Switch

Good game! Beautiful art style. Fully voiced. Controls are tight and snappy. Short game overall.

Don't play it it in Switch tho. Got a few optimization issues. The game freaked out a few times and gave me a loading screen in the middle of combat lol. Resumed just fine tho so its clearly a known issue.

The button mapping is incredibly flexible. I was able to place all the combat controls on the right side. Even blocking. What became apparent is im so used to never blocking in games (because the button is usually unreachable to me) that i forgot i could block this time.

It bears repeating, the art is so beautiful and organic. Its so nice i dont understand why the devs felt the need to titillate players with a booby protag. shrug The boobs are toned down for the cover art tho which is interesting.

Browser

Posted: 2024-01-30

\o/

You gotta play these games right now. Here are the links to play Candy Box! and Candy Box 2.

They are free, there are no ads, and once you load the page, you can play in your browser.

If youd rather play only one game, I recommend playing Candy Box 2. Candy box 1 and 2 are conceptually the same game. Although you can play both at the same time with no issue.

I love these games. Theyre easily some of my all-time favouite games. Ive replayed candy box 1 and 2 several times over the past 8 or so years. Despite that, i dont recall beating either game. I maaaaybe have beaten Candy Box 1 once but im not sure if that was me or if i fabricated that memory after reading how to beat the game lmao. As of this writing, im my current playthrough, im only missing one of the four stones in Candy Box 2. Im nowhere close to beating Candy Box1.

Edit: I came home today (2024-01-26) and went out of my way to beat Candy Box 2. I had no idea it ended like that. The computer still manages to introduce a funny post-game mechanic. I used the bug ultimate command and then ate candy. Normally, nothing is supposed to happen and instead I got an absurd amount of HP. I went from the normal 3k cap to like 140k lmao

Candy Box 1 and Candy Box 2 are best described as "idle-clicker" games, although candy cannot be generated with any direct input from the player. Assuming you immediately clicked the above links to start playing, you may have noticed that already. By the way, its probably been over 10 seconds since you started the game(s). Maybe youve unlocked something interesting. Why dont you go ahead and check? Dont mind me, I'll still be here.

These games are charming, funny, and easy to get in to. The ascii art is a big factor of why i like the games so much. Its obvious that the ascii art is created by hand rather than generated by some program. Several artists are credited in Candy box 2 just for the ascii art. Its likely that Candy box influenced my preferance for oldschool emoticons (^u^)

Candy Box has a very tongue-in-cheek tone. It sort of has to be if half the gameplay is centred on the production and consumption of bonkers amounts of candy. The candy centric theme carries over to the other half of the game, which is a loving satire of an rpg.

The rpg elements are not introduced right away. You would expect, as this part of the game is unlocked later, that the rpg only exists to unlock candy production upgrades. While this is technically true, its easy to let the candy production fall into the background while playing the rpg side of things. While there are going to be stints when it’s best to let the game run overnight to grind candies, the game is quick enough the player will be making good progress on each play session. Each game is beatable in a week.

Despite hitting a few walls in both games, I never really found this frustrating. Trying to get as far as I feel like and enjoying the humour as I play is fun and satisfying enough.

I mentioned that conceptually, both games are the same. What is inspiring to me is the significant leap in quality and content between the first and second games. Especially since i found out the games were only released like 6 months apart. (o.o)՞ Did I mention the games are built entirely in js? The games are built entirely in js. This means you can still play either game in their entirity offline as long as you can load the page in your browser. From what I understand, these games are fairly lightweight as well.

This also means its easy to cheat if you know anything about html5 and js. It’s even easier to cheat in cb2 bc you can download the save file as plain text, and its extremely clear what variables you need to change to get what you want lmaooo

Anyways, Candy Box 2 is a much larger game, and throws the player into a sprawling rpg pretty quickly. The game retains the same sense of humour as the first, and has way more ascii art. A big stand out difference to me is that Candy Box 2 is a more involved game that requires more attention and strategy from the player. In Candy Box 1, you can get away with going on a quest and letting the game idle so long as your stats were high enough. Overall, Candy Box 2 is a more realized version of the game, but that is not to say Candy Box 1 is not without it’s merits. I still recommend playing both if any of this sounds even a little bit interesting.

Now if you read all that, and you like the idea of a browser based idle game, but prefer a more serious tone, A Dark Room has similar gameplay to Candy Box with a little less absurdity and more resource management.

