Castle Magus

Here is a really interesting free RPGMaker game that I just finished playing. Steam says it took me 29.6 hours. For this first playthrough of it, at least, as I will almost assuredly play through it again at some point, because after you finish it, you are given a code which will (among other things) translate all the symbols used as language text by quite a few of the alien characters that you meet throughout the game (though, apparently, this text is "translatable" manually as well, as it seems to just be a substitution cypher, I didn't bother to try all that hard, and besides, it gives me another reason to play it again later). You're able to use this code on a machine at the end of the game, but there's a way to use it at the very start of the game, too. (There's no full on "new game plus" mode or anything.) And beyond that, I know for a fact there are some things that I didn't do on this playthrough, such as a whole other dungeon, for one thing. While I suppose I could just load the "just before the final boss" save that the game gives you, I think I'd rather hold off on all that and save it for a second playthrough.

The basic gist of the story is that Alicia Copeland is the aunt of a young girl named Dorothy Borders. Dottie lives in a town called Daybreak. Weird and unfortunate things begin to happen in Daybreak, and Alicia rushes there to find her niece. It goes on from there. I won't say anything more about the story, to avoid spoilers.

The game has a vague EarthBound-ish feel to it, what with it being set in modern times, your characters having psychic powers, the initial character (Alicia) using a baseball bat as a weapon, the game having a sort of "Moonside"-ish area at one point, and other such similarities. It's not really trying to be an explicit EarthBound clone or anything, and, indeed, it really isn't that... but I still got quite a few EarthBound vibes from it. Which, if you've read any of my posts about EarthBound, you should know is a high compliment from me.

Aside from that, there are tons of tiny references to tons of other games/books/movies/etc. that I caught scattered all throughout, and I'm sure there are tons more that I completely missed or didn't even notice due to not having encountered the thing being referenced. Mostly in the form of graffiti (of which there is a lot) and such.

This is a game where you'll want to use your special abilities in battle in just about every fight, unlike most other RPGs where you typically just use nothing but normal attacks for most fights and save your magic and such for bosses or whatever. Each character you find that joins your party has unique abilities, and the game gives every character passive or active (or both) abilities which allow them to fairly easily regain their "PSI" (which is what this game's version of "MP" or "mana" is called [not to be confused with "pounds per square inch"]), both in and out of battle. Hell, one of the characters gains an ability where every use of their basic regular attack refills their PSI a little bit, for example.

Speaking of battles, this game uses both random battles and "you see the enemy on the overworld before you fight them" type of battles (or, at least, you see a generic monster sprite roaming the overworld map, anyway). And even the random battles aren't completely "random," in that it has a red bar/meter that fills up as you walk around, and when that's full, it triggers a battle. The only other game I can think of off hand that does something like that is Ar tonelico, but I'm sure there are probably others that do something similar. After you're in an area for a while, the bar turns yellow and takes longer to fill up, which is nice. Most areas usually only use one or the other system, but a couple areas use both.

One hint: don't sell Margaret (the bat that Alicia starts the game with), as there's an "Honest Axe" scenario a good ways into the game that lets you upgrade it, if you still have it with you.

I would have embedded/linked to a Youtube playlist of the music, as I do for most other posts like this, since the music is good, but as far as I could see, no such playlist exists, and the one video I found that contains some of the battle themes in it also has visual spoilers in it, so I won't be linking to that one. That said, here is the entire soundtrack on khinsider.com, though it's all jumbled and in no real order, other than literally alphabetical based on file name. (This, for example, is the main title theme of the game, but it's track 55 on the KHInsider list.)

Just to mention it, again, this is another one of those "how and why does this game not cost any money to play?" games. Oh, and with this post, I've made a new tag. I might have missed one or two such posts, but I don't think I did, because I used the month's worth of paid account for Dreamwidth I bought a few weeks ago for the "search my own journal" ability and used that, so hopefully not.

I also just found out right before starting this post that the creator of this game has another free RPGMaker game on Steam, which I have not (yet) played.

I'm just like this, but with EarthBound instead of Chrono Trigger. I am also like this with Chrono Trigger.

The only ones mentioned here that I hadn't at least heard of before are Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled and I am Setsuna.

Yeah, everything about this and everything even remotely similar... it's just yet another bullshit-encrusted facet on the cubic zirconia that is the modern video game industry, and the sooner the entire thing crashes and burns, the better.

Haven't heard the name Jack Thompson in a while. Fortunately, it was just Woolie making a reference, rather than anything actually to do with Jack Thompson. Last thing anyone needs is that dipshit roaring back into the limelight.

Anyway, yeah, as Woolie himself mentions[1], Collective Shout is more specifically like the Westboro Baptist Cult (Remember those shitheads? Another blast from the past, like bad ol' Jackhole.) than they are like the more generic, generalized "moral panic" dumbfucks of the days of yore (though said dumbfucks do indeed still exist to this day).

Also, in the last couple of minutes of the above video, Woolie and Pat indirectly describe pretty much the entire modus operandi of Trump supporters for the past entire decade, i.e. real reasons hidden behind """""plausible""""" reasons.

[1] - And I actually wrote the majority of that sentence there before getting far enough into the video to hear that explicit mention, because that was where my mind went to, as well. Simply added the "as Woolie himself mentions" bit after the fact, in a pre-post edit.

