2056: Pete's Probably Non-Comprehensive Visual Novel Primer

I posted the following over on the Squadron of Shame forums the other day, since we were getting into a discussion on visual novels. I thought it might be of some interest to people who don't frequent the Squawkbox, so I present it here in slightly extended format for your enjoyment and information.

Pete's Probably Non-Comprehensive Visual Novel Primer

What is a visual novel?

First things first, get out of the habit of thinking of a visual novel as a "game", despite the fact that they're typically sold as games, referred to as "games" and share a number of stylistic and mechanical elements with games. In Japanese popular culture, visual novels are treated as their own distinct medium, and in the pantheon of media which creators tell stories across, they comfortably sit alongside light novels, manga, anime, movies, live-action TV shows and, yes, video games. Transmedia productions often span several or even all of the above formats, and any one of them can prove the starting point for a successful franchise.

The reason I mention visual novels' distinction from traditional games is because visual novels very often don't have any "gameplay" as such, and coming to them with the expectation that you will be "doing" anything is often a recipe for disappointment. There are exceptions of course, since some visual novels do incorporate "game" elements — notable examples include Aselia the Eternal's extremely deep and satisfying strategy game and its spiritual successor Yumina the Ethereal's dungeon-crawling and peculiar argument-based battle system — but for the most part, visual novels are about reading reams of text accompanied by some combination of art, music and voice acting. In other words, they're a dedicated storytelling medium that occupies a peculiar space at the intersection between manga, anime and traditionally written prose.

Danganronpa, Corpse Party and Ace Attorney are often described as visual novels due to their text-heavy nature and emphasis on linear storytelling, but there's a strong argument that they are more adventure game than visual novel due to their balance between story and game being firmly in favour of "game". Ultimately it doesn't matter all that much; if you're less than familiar with the visual novel medium as a whole, though, just don't go in expecting to actually have any interaction whatsoever, and then you can only be pleasantly surprised if you do get to do something. The appeal of a visual novel is in the storytelling, not the interaction.

Types of visual novel

The presentation of pure visual novels can be roughly broken down into two main types:

NVL ("novel") types fill the screen with text, usually in a semi-transparent box so you can see the artwork behind it, and read like a traditional novel. Examples of this type include Kana Little Sister and KiraKira.
ADV ("adventure") types look more "gamey", with a dialogue box at the bottom of the screen and a clear view of the art and characters. These tend to have a sharper demarcation between narration and dialogue, compared to NVL types, which will often mix both on a single screen of text. Examples of this type include Katawa Shoujo and The Fruit of Grisaia. This is probably the more common type we see in the West.

Visual novels can also be split into a couple of different categories according to structure:

Kinetic novels have no choices whatsoever. You start them up, you read them, you reach the end. You have absolutely no interaction whatsoever — it's a pure storytelling medium.
Multi-scenario visual novels are the more common type. Most of these start with a common route, then branch off in a number of different directions according to choices you make in the common route. Some further split the branches into other routes, not all of them necessarily ending well; others guarantee you a specific good ending once you lock in a particular route.

You can then further subcategorise visual novels by basic subject matter and audience:

Bishoujo games — aka bishoujoge, literally "pretty girl games", have a (usually heterosexual) male protagonist and a cast of heroines who usually correspond to the various narrative routes. The story isn't necessarily focused on dating the heroines, but the girls tend to be the ones pushing the story forwards. This is by far the most common type of visual novel brought West.
Otome games — aka otoge, literally "maiden games", are the inverse of a bishoujoge in that they have a female protagonist and a cast of heroes who usually correspond to the various narrative routes. Again, the story isn't necessarily focused on dating the heroes, but the non-player characters are the ones who push the story onwards. We're starting to see more of these in the West — both Aksys and Idea Factory International are starting to bring more over — and Western visual novel developers seem to favour these over bishoujoge, perhaps because of the disparity in the number of bishoujoge and otoge from Japan that get localised.
Yaoi games — stories that focus on homosexual relationships between men. These are often designed to appeal to women as much as gay men, so if you like some hot man ass, go nuts. So to speak. These are relatively rare in the West, perhaps because of our seeming hesitance to depict homosexual relationships in interactive media, but we are starting to get a few. The most recent example is MangaGamer's No Thank You!!, but JAST USA have also released a few.
Yuri games — stories that focus on homosexual relationships between women. Like yaoi is designed to appeal to women as much as gay men, yuri is often designed to appeal to men as much as gay women. Notably, the first ever uncensored visual novel to make it to Steam unscathed is a yuri game.
Utsuge — literally "depression game", these are visual novels specifically designed to be upsetting, depressing or emotional. A visual novel of this type is generally an utsuge alongside being something else; Kana Little Sister, for example, is both bishoujoge and utsuge.

Alongside all that you can also refer to visual novels by basic genre, much like a book or movie — there are visual novels of all types, whether they're horror, comedy, romance, erotica, thriller or slice-of-life.