Wait hold on, I wanna try something

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          .-'%%% a: a %%%
              %%  L   %%_
              _%\'-' |  /-.__
           .-' / )--' #/     '\
          /'  /  /---'(    :   \
         /   |  /( /|##|  \     |
        /   ||# | / | /|   \    \
        |   ||##| I \/ |   |   _|
        |   ||: | o  |#|   |  / |
        |   ||  / I  |:/  /   |/
        |   ||  | o   /  /    /
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          \/ \::|/\_ /  ---'|

Eyyyyy! It’s the candy merchant! \(^u^)/ Gosh it’s like seeing an old friend.

The one thing I appreciate more now than I did before is how much these games managed to accomplish using tools that I’m casually learning on my own. It makes me wonder what I could try to do with this site. (ෆ˙ᵕ˙ෆ)

I’ll probably revisit Candy Box 1 and 2 sometime in the future. These are charming and funny games I deeply enjoy. Sometimes it’s less about playing old games and more about playing an indie title once in a while as a pallet cleanser. So much of the gaming industry is a capitalist hellscape choked with price gouging and micro transactions. I do play a good chunk of indie games off itch.io. Maybe I ought to post a review or two of games that I love off there now and then.

Browser

Posted: 2024-02-09

@

This is another browser based incremental thats what the genre is called game you can play here. If you already started playing, my number one tip for this game is DO NOT IDLE ON THE VILLAGE TAB. Literally stay anywhere else. This advice applies to the mobile version as well.

Ohhh, boy. This review is going to have a lot of spoilers. I'll try my best to keep this review as neat looking as possible

There are 2 versions of adr, and i played the browser version. From what I’ve read, the mobile version of the game is a much richer version of the game. There are more direct story beats, and the tone of the game’s narrative is much harsher. I’ll talk more about the specific differences later. From what I’ve read, the mobile version is absolutely worth playing over the browser version. I like the browser version just fine but... we’ll see. >.>

The game starts with you starting a fire. The first person to wander in and join you is builder. She’s great, i love her. She helps you build anything you need, including huts to encourage others to settle in your newly established village.

The Village is a resource generating and management system. You set traps and collect wood to hurry it along. Any villagers you have can be assigned to specific tasks to generate specific resources. Watch out, bc certain roles will reduce other resources to get the job done. (Tanners will take 10 fur to make 1 leather, for example.) Events occur at random and eventually you earn a compass, which opens up the Dusty Path tab.

The Dusty Path is a rogue-lite rpg adventure. You’re job is to explore the area beyond your settlement and collect more goods. Oh, and you have to make it back alive if you want to keep anything. Walking consumes water and food. Its very punishing especially in the early game. Good luck (b^u^)b

I can’t really say much more without revealing MAJOR spoilers. The next bit is going to be covered in spoiler tags.

A Dark Room is pretty subtle in its telling until it’s not. This is especially true in the browser version. You’re going to be doing a lot of reading between the lines. The first reveal is that the game takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. (This is most obvious while exploring A Dusty Path.) The second reveal is that you are an alien, and everyone referred to as a wanderer is also an alien. The last reveal is that you are partially responsible for said apocalypse. The end goal of the game is revealed when you find a starship. Your character plans to use that to escape back into outerspace.

Most of these reveals are indirect (at least in the browser version) so it’s up to the player to read carefully and pick up on the implications of the game. It explains why the pc and the builder are set apart from the other villagers. It also explains why so many people are hostile to you on sight. Young teens and children attacking you is a common encounter. I mean, the cloth and charms (and some of the meat) you find in your traps could only come from humans. This game is not above implying cannibalism.

The further out you venture, the more alien tech you find. This stuff is easily the best in the game, which gently implies humans didn’t stand a chance when the alien fleet attacked. The game paints an especially gruesome picture in the locations at the furthest edge of the map, which have more descriptions of desolated cities, ravaged environments from battlefields, and bodies littering starships.

As far as i can tell, the browser has two endings depending on if you find the fleet beacon. The ending without it skips straight to showing you your score. If you do find it, you will be given extra text that is somehow more ambiguous (imo). Genuinely i like this true(er) ending. It requires you to do more reading between the lines like you’ve likely been doing most of the game. The way I read it, the wanderer dies. The old starship cannot run his life support long enough in time for the fleet to pick him up, but calling upon the fleet could likely bring further suffering to the planet below.

