor, if you're into that.

Murder at the Birch Tree Theater

• by Crucible Juice -- game site

Golden-Idol-alike set in a cursed community theater. "Cursed" because people keep dying! Totally by accident! Deduce the details of ten (or more) deaths, from 1975 through 1995, and figure out who's really behind it all.

(That's not actually a mystery -- one character is consistently a sociopathic jackass in every scene, although he's not the only one. Maybe I should say "jack-dog"; the characters are all rendered as anthro animal cartoons. Jackhound? Hm.)

Birch Tree Theater is a good playable example of its genre. It's fun to see the theater and its dramatis personae through the decades. The shows are mostly musical theater, which gives the author scope for innumerable furry-musical puns and filks. You don't have to be a fan of musicals to get them. Well, you probably have to be a fan to get all of them, but I caught "Alan Minken" so I figure I'm doing pretty well.

Gecko Gods

• by Inresin -- game site

A nonviolent(*) open-world puzzle adventure in a tropical archipelago. These sorts of adventures always involve climbing charismatic megastructures, which I love. Normally the climbing is part of the puzzle. In this one, you're a gecko! You can climb literally anything! You can dance on the ceiling! Falling doesn't hurt because you're so small! Perfect.

(* Almost nonviolent. Sometimes you have to beat up some hostile beetle-pots. They can't hurt you much though.)

Notionally, you're trying to solve puzzles to light up statues and stuff to bring back the Gecko Gods. In fact you're there to smash pots and eat tasty bugs. Puzzles are just a way to keep score.

...Okay, I'm kidding. The puzzles are quite good. Not brain-crushing hard, but a good variety of levers (which you can grab with your tiny gecko mouth), wires to connect up, balls to push onto plates (with your tiny gecko head), and so on. There's a few slider puzzles but they're not too painful. And of course lots of disorienting three-dimensional architecture to crawl around, including on the ceiling.

Eating bugs is still the best part. I have no idea how, but your tiny gecko viewpoint somehow invites you to be distracted by every tasty bug you see. Even though snacking down provides no bonus whatsoever. Other than an achievement for eating one of every species -- but you can't eat just one bug! C'mon. This is master-level embodiment work.

I haven't finished this; I think I'm working on my third island of five. It's a pretty large-scale game, and not just in comparison to your tiny gecko self. Will finish though.

EDIT-ADD: Did not in fact finish. The game ends with a timed race which is kinda bullshit. I watched it on youtube.

Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library!

• by ArtRising -- game site

Some games have a convoluted design history, full of pivots and agonizing "find the fun" focus sessions. Other games, you can tell, had a one-line design process: "Oh my god what if you were in a giant messy room full of books and you had to shelve them all?!" Sold. Write it and ship it.

Seriously, click through that game link and look at the screenshot. If you don't immediately Get It, you're not the target audience.

I'm afraid Arcane Library doesn't entirely fulfil its promise. At root it's an incremental game. You start out picking up books one at a time; then you begin to acquire magic to make the job go faster. The problem is that this wheel turns about one-and-a-half times and then jams.

I say "incremental" but really these games trade on the exponential, right? Every phase is supposed to go ten times faster than the last, until you're blasting through paper clips or potatoes or whatever in planetary-sized gulps. Here, your fifth shelf of books goes a lot faster than your first; your tenth shelf goes somewhat faster than your fifth; after than you're kind of in a rut.

I think if the game had more varieties of spells, with more interesting interactions, it would have held together. Maybe 40000 shelves instead of 400? With a rank of spells that operated on a whole new level -- shelves instead of books? Or a lot more secrets. (There are four locked chests but no surprises beyond that.) As it is, I decided I'd had enough after an hour or so.

Footnote: A friend insists that you're supposed to play without using the spells at all. Just put away 3000 books, by hand, one at a time. If that's your kink, have I got a game for you.