You can further subdivide visual novels by their approach to erotic content:

All-ages visual novels have no explicit erotic content, though the "all-ages" part is a bit of a misnomer in many cases; since visual novels tend to deal with mature themes even when there's no explicit depictions of sex in them, you should still be aware that "all-ages" visual novels might include challenging subject matter ranging from violence to explorations of sexuality and everything in between; the lack of traditional "gameplay" in a visual novel means that they're free to explore subject matter that wouldn't be "fun" to play.
Ecchi games are often found under the "all-ages" umbrella. They stop short of explicit sex, but may include "teasing" content such as non-explicit views of naked people, people in provocative poses and/or people in their undies. They may also strongly imply sexual activity without outright depicting it. This is as close to the knuckle as console and handheld visual novels and visual novel-style games get due to the platform holders' restrictions on what content they allow to be sold.
Eroge are visual novels that incorporate erotic content, but where the erotic content isn't the main point. In other words, these are stories where the characters might have sex with one another as part of their developing relationships — or there may also be explicit depictions of sexual abuse, so be aware of that — but the point of the game is not simply to jump into bed with one of the heroines. Eroge are a strictly home computer affair, since Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are all unwilling to have fully explicit sexual material on their platforms for the most part, and you tend to have to acquire them through specialist retailers or direct from the publishers, since most regular retailers won't stock unrated games or those with an ESRB "Adults Only" rating.
Nukige are visual novels where the erotic content is the main point. These are your porn movies of the visual novel sector; while they often do have plot and characterisation — sometimes surprisingly good ones, too — make no mistake, the main reason to play one of these games is to see some fucking as quickly as possible. Like eroge, these are usually only available through specialist retailers or direct from the publishers.

Other useful terminology

Bad/Wrong/Dead End — an ending in which the protagonist and/or hero/heroine dies, usually. Not necessarily a "fail" state; if the story is a tragedy, there might be nothing but bad endings!
Good End — an ending in which everything resolves nicely and cleanly, and (usually) no-one dies.
True End — an ending which is treated as canonical for the purposes of sequels, whether or not sequels actually exist. True Ends are often inaccessible until you complete all the other routes.
Decision point — being presented with a choice. Not every choice in a visual novel has an impact on how the story ends out, but most don't tell you one way or the other, and some don't even allow you to save while a decision point is on screen, so choose wisely!
Clear — reading a visual novel to one of its conclusions.
Full/100% Clear — reading all of the possible routes to a visual novel, including bad endings, and unlocking all the bonus content.
Flag — hidden binary variables that are set and unset according to the choices that you make. The most commonly referenced is the "death flag", where a choice you made will result in someone's death, not necessarily immediately. Some visual novels use flags to determine which route you end up on.
Points/stats — other visual novels have hidden "stats" according to your choices, and use these to determine which route you end up on. Kana Little Sister is an example of this; the choices you make in the first half of the game determine the personality of the protagonist and his sister, and this determines how the latter half of the game plays out.
Skip — the ability to fast-forward through text you've already read. All but essential for subsequent playthroughs to get different routes, unless you really want to read all the same text again. Most visual novels stop skipping when they reach a decision point.
CG/event image — a piece of artwork that isn't a character sprite overlaid on a background, usually depicting something significant happening. You are considered to have 100% cleared a visual novel when you have unlocked every CG in the game's gallery page.
H-scene — pronounced "ecchi scene", these are the erotic scenes in an eroge or nukige. Many eroge and nukige allow you to watch these scenes by themselves once you've cleared the game once. You know, for… you know exactly why.

2054: The Fruit of Grisaia: First Impressions

A while back, increasingly prolific visual novel localisation company Sekai Project — whose first commercially released title was the JAST USA-published School Days HQ, one of my favourite visual novels of all time — ran a Kickstarter campaign for the localisation of a series of Japanese visual novels collectively called Grisaia.

I didn't know anything about these save for the fact that they were particularly well-regarded for one reason or another so, wanting to support Sekai Project's efforts — their localisations are generally really solid efforts — as well as wanting to continue supporting the localisation of visual novels in general, I put my money where my mouth was and backed the Grisaia campaign to the tune of $120 — my largest pledge to a Kickstarter to date. Said contribution would net me a boxed set of all three Grisaia visual novels as they were released, and I later supplemented my original pledge with an additional $40 to support the digital release of the 18+ versions via Denpasoft, since Sekai Project's original plan was only to port the Vita versions of the trilogy, which had all erotic content excised in order to comply with Sony's platform requirements.

The Fruit of Grisaia, the first installment in the trilogy, came out a little while back, but I held off checking it out because I was waiting for the 18+ version for a more "authentic" and true to the original experience. (Also, boobs.) A short while ago, I received an email notification that the 18+ version was now available, so I decided that now would be a good time to finally check it out, particularly as I'd just finished up Hyperdevotion Noire and had a bit of a hankering for a pure visual novel, the last one of which I'd played was the PC version of Steins;Gate, and that was some time ago now.

I'm a few hours into The Fruit of Grisaia so far, still in the "common" route (at least, I assume so; I haven't made any choices as yet) but I am already enjoying it a great deal. It's a delightfully well-written (and well-localised) tale so far, with just enough intrigue about it to keep you reading in order to try and find out what happens next. I'm particularly excited to get into the branching routes in the latter half of the game, since I understand each of these are really interesting and go in some surprising and exciting directions.