I love this game. It explores the sci-fi genre in a very satisfying way. Up until this playthrough, I never got far in the game. I used to give up right around when i unlock A Dusty Path (i really don’t like rogue-likes or rogue-lites) but I’m really glad i pushed through this time around. I replayed as result of revisiting the Candy Box games, and adr was directly inspired by those games so naturally I tried adr anytime I decided i was done with cb1 and 2. I like adr bc it happens to hit all the genres and gameplay styles i really like, but at the end of the day, adr is just a good game.

Mobile Version Superiority

Like i mentioned before, the mobile version is pretty different, and I think it would make for a richer experience of the game.

It’s pretty clear in the browser version what the setting and immediate history is supposed to be, but from what I’ve read, the devs weren’t quite satisfied and decided to flesh out the pc and builder characters in the mobile version of the game. The same playthrough on the mobile version reveals that the pc will eventually start to refer to the villagers as slaves and will continue to do so until the end of the game. If i was supposed to pick up on this implication in the browser version, i did not pick up on that at all. As a result, the game is much kinder in the browser version by virtue of being more ambiguous.

The builder is also expanded on in the mobile version. Apparently she’s the reason the pc survives when they pass out during the Dusty Path adventures. She also has more opinions on what the player does. She makes it pretty clear she hates your plan to escape into space and rejoin the fleet and she’ll eventually abandon you completely and never return. The browser version has her as a more neutral presence. She remains in the village no matter what you do, and it’s unclear whether she joins you on the ship or not.

Both versions of the game invite you to replay the game after you beat it, but the storyline in the mobile version incentivises the player to try beating the game without building any huts and therefore without resorting to slavery. I have no idea if this pacifist run exists in the browser version, but apparently your reward for the hutless run is that builder doesnt hate your guts and joins you on the starship at the end of the game.

All in all its a great game. For reading this far, here are a few more tips: You’ll generally want to avoid the “do nothing” option for net gains. Hoard scales and teeth above all else. Last but certainly not least, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DONT HANG THE THIEF.

As an aside, I found out while looking this game up that Candy Box and A Dark Room were the direct inspirations for Cookie Clicker. The natural progression would be to play that next. Cookie Clicker is kinda renown for its infamy so it feels weirdly redundant to review it. I mean, the real reason i don’t wanna review it is because I’ve already been playing Cookie Clicker for yrs on my phone so I don’t feel like reviewing it

PC (2015)

Posted: 2024-03-30

Seems like this review is just as much a retrospective on MapleStory as it is a review of MapleLegends. I will also touch on one other server i tried.

The thing about gaming as a hobby is that some games are the sticky tar pits of the gaming world. I don’t necessarily mean they’re bad games, I mean they’re hard to get out of and leave. Sometimes a game feels more like a bad habit rather than a relaxing hobby. MMORPGs and a lot of PVP multi-player games usually fit this category to a tee. This is what playing ML is like. There were a lot of days when i would rather play literally anything else, but my brain basically made it impossible to enjoy any game that wasn’t ML. There were a few months there that i was really into the thick of it. Rare was the day i didn’t log on at least once. I cannot stress enough that I think ML is a good game. Its just that some games put a curse on you, and ML is one of those games. Now that the curse is lifted, I can properly enjoy other games again. It also means I’m more comfortable reviewing this mmo. (ෆ˙ᵕ˙ෆ)

I dunno if you’ve picked up on this vibe from me yet, but I Do Not like multi-player games. (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ Whether it be co-op or pve it doesn’t matter. I especially dislike anything pvp. An excellent video essay by fellow Calgarian Dan Olson titled Why It's Rude to Suck at Warcraft pretty succinctly explains everything i dislike about MMOs and more broadly multi-player games in general.

MapleStory is my one exception strictly for nostalgia’s sake. The music is so chill and peaceful it’s like 90% of the reason i wanted to go back to revisit the game. The modern version of MapleStory is about as unappealing as any other mmorpg out there, so i decided to find out if there were any private servers over older versions of the game.

This is where MapleLegends comes in. It’s based on ver .62 of the game, which came out right around the time my family stopped playing the game, which turned out to be exactly what I’m looking for in a server. From what i gather, this is the oldest version private servers will base their servers on. ML doesn’t restrict itself to v.62, it also includes areas and features from later versions.