Legacy of Kain: Defiance: Remastered

• by Crystal Dynamics -- game site

I played this in 2003 and reviewed it with the faintest of praise. My entire 2003 commentary:

An acceptable followup to the first two Soul Reaver games, but not inspired. The paradox story elements from SR2 are abandoned completely -- not that they were all that strong to begin with, but I was hoping that the conclusion would be more interesting. The major story revelations are all either murky or implausible. I still want more games set in this universe, but they need to start over with better writers.

If I had known that the next Nosgoth game would take 23 years to ship, I might have been kinder!

Historic note: A followup game called Dead Sun was planned in 2010 with Sam Barlow at the helm. It was cancelled in 2013, freeing Barlow to go off and write much more interesting games. (And yet we mourn.) Some remnant of Dead Sun was spun off into a multiplayer battler called Nosgoth, which never got out of beta.

So what's it like to come back to a twenty-year-old game that I never planned to replay? I sure didn't remember much of it.

You alternate playing Kain and Raziel, recrossing the same territory in different time periods, until they converge at the end for a final beat-down with the Elder God. That's about all I remembered. That's about all there is to remember.

Oh, there's plenty of story. You cross paths with the regulars: Moebius and Vorador, Ariel and Janos Audron. You even have a run-in with Mortanius, who hasn't been on-stage since Kain corked him in the original Blood Omen. (Time travel: a scriptwriter's gift to cameos.)

It's just, you know, lots of revelations and people sneering at each other. We get more history of the Elder Race vs the Hylden, but as usual, the Hylden are boring. The Hylden Lord escapes at the end, which is either sequel-bait or a reverse-setup for Blood Omen 2 -- I'd completely forgotten him.

Any given exchange is a pleasure to listen to! The voice actors are having a blast. (Check the making-of bonus videos.) But when I try to lay out what happens, I get: "The writers put Kain and Raziel through their paces." No wonder they get so antsy about free will.

I had fun. There's plenty of puzzle-shrines and puzzle-tombs and puzzle-courtyards to keep you busy. The environmental puzzles are the heart of these games; Defiance provides them in top form. As a bonus, most of these maps are polymorphic. Kain and Raziel run through the same areas -- from different starting points, using different abilities, solving different puzzles, breaking or fixing architecture in ways that will be reflected in each others' time periods. It's a genuinely impressive design stunt.

On the down side, this is all paced out with endless hallway fights. Fights, fights, fights. They just don't vary that much, as Kain or as Raziel. You beat on mooks until they bleed and then suck them dry, blood- or soul-wise. Bosses: dodge first, then pound.

The one exception is Turel, the boss-vampire cut from the first Soul Reaver script. You finally get to take him out -- and his fight is a stylistic gesture back to the environmental puzzle-fights of that earlier game. A good bit. Otherwise, it's all a bit of a slog. Or a bit of a sluagh. (Sorry.)

"Zarf, you Nosgoth fanboy, you protest way the heck too much." You bet your tattery blue ass I'm a fanboy. I love the whole ridiculous setting. Raziel is one of my household gods. (Limited-edition 18" figurine guarding my book collection.) When Ascendance and this remaster came out, I grabbed both and played right through.

What I love about the world of Nosgoth is that it's big, underexplained, and trails off in a thousand weird directions. It's exactly the kind of setting that doesn't benefit from having all its cracks filled in and smoothed out. Vorador forged the original Reaver blade? No, argh! This is exactly why Sam Barlow's mission was to start fresh with new characters and a new era.

That said, I will give Defiance its due: it wraps up Raziel's story on a hell of a high note. (Spoilers:) It effectively recasts the entire Kain-and-Raziel arc as a twisted vampire love story. Seriously, Raziel dies in Kain's arms swearing eternal fidelity. Not a dry eye in the house, albeit probably tears of blood.

Okay, yes, Kain has spent the last 1500 years of linear history being an unsurmountable and utter dick to Raziel. For plot reasons. Still -- OTP forever. Go them.