In the opening of The Fruit of Grisaia, we're introduced to the protagonist Yuuji. Yuuji is a young adult of indeterminate age — we can assume he's around 18 or so, since he's still of school age — who, when we first meet him, has walked about 150km to start his new life at his new school. Unfortunately, things don't quite go according to plan, since his bedraggled figure seemingly wandering around aimlessly attracts the attention of the police, who take him in for interrogation even despite him skilfully taking down a purse-snatcher during his disagreement with the officer in question.

This minor inconvenience eventually dealt with — seemingly through someone pulling strings behind the scenes — Yuuji starts his new school life at what turns out to be a very strange educational establishment indeed. Yuuji is one of just six students at the academy, none of whom appear to be quite "normal", for want of a better description. Yuuji, meanwhile, is the first to admit that he isn't exactly normal, either, having suffered the loss of his entire family at an early age, lived on the streets and worked under the tutelage of an apparently Amazonian woman he refers to only as his "former Master" until she, too, died, leaving him as an employee of a mysterious organisation whose details have not yet been revealed to me so far as I've read.

Yuuji's five classmates — all of whom are female, as these things tend to go — are a peculiar bunch. Amane is the most seemingly "normal" of the bunch, with a warm, friendly — if somewhat sexually aggressive — "older sister"-type personality that means you can't help but like her; Yuuji feels a connection — or perhaps a morbid fascination — with her immediately as her rather tall stature can't help but remind him of his mysterious "Master".

Makina is the resident loli of the group, with what initially appears to be a distinctly childish attitude, as well as a habit of blurting things out in English instead of Japanese, a personality quirk that is attributed to her having spent lots of time in non-Japanese countries during her formative years. Makina claims not to be particularly bright, but it's not long before she starts revealing that she's oddly quick-witted and has a pretty acidic tongue at times.

Michiru, meanwhile, is a self-conscious tsundere, or at least she wants to be. Yuuji's first encounter with her comes as she is rehearsing stereotypical tsundere lines, and she even congratulates herself on the successful delivery of a cliched zinger like "i-it's not like I'm doing this for you or anything!" or its ilk. Yuuji takes great pains to point out to the reader that he's not someone who likes to judge people on first impressions, but he finds the conclusion that Michiru is, in fact, a complete idiot inescapable after just a few days — though she does gradually start to reveal other sides to herself as time passes, particularly a caring, considerate side.

Sachi is a character Yuuji refers to as being "robotic" or "cyborg"-like, and this is because of her naturally demure nature and seeming inability to be particularly flustered by anything. She's extremely loyal, but also has a tendency to take things very literally and follow the "orders" of others without question. I don't quite know what her deal is yet, but I'm very interested to find out.

Finally, Yumiko initially appears to be the stereotypical "class president" type — aloof and haughty — but quickly reveals herself to have somewhat more disturbing tendencies, most notably her habit of swinging around a box cutter willy-nilly when she feels threatened. Despite the risk of injury — she attacks Yuuji very aggressively and persistently at the outset of the story — everyone seems to just sort of accept this as "just part of who she is", despite no-one seemingly knowing the circumstances behind what made her this way. I can see that there's going to be some interesting revelations about her later.

What I've enjoyed the most about The Fruit of Grisaia so far is how much it sets things up and teases them, revealing little pieces of information over time. We know nothing about Yuuji at the outset of the story, but he drops in details to his narration and internal monologue piece by piece until we can start to figure out a few things for ourselves. This keeps things interesting and compelling, particularly when combined with the more intriguing aspects of the main heroines' personalities. It's clear that each of them have something if not outright traumatic in their pasts, then certainly something that affected them deeply; the reason for the school's existence isn't yet clear so far as I've read, but it seems that their shared bond of "something not being quite right" with each of them is going to be a key aspect of the overall story.

I've been very much enjoying The Fruit of Grisaia so far, then; I have no idea how far through the whole thing I am, but I'm looking forward to reading it from "cover to cover" as it were; each of the five heroines are intriguing in their own unique ways, and far from being a typical harem setup, each of the characters seems to go out of their way to subvert some of the more typical tropes found in this sort of story. In short, it's already clear why this visual novel was voted the number one visual novel of all time by the folks over on Reddit's /r/visualnovels subreddit a while back; I'm sure this deeply interesting creative work will continue to enthral me for quite some time yet.

2019: Hero of Daventry: Some King's Quest First Impressions

Following on from my post the other day, I downloaded the first episode of King's Quest on PlayStation 4 today, and gave it a bit of a go earlier. Andie seemed to be enjoying it, so I paused for a bit while she went and had a nap, then we went and had dinner. Will probably play some more tomorrow.

First impressions are very good indeed, though. The game has a gorgeous art style, wonderful animation and a spectacular voice cast, including Christopher Lloyd, Josh Keaton and Maggie Elizabeth Jones.

Most notably, though, the game is very much aware of its heritage. I was concerned that a new developer taking on such a legendary series would lose some of the magic of the original — or worse, try and retrofit their interpretation over the top of the existing format, or "reboot" it — but my mind has been very much set at rest so far, with a story and characterisation that feels very true to King's Quest's lightly comedic (but, at times, surprisingly dark) fairy-tale nature.