A widely universal problem across private servers is that the game stagnates pretty easily. Most MS servers seem to have populations anywhere from a couple dosen to two thousand players. ML’s population typically hovers at around 800 concurrent players (most of whom are AFK at any given moment). Most of these players are people in the late game. What this means is that in-game economies suffer inflated priced on items when there are almost no new players to offset the market. It also makes it harder for new players to recruit others for lower level party quests. For someone like me, the majority of my chat is filled with server wide announcements for people buying, selling, and looking for players to pq. Some aspects of the meta change for the worse when the ‘massive’ part of the mmorpg cannot be replicated on a private server. ¯\_(σ ‸ σ)_/¯

As an aside, i know for a fact that anyone who is afk is an active player lmao They are not legacy players who left their account logged in for years on end. Over the course of the past few months that I’ve been active, the server has closed for maintenance/updates roughly once a month for events. All ~800 of those players have to download the new version and log on every time that happens. Not to mention people who dc naturally as a consequence of shaky internet or what have you.

I don’t know if this is/was a common thing in mmos, but for some reason in MapleStory, different regional servers had different extra areas available to them. Like. Why. (=A='') MapleStory SEA (South East Asia) had a lot of exclusive content that wasn’t available in GMS (Global MapleStory). As far as I understand, these regional differences were pretty superficial, as the base game was identical. Any private server remedies this by integrating any exclusive content into their servers.

As of this writing, I have a lvl 86 ranger in ML. So im decently far into the midgame. My goals with this character is tourism and childhood wish fulfillment. I don’t really intend to dive into the late game like at all. My play style is pretty much solo all the way through.

Part of that wish fulfillment aspect is that most private servers (as i understand, anyways) give players free access to the cash shop. In the official MS, these are exclusive game items you can pay for with real world currency micro-transaction style. Private servers lets you buy cashshop items in exchange for voting for their server. Obviously no one ever enjoys micro-transactions, so being able to access cosmetics and pets without needing to pay is a pretty big draw. You can still donate money to the ML server and get cash shop items that way, but since ML only includes cosmetics and pets, this removes any pay2win problems that occur in official MS. As a result, there are basically no high lvl players who aren’t completely decked out in cosmetics. Everyone gets to wear that cute dress we always wanted to as a kid. I don’t mind this at all.

Seeing as this is a pretty early version of the game (circa 2008), the pace for levelling up is pretty slow. ML features x2 exp and x3 quest and even then the game moves at a leisurely pace. As a weirdo who likes grinding as a way to chill out, this is ideal. Servers based on slightly newer versions of MapleStory will usually sport higher multiplying factors to exp as part of their appeal and feature content that expedites levelling that render old quest lines entirely obsolete. Modern MapleStory is pretty egregious with the latter, in that one of the selling points is that players can practically skip to level 200 within a few months of starting the game. For some players, this is a make-or-break QOL feature. For me, it feels like a shallow appeal to players at the cost of the journey.

The difficulty humps and slowdowns as a character levels up is, in my humble opinion, part of the experience of the game. It feels less meaningful when characters practically skip through lvls 20-30 bc they get a buttload of exp just talking to npcs. I mean, its kinda special when a bro you meet at lvl 40 is still active in the guild at lvl 100 six months later.

My older brother got me to try out a server that just launched a couple of weeks ago. ScaniaMS is based on ver .83 of MS, and sports a lot of the changes and features of another popular server DreamMS. A huge reason i didn’t like that server is because it removes aspects of the game i consider essential to the game feel. This server, and servers like it replicate a lot of the issues i have with updates to official MS. :T

Speaking of QOL, ML adjusts some features, but seems to keep a lot of the base game intact. Once again, this appeals to my nostalgia. I understand if a lot of players view some of these legacy quirks as things that should be fixed, but to me, they’re important to the game feel. The 2 biggest examples that stick out to me is traversal and bosses.

Travelling through the maple world will often require the player to board ferries to get to various areas. The largest voyage was connecting Ellinia to Orbis, in MS this took 30 real world minutes. If you just miss the ship, you’re shit out of luck until the next boat arrives 30 minutes later. If the ship gets ambushed while you’re outside, there’s a really good chance your character will die and spawn you back at the start. It wasn’t unusual for characters to get stranded or go broke as this trip cost 10k mesos. ML retains this feature, but removes the cost and shortens the voyage to 10 minutes. Smaller journeys were reduced to 5 minute voyages. A welcome change, as the population of the server means most journeys will only have a single occupant. Back in the day, the voyage on channel 1 usually carried hundreds of players across the world and meant it was easy enough to occupy your time socializing with other players. In ML, boarding a ship with one other player is a rarity.

