#oneaday Day 186: New Funtimes

Been playing a couple of fun new games over the last couple of days: Kotodama: The 7 Mysteries of Fujisawa and Lapis x Labyrinth. Both will be getting writeups on MoeGamer in the near future, but I thought I'd provide a few exclusive initial impressions right here for those curious!

Kotodama

This one intrigued me because it's the first game that PQube has actually developed (in collaboration with Japanese dev Art Co. Ltd, who previously worked on Gunpey and, err, Britney's Dance Beat). Consequently, I was keen to support it even if it turned out to be bobbins, but thankfully that is not the case; I'm really enjoying it so far.

Kotodama is a fusion of visual novel and puzzle game, with emphasis on the former. If you've played something like Purino Party, you'll have a rough idea of what to expect, though rather than being a comedic, ecchi affair like Purino Party was, the underlying story here is actually rather serious. I'll spare you the details for now in case you're interested in checking it out for yourself!

The puzzle sequences represent the main character making use of his power of kotodama — the power of words — to uncover the layers of lies within an individual's heart, and discover the truth within. This is accomplished through a tile-matching puzzler, though rather than following either the Bejeweled or Puzzle & Dragons mould, this time around it's an unusual system where clicking a tile sends it shooting up to the top of its column and subsequently shoving everything down into the gap it created.

It takes a little getting used to, but once you get into the rhythm of things, it's really satisfying. The whole "power of words" thing comes in via the visual novel segments; as you learn various key words by asking the right questions at the right times, you earn experience for the different "colours" (which roughly correspond to emotions and feelings such as love, "fire", tears, greed and the like) and, with enough experience in a particular colour, you level it up and make it more effective at filling the meter that determines your completion of the stage.

They also double as a means of determining whether or not you've actually managed to figure out the complete truth of a particular chapter; if you reach the end of a chapter and haven't found all the keywords, chances are you missed something!

The story is really cool and mysterious, with some surprisingly weighty themes. And both boys and girls get nearly naked in the puzzle sequences. A winning combination.

Lapis x Labyrinth

This is the new one from Nippon Ichi Software, and with the troubles they're having at the moment, I wanted to support it — particularly as I heard from at least two people I trust (both of whom are Patrons, I believe — thanks, guys!) that it's a good time.

Lapis x Labyrinth is a very odd game that positions itself as an RPG, but it's really more of an arcade game with a sense of persistent progression. In simple terms, you proceed through a series of 2D side-scrolling "dungeons" beating up enemies and collecting loot, but the focus is on generating combos and high scores rather than surviving particularly difficult challenges.

Score more points, get more gold. Get more gold, get more upgrades. Get more upgrades, score more points. Repeat. It's a deliciously addictive affair that I'm having a ton of fun with so far… and I absolutely adore the art style, combining adorable cutesy chubby chibis with an oddly strong feeling of sexiness. I am very into the Necromancer.

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Anyway, as I say, I'll be doing detailed writeups of both of these on MoeGamer in the near future. I don't know if either of them will get the Cover Game treatment — it depends how much there is to talk about, I guess! — but they'll both definitely get some words of appreciation when I've spent a bit more time with them both.

And now it's nearly half past midnight, so I should probably go to bed rather than attempting to unravel the Mystery of the White Wolf… but Honoka's undies are so cute…