Of particular note in the animation regard is how much care and attention has been lavished on protagonist Graham. Although he's now a beautifully animated 3D model with a dramatically billowing cape as opposed to a tiny pixel dude with yellow skin, there's a bunch of wonderful little touches in the new game as callbacks to the original King's Quest games. Make Graham walk instead of run, for example, and his slightly cocky strut looks just like the crude walking animation of the original game's sprite. And in one sequence, you jump into a river; the animation as Graham flails about in the water is pretty much exactly the same as his old sprite did any time you wandered into a body of water and forgot to type "swim".

And, pleasingly, the new game incorporates the original series' fondness for killing you off in a variety of horrible ways — though, given the game's narrative framework of an elderly Graham narrating his past adventures to his granddaughter, any unfortunate demises are represented as Graham either making a mistake in his memories or cracking a joke.

The use of old Graham as narrator allows the game to do something that a lot of modern adventure games these days don't do: use a narrator. This is one thing that made Sierra adventures unique and distinct from their biggest rivals LucasArts — in every one of their games, the narrator was as much of a character as the characters who had actual dialogue. In most cases, the narrator wasn't a participant in the narrative, instead taking an omniscient viewpoint of what was going on, but there was a very clear sense of authorial voice that was often distinct between Sierra's different series. The narrators of King's Quest used flowery language and occasional cringeworthy puns — a habit Graham has picked up in the new game — while Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry used lowbrow humour to good effect. Gabriel Knight, meanwhile, took the bold step of having a narrator with a very strong Creole accent explain what was going on — stylistically appropriate, though initially jarring if you were used to the somewhat cleaner, more easily understandable tones of the American narrators of Sierra's other games. (Once you became accustomed to her drawl, however, she delivered some delightfully sarcastic zingers at Gabriel's expense throughout the game.)

Pleasingly, old Graham's narration pays attention to what you are doing and has a variety of responses for when you try to do the same thing over and over again. There's no Discworld-style "That doesn't work!" here; instead, keep trying to do something that's clearly wrong and old Graham will come up with more and more fanciful reasons about his futile attempts, until eventually his granddaughter stops him in most cases. There's also a delightful running joke about That One Adventure Game Item You Use For Everything when you discover a hatchet which comes in useful for a while. After its final task, however, Graham leaves it behind, with old Graham putting special emphasis on the fact that he would "not need it ever again". (Prior to this, of course, you were free to attempt to use it on anything and everything, with suitable comments from both Graham and Gwendolyn along the way.)

So far, then, I'm delighted by how King's Quest has turned out. It's smart, funny, beautiful and captures the essence of the old games while bringing them right up to date. I'm looking forward to see how the remainder of this first episode continues — and how the series as a whole develops over time.

2017: Quest for the Crown

It's weird to see a new King's Quest game on sale. I haven't tried it myself yet — I'm probably going to — but the early buzz surrounding it is very positive indeed, even sans involvement from series creators Roberta and Ken Williams.

For those not quite as old and jaded a gamer as me, King's Quest was one of the very first graphical adventure games. I hesitate to call it a "point and click" adventure, because although it supported mouse control, you actually had to type things in to a text parser in order to actually do anything. As the series progressed, it gradually and noticeably improved; by the fifth installment, it had made the full transition to a more conventional point-and-click interface as well as offering a "talkie" CD-ROM version; the seventh installment abandoned traditional pixel art in favour of some distinctly Disney-esque animation, and the eighth… well, most people don't talk about that one.

For me, King's Quest as a whole is an important series to me. It represents one of the earliest game series I played, and also some of the earliest games I actually played to completion. They also represent an early form of using the video games medium as a means of telling a story — albeit a very simple one in the case of the first couple of games; from the third game onwards it started to get quite ambitious — as well as a wonderfully vivid realisation of the world of fairy tales.

Back in the days when King's Quest first appeared, it wasn't at all unusual for games to take heavy inspiration from existing works of art. Numerous games made use of famous classical tunes for their "themes", for example, and others drew liberally from popular mythology for inspiration. The original King's Quest games were no exception, as they saw you running into everyone from Rumplestiltskin to the Big Bad Wolf — and, in many cases, dying horribly at the hands of fairy tale monsters.

Despite the fact that it drew heavily on popular mythology, though, King's Quest had a feel and an atmosphere all of its own. Like the best fairy tales, it presented a world that appeared colourful, happy and vibrant on the surface, but which was mean, horrible and out to get you underneath. The King's Quest games were notorious for having a wide variety of means for the protagonists to die throughout them, ranging from being eaten by a giant to tripping over your wizard master's cat while being too far up the stairs, and subsequently breaking your neck when you hit the ground. So frequent (and frustrating) were the death scenes in King's Quest and other adventures from the same stable Sierra that main rival LucasArts made a specific marketing point of the fact that it was impossible to die or get stuck in most of their games — with the Indiana Jones games being the only real exceptions, and even there it was pretty difficult to die.

But as frustrating and irritating and, at times, downright illogical as the old-school King's Quest games could be, they represent one of my formative experiences. They're something that helped me understand a medium that, as you'll know, is very important to me. They're something I shared with my family, since many of us used to play them together and try to solve them. And they're something that I will always have fond memories of.