Bosses retain their rarity in ML. Bosses have a cooldown timer anywhere from 2 hours to resetting once daily. With only 6 channels and hundreds of players, some bosses are harder to come by as other players will likely have killed them before you get a chance to find them. I like this about boss hunting. Getting lucky finding a boss, or noticing which bosses are almost always taken out by other players is part of the meta. Finding a less popular boss thats off the beaten path has a special kind of satisfaction when you have free reign to wipe out the boss on all 6 channels.

When these aspects of the game are cited as ‘inconveniences’ and are removed from the game, I consider that a negative. Sure, a mandatory 10 minute wait to arrive at your destination sounds like a bad thing, but the break from the game removes pressure and urgency that tends to crop up in other games. Sure, not being able to hunt bosses whenever you want sounds like a stupid limitation, but I like discovering and recognizing the patterns in player behaviours and needing to plan around that. Even though im a solo player through and through, i still want to feel the impact of other people in this virtual world.

A lot of what I talked about just now speaks to my personal taste, and thats great. I don’t wanna yuck anyone’s yum if they prefer servers with slightly newer versions of the game. My point is that game feel is really important to me, and I’ll play retro games and forego QOL just for that alone.

There is also a series of benefits and drawbacks to playing a fresh server. There’s a chance to break into the top 100 player rank if you play early on, for one. On the other hand, playing on a server that has been around for several years has had a chance to develop a stable game and community. I know this should not count as a point against ScaniaMS, but playing a game that has way more polish and then switching to a version that struggles to render properly at modern resolutions is a downgrade that did colour my experience. Buggy autobans or npc dialogue with incorrect information adds up fast.

But the fattest nail in the coffin was ScaniaMS had no community forum. They used a discord server as a replacement. This is a growing trend on the broader internet and its a change for the worse. (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ Having discussions on a forum meant that information was publically available to anyone. Being able to plug a specific issue into a seach engine and have the answer on a forum is part of what made the early internet a more agreeable place to navigate. Now, a lot of useful information is gated behind a chat client.

In addition to a forum with information relevant to the specific server, over the years, players of ML have developed tools outside of the game for others to use. From what I can tell, ML’s free market has pretty stable for a few years now (if a little inaccessible to new players). The reason I know this is because OwlRepo has existed as a tool for players to upload and search market prices since 2020. I’ve seen discussions of a market fluctuations when a bunch of new players joined during covid lockdown lmao

Now, I’m gonna awkwardly pivot to talking about something else (^-^')7

The monster book is a feature introduced to MS after i stopped playing, but it perfectly complements my play style. It’s easily my favourite part of the game. (ෆ˙ᵕ˙ෆ) I think i would have dropped playing ML a long time ago had it not been for the monster book. The monster book is a virtual card collecting quest. Different species of monster have different drop rates for their card. Collecting five of the same card completes a set. This basically gave me a collect-a-thon mission that would allow me to justify grinding solo and justify visiting and exploring obscure maps for fun. °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖° Most players wait till after 4th job advancement (lvl 120) to start card hunting, but i basically started card hunting as early as lvl 30.

The monster book is the only thing I liked better in ScaniaMS. Even though it’s my favourite feature, in the end, it did not overshadow all of the things i liked better in ML. Now, i don’t know what is true to the original MS, but the two servers have different rewards for the monster book. In ML, every 30 card sets completed allows the player to upgrade a ring for better stat bonuses. In Scania, there is a hp/mp stat bonus applied after every card set. Card drops are more common in Scania, and being a later version of the game means more monster types to collect.

Now that im writing about it, the monster ring in ML is still better. ML’s monster ring may only be upgraded every 30 card sets, but at least it also gives bonuses to the 4 base stats in addition to hp/mp boosts. Scania might also do this, but i didn’t play far enough into it to find out. Basically, not even an expanded monster book could sway me from my preference for an older feeling, slower paced version of the game. d(￣◇￣)b

I mentioned the community on ML has stabilized, but I have a theory that a major factor in why interactions with people in game have been mostly pleasant and reasonable is because there’s hardly anyone under the age of 30 playing on MS private servers. I've had several lovely interations with complete strangers. It's not uncommon for passers by to say hello (^u^)/

This next bit is all personal anecdote. The review is basically over lol

Despite being a solo player, i somehow managed to stumble ass backwards into founding a new guild. For a brief stint, I managed to get my brother to play on ML with me (this was a little bit before ScaniaMS launched). We ran into a very kind player who gave us directions (i had forgotten where a few job specific npcs were) and outfitted my bother with some nice gear. My brother wasnt able to play much more as life got in the way, but i ended up running into the same player weeks later as we got mass recruited into the same guild.