Over the past few days, I've replayed both Gone Home and Tacoma (both made by the same company). Twice, even, with the first times being without commentary and the second times being with commentary. For Tacoma, I've already written a post about it, back in 2019 (and I should point out that I rebought it on Steam just before starting this new playthrough, since it was on sale at the time, even though I already had the free copy of it downloaded), but for Gone Home, I apparently never wrote a post about it. So, this is that post.

I would say it would be better to go into Gone Home not knowing anything about it, but it's kind of an It Was His Sled situation at this point, so...

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( Behind cut + spoiler space, even so, and also a bit of drama that I only found out about in the process of writing this post )

Full headline, because the whole thing didn't fit up there: "Amazon thought it could compete with Steam because it was so much larger than Valve, but Prime Gaming's former VP admits that 'gamers already had the solution to their problems'"

"That's not to say the assessment that Valve punches above its weight is inaccurate. ... It's more the naive fascination Evans has with the idea that Steam is good that baffles me."

It's not even so much that Steam is good, really. There is an awful lot about Steam that I absolutely loathe.[1] Steam was simply lucky enough to be the first (well, no, but it was the first to actually get huge, anyway). It's just that, so far, to this day, everything that came after and tried to ride on Steam's coattails has been and is absolute rancid dogshit.

At least this Evans guy is, kind of, being self-reflective about Amazon's failure in particular, sort of (even if most of it is just "inspirational LinkedIn corporate speech"). Meanwhile, we still have fetid horseshit like Origin/EA App and UPlay (or whatever it's called now) and Epic Gluttonous Shitpile and so many other flavor-of-the-month, Johnny-come-lately digital storefronts still plodding along like they're each the hottest thing since sliced bread (and, well, since Steam), when they're actually worse-than-worthless, each and every one of them.

My own personal history with Steam is that I basically avoided it like the plague, up until the point where a game I wanted to buy was only available on Steam at the time I wanted to buy it. So, I finally bit the bullet and installed Steam. And now, today, I still occasionally might buy a PC game (and PC games are all I buy these days) if it isn't available on Steam (like, say, if it's some retro/nostalgic thing on GOG, or maybe some The Sims related thing on the EA Store, maybe), but much more often than that, I take the view that if it isn't on Steam, it may as well not exist at all (e.g. all the Epic Grotesque Scuzz "exclusives," most of which end up being properly released on the personal computer six months to a year later anyway).

[1] - All you have to do is look at my "steam" tag below to see what I'm talking about (well, the posts that are actually about Steam itself, anyway, and not just about games that happen to be on Steam or whatever).

This game is sort of like what you'd get if you took Vampire Survivors and made it a 2D side-scrolling arena (without the scrolling), in which you run back and forth, jumping around, throwing knives at monsters, and collecting bones (the game's currency), until you dieget knocked out. During the arena part, you get level ups that let you gain new (temporary) powers and abilities.[1] You start in a tiny hub town place, to which you return when you dieget knocked out. It has a shop (which only opens after you've lasted at least 2 minutes in the arena part) that sells permanent upgrades, and there are other doors that open after you last increasing amounts of time. I've only lasted 7 minutes so far, so the only other door I've opened so far is the one to the item mixing guy. I've only played it for 35 minutes as of this post, though, says Steam.

The game is free. If it had cost even just a dollar, I probably would have just clicked Next in my discovery queue, but I'd say now that it's probably worth at least a dollar. Maybe even almost the same money as Vampire Survivors.

My only issue with the game is the weird effect that is on the text font that makes it annoying to read. It's kind of like that Zalgo shit, but not really. More like just a weird repetition/echo effect or something. Still, in any case, I wish there was an option to make the text not do that.

[1] - I could see the game becoming super easy if you lucked out and got a bunch of the power ups in a row that increase base damage and increase healing per kill, though. On the other hand, you could get unlucky and get two "choices" of the same power up that doubles your damage but sets your health to 1 (i.e. near instant deathunconsciousness, unless you have godlike reflexes or something).

Full headline, because just look at that gargantuan monster: "Steam has changed its policy on DLC content and season passes, so now players are entitled to proper compensation if future plans fall through: 'Customers will be offered a refund for the value of unreleased DLC'"

As just one example, the article mentions Stellaris. The main reason I have never bought anything to do with Stellaris is because every time I see it go on sale for 75%/$9.99 USD or whatever, I'm inevitably reminded that that's just for the "base game," and the DLC will still be way too expensive, even at half off or more. Like, right now, with just the very basic 10% "bundle discount," the "Stellaris Ultimate Bundle" is fucking $290.49 USD. All the DLC separately (some of which isn't, amazingly, in the "ultimate bundle") is $359.74 USD. And that $359.74 doesn't even include the "normal" $39.99 price tag for the "base game." The DLC/season pass situation of Stellaris is completely asinine.

Anyway, good on Steam for doing this, I guess.

Was looking at the Apollo Justice trilogy on Steam. Seems like they removed Denuvo, which is good... only to replace it with Enigma Protector, which is bad. They may as well have just kept in the fucking Denuvo, as far as I'm concerned. I'm guessing they'll probably do the same with the Edgeworth games collection when the Denuvo license expires on that, too. I'm just glad they haven't shoehorned that Enigma Protector shit into the original trilogy I already bought (yet, at least).

Well, I'll say this much, it certainly "protects" Crapcum from getting any more of my money, if nothing else.

Welp, they finally did it. Haven't bought it yet and will, of course, be waiting for at least a moderate sale, as usual, but it's still about 99.999% certain that I will be getting this eventually.

(And I have since bought and played the whole thing, except for the Haunted Castle stuff. It's pretty great. No complaints about anything, this time.)