It's for this reason that I'm really happy to see King's Quest making a comeback — and, moreover, to see that it's being received very well so far. I'm excited to give it a try for myself very soon, and I look forward to seeing how the subsequent episodes develop over the course of the series.

2013: Starchaser

Interesting indie game time? Interesting indie game time.

I'm a big fan of the doujin (independently-developed) games that Playism brings to the West. Japanese indie games have a very distinctive character about them; they're rarely the most technically impressive games in the world (though there are exceptions, like wonderfully gorgeous shoot 'em up Astebreed) but it's rare to find one that doesn't feel like it's been infused with heart, soul and love. The doujin culture in Japan breeds people who are passionate and enthusiastic about their work; these aren't people who are making games to prove a point, these are people who are making games because they love making games.

One of Playism's most recent releases is a peculiar little platformer called Starchaser: Priestess of the Night Sky. This is the work of a doujin circle called Nonlinear, and the designer's philosophy behind the game is an interesting one: he wanted to make a 3D game where the concept of 3D actually mattered. He has a point; there's a lot of games out there that are presented in 3D, but which actually only practically play in two dimensions at once. Even renowned games like Super Mario 3D Land/World tend to only have the player worrying about two dimensions at a time for the most part; it's rare you have to worry about the width, length and height of an environment at the same time in a Mario game, and that format works well for its accessible, family-friendly formula.

Starchaser, then, takes a slightly different approach to 3D platforming. Unfolding through a series of levels on both the inside and outside faces of a series of cubes, you control a young girl as she learns to commune with the stars by navigating through several perilous labyrinths of these cubes. The game starts very simple, but it's not long before it introduces one of its core mechanics: gravity floors. These checkerboard cubes have their own gravitational pull, so if you're airborne (through jumping, falling or walking off the side of something) you'll be sucked towards the nearest one if you're within its zone of influence. This may well be at a completely different angle to where you were standing a moment ago; Starchaser's levels unfold making full use of all three dimensions, and you'll have to look around in every direction carefully to negotiate a pathway towards your destination, making quick-witted use of the gravity mechanic and more conventional platform skills in order to survive.

It's actually a really delightful game to play. It reminds me somewhat of PS1-era puzzlers like Kula World, Kurushi Final and the like. At least part of this is due to its somewhat… functional presentation (it won't run in 1920×1080, and it won't exceed 30 frames per second) but even with its (apparently deliberate) technical limitations, it's a joy to play, once you get used to the peculiar control scheme. It's a very distinctive, original take on the 3D platformer, and a great game to dip in and out of when you fancy banging your brain against some fiendish environmental puzzles and enjoyable boss fights.

Starchaser is available now either direct from Playism or on Steam — buy on Playism and you get a Steam key for free.

2009: Into the Nexus

Up until a few days ago, I thought I hated MOBAs¹. Turns out I just hated Dota 2.

Actually, let me qualify that. I hate playing Dota 2, but I don't hate it. It's one of those games that, like Dark Souls or any fighting game released after the original Street Fighter II on Super NES, I feel like I'm doomed to never be any good at, and consequently have reached a point of acceptance where I feel I can and should respect it from afar, but not even attempt to get into it. And that's fine by me.

Let me qualify that further by saying that I feel there are way too many MOBAs on the market these days, as many developers appear to be seeing it as the new² fad to latch onto in the (usually vain) hope that they will attract a large, world-beating multiplayer community.

With all that in mind, well, Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm is really good.

Heroes of the Storm is a MOBA that brings together a series of characters from Blizzard's various games from over the years — primarily Warcraft, StarCraft³ and Diablo, with a guest appearance from The Lost Vikings — and throws them into battle against one another in the usual 5v5, destroy-the-other-team's-base-before-they-destroy-yours MOBA gameplay.

Heroes of the Storm has a few little twists on the formula, though. For starters, individual players on your team don't level up independently of one another; you have a collective pool of experience that you share, so you all level up at the same time. You still need to do your part to make sure your team levels up faster than your opponents, particularly in the early stages of a match, but there's less feeling "left behind" than there is in stuff like Dota and League of Legends, in my experience anyway.

Tied in with this is the fact that a lot of the stupid arbitrary maybe-skill-maybe-luck-based bullshit that Dota includes — "Last Hit"⁴ being the one that always wound me up the most — is conspicuously absent from Heroes of the Storm, and it's much more fun as a result. It means you can focus on the overall team strategy rather than micromanaging your character to such a degree that it can become very distracting — if you're a newcomer, anyway; I'm sure veteran Dota players can Last Hit pretty much at will.

Then there's the fact that there's more than one map, and each map has its own little quirks. Some have two lanes to attack down, some have three. Some have objectives you need to defend to gain a temporary advantage, some have special enemies you need to defeat. Some have collectible items to unleash powerful attacks, and one even has an entirely separate "dungeon" map for you to descend into when the time is right. The objectives and the rewards you get from them don't necessarily make or break a whole battle, but they can make things swing one way or the other — and even provide a means for a struggling team to make a spectacular comeback, rather than being stomped into the ground.

All of this is wrapped up in matches that generally don't take any longer than twenty minutes to play, as compared to the 30-90 minute slugfests that games of Dota can easily become. It's simple to understand, accessible and actually enjoyable to me, even as a newcomer and someone who is not generally very good at strategy games.