Generally, my policy with guild invites was flat out rejection i've had one person cuss me out and call me rude for rejecting an unsolicited invitation, but the guild’s defacto leader found me while i was card hunting and managed to persuade me. (“Why?” i asked. “Why not?” he said.) Since everyone was mass recruited, no one in the guild really knew anyone save me and the buddy who help my brother out.

Another few weeks go by and i get a pm from the buddy. He pitches to me an idea of forming a new guild. Tells me i could rejoin the old one after the new one is formed. I decided ‘ehhh, i knew this guy slightly longer. He’s been kind and reasonable so far, I may as well help him out.’ While we sort out forming a new guild, we get to gossiping. He tells me he got booted unceremoniously from the last guild for trying to recruit people for pqs. Apparently the leader of that guild was quite rude.

Buddy promotes me to jr. master on account that i am a founding member. We decide as a rule we don’t mass recruit.

A day goes by. We join a guild alliance and it turns out A FUKIN LOT of people dislike the defacto leader of that other guild. I get a few stray bits of gossip about it. It’s hella funny. XD

I take a break from ML for a few months. I log in and the only people active in the guild are myself and an entirely different founding member. She managed to get to lvl 120 in the interim. Despite being a solo player and only ever card hunting (its a very inefficient grinding method d(￣◇￣)b), i manage to to become the second highest level player in the guild. I’m still baffled that i basically failed upwards into being a founding member and jr. master of a guild lmaoo Nice to know being polite can get you places

Like I told my fellow jr. master, my primary goal in playing ML is tourism. If i keep playing ML on and off for the next bit, chances are I’ll either complete the monster book, or get to 4th job advancement and then I’ll likely quit the game for good.

Switch

Neat idea. Decent execution. The gameplay loop of dungeon crawling and shopkeep simulator is pretty nice. The pricing is a fun mechanic. Some bits are a little unbalanced. I don’t like that some drops can only be acquired once. This means pricing them properly for sales is near impossible. The game felt a bit samey by the time i unlocked the third dungeon. Every dungeon has the same layout, same formula for the procedurally generated layout, and same reward structure. The only thing unique between each dungeon is aesthetic theme, and small variance in combat. It felt like working through the same dungeon as the first again except everyone, the enemies and the player, were doing more damage and that’s it. Give me more variation for each dungeon.

The final door had a missed opportunity of combining all four previous dungeons into one messy final dungeon. Even if it was just one floor and super easy, it would have been neat thematically, i think.

Plot is fun. Visually pleasing. Considering this is an indie title its a pretty good game. There is dlc available but im not all that compelled to buy it.

PlayStation 4

GOOD. GAME. ♡

PC

Posted: 2025-07-28

AMAZING GAMEEE °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°

I have linked the website here because its so worth your time.

For transparency, I received this game as part of a bundle for donating a few dollars to charity. So I did not pay the full 20-ish dollars for this. Still, I genuinely think it deserves your attention.

This is a 2D side-scroller platforming adventure game. You play as a bard. Who is a pacifist The main mechanic to interact is to sing. Singing is mapped to the right analog stick (which got a real workout while playing this game). Eight directions for eight notes giving you a full octave to work with.

The presentation of the game is 2D papercraft/amateur digital art. I get some paper mario vibes, which is likely one of the driving inspirations. There's also a lot of homage to many LoZ games. Don't be fooled by the simple presentation, there is a lot of sophisticated animation and very expressive visuals that play up the strengths of a simpler style.

Given that this is a music-centric game, you would assume it would have a lot of rhythm elements. There's only ONE minigame that requires following along to a beat. Most puzzles are more like simon-says or note recitals. Basically, you know how OoT and Majora's Mask had you play instruments to complete puzzles? It's more like that. In addition, there are more actiony applications of the singing. The singing is frequently combined with platforming or combat to produce a unique gaming experience with this one mechanic. I've often gripped about games introducing a cool mechanic, but not exploring the full potential of that mechanic. Wandersong does not squander the unique potential of a musical instrument as a gameplay feature.