I haven't yet dared play a game against human opponents, but I feel much more inclined to give it a shot in this than in the notoriously elitist and short-tempered communities that play a lot of Dota and League of Legends. If you, like me, have been skeptical about MOBAs but like the idea of them, give Heroes of the Storm a shot. It is free, after all.

¹ MOBA: Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, a team-based game where two teams compete for dominance of a map by attempting to destroy the other team's "core" by infiltrating their base.

² Well, not that new any more, I guess.

³ The way they're capitalised differently has bugged me for years now.

⁴ Last Hit: a mechanic whereby you only get experience points for a kill if you were the last person to deal damage to it. Satisfying to veterans, the most fucking annoying thing in the world for newbies.

2006: Interstellaria

I'd made a promise to myself not to get suckered into trying any more endearingly retro-styled 2D pixel-art exploration-centric games, because the last few I've tried (Terraria and Starbound spring immediately to mind) ended up being enormously disappointing and pretty boring to me. (I'm not necessarily saying they're bad, mind, more that the Minecraft model of "here's a world, do stuff in it" just doesn't really appeal to me any more.)

However, I happened to see Interstellaria on Steam earlier today, and for just £7 I felt I had to take a look at it. And, for once — so far, anyway — I wasn't disappointed.

Interstellaria is perhaps best described as a successor to the old late-'80s/early-'90s space exploration games like Starflight, Star Control II and Space Rogue. You get a ship, you recruit a crew, you upgrade your ship, you explore the galaxy, you fight things, you discover treasures, you uncover a galaxy-spanning mystery and (perhaps) save the universe in the process.

Interstellaria throws you straight in to its world from the outset. Thrown out of your erstwhile home by your flatmate who is no longer content to have a scrounging, unemployed wastrel living rent-free under their roof, you take to the streets in search of gainful employment. After dismantling a robot for the nice man who lives just over the road from you, you find yourself recruited into the slightly shady-seeming crew of a starship that is about to take off. The starship begins its grand adventure and fends off a pirate attack in a thinly-veiled combat tutorial, then is ripped to pieces by an unknown enemy craft, but not before your former captain runs away, leaving you in charge of the crash landing from which you are ultimately the only survivor.

Fortunately, it seems, you've crash landed on a planet where there's another starship that's almost in working order. You come across a fellow survivor and team up to get the elderly ship back into space again, and from there it's up to you to start discovering the truth behind the mystery of the "Abductors", a race of aliens who appear to be giving the galaxy a certain degree of grief.

From here on, you have freedom to explore and do stuff around the galaxy, though you're nudged pretty strongly in the direction of following the plot. Gameplay is split into a few different areas: managing your ship, space combat and planetary exploration.

Managing your ship is a little like FTL: Faster Than Light in that you have to assign crew members to stations according to their skills (which develop over time). You also have to take care of your crew's needs — hunger, boredom and fatigue — by providing them with facilities to relieve these issues whenever necessary. The ship you start with has both limited space to include modules — there's pretty much room for basic navigation, sensors, engineering and tactical stations and one of each of the "needs" modules and not much else — and power to devote to them, so you have to juggle power around according to your ship's needs at any given moment.

Get into combat and you'd better hope you remembered to put some power into the weapons systems and charge them up, because you'll need them. Unfolding on a small tactical display (which provides more information if you have someone manning the sensors) you can move your ship around in real time as well as see incoming missiles, cannon fire and other projectiles. In this way, you can dodge and avoid enemy fire while attacking your foe; it's an interesting, slow-paced take on "bullet hell" in some ways, and it's a nicely unconventional take on space combat that is in keeping with the 2D pixel art aesthetic.

Head down onto a planet and you'll have the option of visiting one or more different landing sites, assuming the planet has a breathable atmosphere. Each landing site is a few screens wide (rather than a never-ending procedurally generated world) and usually features some enemies, some resources to harvest and, occasionally, interesting artifacts, characters and plot-related shenanigans. Controlling each of your crew members independently (or as a group) you can direct them to explore, harvest materials, enter into combat with enemies and interact with the locals. Each planet has a distinctive look, feel and soundtrack (the music is by chiptune artist Chipzel and is really rather good) and manage to feel relatively "organic" without falling back on random procedural generation. (At least I don't think so.)

The game's not without its flaws — the interface is a bit clunky in places, the keyboard inputs aren't as responsive as they could be, camera controls on ground missions are bugged and combat is… lacking in depth, to say the least — but all these issues are more than made up for by the fact that it's the first game in a very long time that I feel has proven to be an adequate successor to the classic space exploration sims I mentioned earlier. It has a lot of potential to improve over time, and is already an interesting, charming game that is well worth your time, particularly if you're feeling nostalgic.

1977: To The Heavens

Well, it's finally here: Final Fantasy XIV opened the doors to its first full expansion Heavensward today — for those who preordered it, anyway — and I've spent literally all day playing it.

It's good.

The story follows on directly from the end of the 2.55 story arc, which I won't spoil here for those who haven't seen it in all its ridiculous and tragic glory. Suffice to say, however, that it provides good reason for the Warrior of Light (that's you!) and occasional companion Alphinaud to head in the direction of Ishgard, a region which had previously been closed off to outsiders, but which became a little more open-minded after seeing how you (and seven friends) fended off an absolutely massive dragon towards the end of A Realm Reborn.

The city of Ishgard itself is beautifully rendered, being somewhat similar in design to a cross between Final Fantasy XI's cities of San d'Oria and Jeuno. It has its own very distinctive character that is separate to the three previous city-states we had the opportunity to visit in A Realm Reborn — the verdant, nature-filled environs of Gridania; the tall towers and tall ships of Limsa Lominsa; and the juxtaposition between extreme affluence and extreme poverty of Ul'Dah — with an austere, almost unwelcoming facade and some beautiful architecture. The kind of place where you'd be slightly afraid to touch anything, lest you befouled or defaced it in some way or another.

Outside the city, things get interesting. Early on, the main scenario quest sends you off in two separate directions: in one direction lies the Coerthas Western Highlands — a snowy, mountainous region similar to the existing Central Highlands region, but with more in the way of sheer cliff faces and inconvenient but impressive-looking lumps of rock all over the place — while in the other lies the Sea of Clouds, a floating archipelago of islands in the sky where skies are often clear and blue by simple virtue of the fact that the islands are above the clouds, but whose altitude drops the temperature to less-than-inviting levels. There's a huge contrast between these initial two areas; Coerthas is drab, monochromatic and somewhat grounded in reality for the most part (huge dead dragon corpse aside), while the Sea of Clouds is dramatically colourful, the stuff of pure fantasy. I haven't proceeded further afield just yet, but the main story is shortly to have me heading for Dravania, home of the dragons, so I'm interested to see how that compares.

One really striking thing about Heavensward is its sense of scale. A Realm Reborn was no stranger to sprawling environments that were impressive to behold, but Heavensward takes it to a new level. Ishgard is gigantic and imposing in the same way an old cathedral is; meanwhile, the field maps are huge in terms of both surface area and variation in altitude — the latter aspect of which is, in part, designed to accommodate the new flying mounts you can ride around after completing the surprisingly enjoyable task of hunting down a number of hidden "aether currents" scattered around the region.

Another striking thing about Heavensward is nothing to do with its architecture, however: a good 80-90% of the original voice cast appears to have been replaced, meaning some characters sound quite different to how they sounded in A Realm Reborn, with several even having picked up regional accents (primarily Yorkshire so far) in the intervening period. It's initially somewhat jarring, but overall the quality of the voice acting is much better than A Realm Reborn. This isn't particularly difficult, however, because although A Realm Reborn had an excellent localisation (albeit one that diverged quite a bit from the original Japanese script and took on something of a life of its own) its voice acting was passable at best and woefully awful at worst. At least in English it was, anyway; the Japanese voice acting makes use of well-known voice talent like Rie Tanaka (Hyperdimension Neptunia) and Eri Kitamura (Senran Kagura) and as such has always been pretty good, but it's clear that the English dub was perhaps, to put it politely, done a little bit on the cheap side.

It's not entirely surprising, mind you; A Realm Reborn was a huge risk for Square Enix given Final Fantasy XIV version 1.0's critical and commercial failure. As such, the decision to perhaps skimp a bit on the voice acting budget — many scenes in A Realm Reborn and indeed Heavensward also are unvoiced — was understandable. However, since A Realm Reborn achieved the seemingly impossible and rescued an all-but-dead MMO from oblivion, turning it into one of the company's greatest success stories in the process, it's gratifying to see that a bit more effort has been put into aspects of the presentation such as voice acting — even if the change in some characters' voices is a little surprising the first time you hear it.

I'm yet to try out a huge amount of the new gameplay features — I'm concentrating on levelling my main class Paladin to 60 before levelling anything further — but the new skills for existing classes look interesting, and the altogether new classes seem to be really cool, though it looks as if "lolDRK" is going to become the new "lolDRG". (Context for those unfamiliar: for the longest time, Dragoons (DRG) were notorious for dying a lot, due in part to their low magic resistance but also due to awkward animation locks on certain skills making it difficult to move out of the way of attacks; hence, "lolDRG" as the response to a Dragoon's inevitable death; Dark Knights (DRK), however, appear to be ready to take up the mantle for themselves, from what I've heard so far.)

Oh, and the music is amazing. And the story is interesting. And I've fallen in love with this stupid game all over again. There goes the next few years of my life…

1937: This Starry Midnight We Make

I'm a big fan of the work of Carpe Fulgur, the small, independent localisation team previously responsible for bringing English-speaking audiences the excellent Recettear, its predecessor Chantelise and the charming Metroidvania-ish Fortune Summoners, and who have most recently been working on the sprawling behemoth that is Trails in the Sky: Second Chapter alongside Xseed Games.

I was pretty intrigued, then, when Andrew Dice of Carpe Fulgur proudly announced the team's fifth project: a peculiar affair called This Starry Midnight We Make. Unlike Carpe Fulgur's previous output, it's not a role-playing game. It is… well, it's kind of baffling, to be honest. I guess technically it's a puzzle game of sorts, but I actually want to describe it more as a game about experimentation.