The meat and potatoes of the game is exploring towns and interacting with various characters. (This is a very reading heavy game.) Often, a new application of the singing or unique mechanic is introduced with each new act. The most memorable act is the town that has a day/night cycle à la Majora's Mask. It's a factory town and you need to collect unemployed folks to start a revolution and stop the factory Baron who is later to be revealed to be the bard's DAD lmaooooo

Every act, you will enter the spirit world. These are platforming heavy puzzle areas. I'm split on these areas. Often the puzzles utilizing the singing are much more interesting and engaging, but the skill platforming is not something i particularly enjoy. The most frustrating section combined skill platforming WHILE singing. Still, I managed to complete the game without chafing too much on any particular area. The checkpoints are pretty generous and the game loads fast.

There is seemingly a pixel perfect jump in the first act. I dunno what the hell was up with that. ¯\_(σ ‸ σ)_/¯

I completed the game over the course of 2 days. It would have taken me longer had I lived alone. The later portions of the game are pretty creepy in contrast to the earlier brighter cartoony tone. I do NOT handle horror very well (I avoid it when i can ) I asked my roommate to figuratively hold my hand while i completed the game not realizing I had already completed the worst sections of the game on my own lmao

Singing throughout the game is very fun and interesting. You can activate it anytime, even during most cutscenes. The bard's mood is reflected in their singing. It's pretty typical that the bard would change to sad or pensive singing to reflect the plot. Early on, the bard changes to stage whisper singing when he's too nervous to draw attention from a rumoured monster. Even when it feels narratively inappropriate, singing in any situation becomes an implied character trait of the bard, and its indirectly encouraged for the player to sing at any opportunity.

Story is masterful. The main plot serves as a deconstruction of hero stories in fantasy video games. The exposition fairy tells the bard out-right that he is not the hero. She also lets you know the world is ending, and that this is by design of the creator of the universe. It's possible to spare the world by singing the Earthsong. No one has ever done it, but it's possible. Despite that, the bard asks if they can try to save the universe anyways and the exposition fairy is like "well. you're cute, and i like your voice, so sure ♥" Then, she ditches you in search of a real hero. So thats how the bard sets out on a quest to save the world. His singing seems to be finally useful, after all.

The plot quickly pairs you up with Miriam, a witch companion that is annoyed, and grumpy, and serves as your hint fairy and main transport. Miriam is fantastic. Incredible companion and character. The game really expands on her in the late game. Her arc hits home when it comes to themes of loneliness, life purpose, and anxieties on belonging. Her relationship to the bard is incredibly sweet by the end of the game. She's the only character in the whole game that calls the bard by his real name.

The antagonist is the best. I'm going to be thinking about her for a long time, I'm sure. Unfortunately, her entire existence is a spoiler to the plot. The next section will fully spoil the entire plot.

Audrey is the hero the exposition fairy chose to complete the quest at the end of the world. While the bard tries to collect all the pieces of the Earthsongs from the Overseers, Audrey is trying to kill all the Overseers before they become too corrupt and start releasing monsters. Halfway through the game, it is revealed that killing all the Overseers will end the world. Audrey doesnt seem to react to this revelation.

I love this shit. I LOVE stories where the hero is the destroyer of worlds. It's rare but almost always interesting. (✯◡✯)

Even knowing that, Audrey continues to wear the "Hero" title and charges ahead to kill more Overseers. She knows this facilitates the end of the world, but she doesnt seem to care. She's the Hero after all, thats how it works.

Audrey continues to antagonize the bard and Miriam throughout the whole game until a turning point toward the end. The exposition fairy has abandoned Audrey. The fairy has changed her mind and now believes the bard had a better shot at saving the world and wants to delay Audrey's "Hero" quest. Audrey doesnt take well to this change of plan. She goes rogue, and tries to end the world herself. Being a "Hero" is her whole identity. It's too important to her that she's willing to sacrifice the universe just to be a hero for a few more days.

THE FINAL. BOSS FIGHT. HAS YOU. ASSISTING. THE FINAL BOSS. TO STOP AUDREY. ITS SO METAL. YOU HAVE TO WATCH THE BOSS' HEALTH AND PREVENT THE "HERO" FROM KILLING THE BOSS. EXCELLENT ROLE REVERSAL AAAaaAAaaAAaa \(✯◇✯)/