I sat down and played the demo version — available now on Steam, with the full version coming later this month — and recorded my experiences, bewilderment and all. Here's what happened when I had a go:

As you can see if you watched the video, the game blends visual novel-style storytelling with its main mechanic: creating "stars" in a magical basin that appears to influence what happens in Kyoto according to the astrological phenomena you create.

The basic format of the game involves plopping stones into this basin and watching them do stuff, then figuring out how to make them do other stuff. The basin is split into five elemental areas, represented by faint swirling coloured gases, and the combination of the elemental area you drop a stone into and the type of stone you drop determines what happens next.

As you progress through the game, you're tasked with a series of quests that ask you to create specific phenomena. What's interesting is that after an initial, rather brief and unenlightening tutorial, you're pretty much left to figure everything out for yourself. How, exactly, do you create a nebula? The game sure isn't going to tell you right off the bat, though it will record the phenomenon in your notebook once you've created it once, allowing you to refer back to it and check how you did it if you're not sure.

Beginning with the simple task of creating individual stars, the quests later start demanding that you create evolved forms of stars that involve mixing different types together, manipulating the amount of elemental gas in an area of the basin and even using "clay stars" to fuse others together. Beyond that, you're tasked with creating "constellations" using specific combinations of stars that you've created, and the game hints that once these have been created, they'll be used as "tools" to further manipulate your astral creations, though the demo stops before you get to see what this means for yourself.

What I found initially offputting but subsequently rather compelling about This Starry Midnight We Make is what I hinted at above: you have to figure out everything for yourself. And this is a huge adjustment from a lot of modern games, which spend much of their early hours walking you through every step of the mechanics you might be using throughout the game until you're absolutely sure you know what you're supposed to be doing. Not so in This Starry Midnight We Make. You are, in effect, a scientist, given some interesting things to fiddle around with and left to your own devices to try things out and see what happens. Some of the things you do will work — and these form genuine "Eureka!" moments, since you've figured them out for yourself — and others will not work, forcing you to analyse your "mistakes" and learn from them… or perhaps determine what caused an unexpected reaction to happen.

I find it difficult to envision how the game will carry this strange concept through a full-length narrative, but I'm kind of intrigued to find out. It's a slow burn of a game, for sure, and its obtuseness will doubtless put many people off within about ten minutes of starting, but if you put some time in and make the effort to actually experiment with it yourself, you'll find a strangely compelling experience waiting for you.

Do I recommend it? I'm hesitant to do so before seeing the full version, but I can at least recommend that you give the demo a try for yourself to see what you think and whether it might be for you. It's available now from Steam.

1924: Journeying Ever Onwards

So One Way Heroics Plus has pretty much devoured my soul with its wily ways and new features. I've been playing it a whole bunch, dying a whole lot and having a great time in the process.

I made a video of two unsuccessful runs earlier; here you go:

I'm really impressed with the additions to the base formula. In particular I'm excited about the fact that there are a number of new quests involved in unlocking the additional character classes; these quests replace the standard adventure to defeat the Demon Lord (or win in a couple of other super-secret ways) and task you with additional objectives, confronting you with new challenges and powerful foes on the way.

The small additions to the game's interface are great, too. The hotbar in particular is an excellent addition, even if you only use it to quickly access skills like Awakening (your default "stop time for three turns" ability, which is very useful for getting out of a pinch) and Lockpicking. It's also great to be able to customise the interface somewhat; it's still a little cluttered thanks to it running in 640×480 (or upscaled 640×480 now, at least) but simple changes like being able to put your gauges at the bottom of the screen and the minimap up the top make it a lot easier to see where you're going.

More subtle changes only become apparent if you've played both games. The pace of levelling has been considerably increased, but in exchange the "Goddess Statues" at which you can "spend" levels to get numerous benefits are considerably more expensive to use, and no longer provide the same possible bonuses every time. Skill merchants offer the ability to learn new abilities in exchange for stat levels, Iron Hags will make a random item for you (including "air", which just means you're out of pocket), benevolent Force practitioners will teach you defensive, utility or restorative spells… the list goes on.

And the game is still absolutely packed with charm and a surprising amount of depth. Most notably — and this was true of the original, too — is the fact that, despite initial appearances, the game does have a plot. Or, more accurately, a number of different intertwining narrative threads that only become apparent if you come into contact with the recruitable NPCs, figure out a way to stop the Demon Lord trying to set fire to you long enough to have a chat or try some of the daily "special campaigns" that add small but significant tweaks to the basic formula. A particular favourite that I had the other day was a world where every normal attack had a massive knockback effect on it, so you had to take care not to fight with your back to the encroaching Darkness lest you get slammed into it by your foe landing a blow. It shook up the way I played a great deal; unfortunately I didn't quite get far enough to take full advantage of it by whacking the final boss of the Force Knight unlock quest into the Darkness — the main means through which you deal damage to this rather unpleasant adversary — but it was an enjoyable journey nonetheless.

I'm well and truly hooked then. And if you're yet to discover the fun for yourself, I recommend giving it a look now. It's just $6.99 and it will keep you busy for a very long time. You can grab it from publisher Playism, or soon from Steam, too. (If you buy it now at Playism, you'll get a Steam key when that version releases.)