Hey look, another indie game pretty twin stick shooter full of neon lights and fast paced action. Scoregasm was included in the Indie Royale Difficult Bundle a few weeks ago, notable because it allowed gamers to get the game for Steam before it’s been officially released for Steam. The game still isn’t available on Steam, nor does it have a store page yet.
It’s still available elsewhere, just not on Steam. It’s made by the same guy who made Bullet Candy.
The gameplay is pretty straight forward, fly your ship around and shoot in different directions destroying hordes of enemies. It’s similar to Beat Hazard or Geometry Wars, or even, Asteroids. You do have the limitation of your movements being trapped within a small confined area. The game’s main draw is it’s progression system. The more enemies you shoot in a row without dying, the larger the combo you build up. Depending on the size of your combo you will unlock different stages to move on to. The fun part is, you can choose which stage to go to next. Each one is labeled by it’s difficulty so if you’re wanting to try something easier for a bit, you can pick the Easier stage, if you suddenly have a desire to challenge yourself, you can slip into a much more difficult stage, assuming you managed to unlock the higher difficulty.
This does lead to the game’s only real flaw, if you break your combo at all, there is a good chance you won’t unlock anything. The goals tend to be high enough that when your combo breaks and drops to zero, there probably aren’t even going to be enough enemies to make the stage goal combo. The stages are quick though so replaying them isn’t too hard.
It’s a good game all around, and certainly a fun game of it’s genre. The progression system is definitely pretty unique which helps make the game more enjoyable. It’s still probably mostly a game for bullet hell fans, which is a bit of a niche genre.
So after having the game recommended over at Gnome’s Lair,
I went ahead full bore and bought the limited deluxe DVD edition of The
Blackwell Deception when it was put out. I won’t talk too much on the
DVD since it’s no longer available. It includes all four of the games
in the series as well as some animated shorts, behind the scenes, and
the soundtrack to the game. It does seem to have a bit of trouble
reading, though it may be I simply got a bum copy. You probably aren’t
missing much by missing the DVD other than the chance to get all four
games at a discount.
On to the game itself. The Blackwell Deception is the fourth game in
the Blackwell series of Adventure games put out by Wadjet Eye Games.
Doing some research into Wadjet Eye, I found that I owned almost every
game they have put out already and didn’t know it. I’ve gone through
and started playing them one by one. It’s kind of interesting to notice
that the games, even the really early ones, all share a very similar
overall game engine (so far), though there have been some tweaks done
along the way.
The game plays very similarly to The Blackwell Convergence,
which is understandable, though it’s notable that I’ve been playing
through the second game of the series and the differences in gameplay
and set up are quite a bit more striking between the second and fourth
games than the third and fourth. You play as Roseangela Blackwell, who
is capable of speaking to Ghosts, who has a ghost pal named Joey who
hangs around with her. Your job is be a failed writer and mope about
it, no wait, that’s Rose’s job. YOUR job is to follow clues and hints
to help ghosts who are lost move on to the other side. Often, this of
course involves solving a murder mystery.
One main notable difference from the previous games is the change in
how the internet searches work. It seems to be a bit of a gimmick of
the series and it shows up in the early title by the same company called
The Shivah. Basically, often you will receive clues of names or places
and must search for them on the internet to get more information or an
address. There is also some occasionally email “hacking” involved
though this generally involves figuring out the person’s password by
finding it or making a good guess. To make a long story short, in
Convergence, a few times you’d get some information, heat back to your
apartment to do a search, go get more info based on those results, then
have to come back to the apartment to do ANOTHER search.
In Deception, Roseangela Blackwell has entered the modern world and
gotten herself a smart phone. It is very obviously an iPhone clone.
This allows you to do these searches in the field. It’s pretty
convenient.
Enough on that though.
Like Convergence, Deception features a sort of “how to” case that is
unrelated to the plot. The regular story is quite a bit more complex
this time as well, which is nice. It also makes much more use of the
Joey is a Ghost gimmick allowing him to go off and do his own thing, as
much as a ghost can, at times. This aspect of the game was barely
present in it’s predecessor which was definitely disappointing.
Essentially, there are times when Rose can’t go into a certain area,
but Joey, being a ghost and invisible to most folks, can easily enter
rooms normally blocked off or locked to investigate or eavesdrop on
others. He is limited in how far away he can travel from his host
however. It’s a rather clever and useful gimmick that is part of the
core of what makes this series of games what it is.
Speaking of it’s predecessors, for the most part, Deception stands
alone other than the reappearance of a character that seems to be pretty
critical to a larger overarching plot that is building up in these
games right near the end. It does however leave the story wide open to
lead into whatever the next, 5th game may be and I find it unlikely that
that game will be able to keep the same stand alone quality that the
other games have had so far. That’s yet to be seen, so I’ll withhold
judgment there.
Overall, The Blackwell Deception has a good interesting plot and
decent gameplay that leaves you wishing that the inevitable sequel was
already here because you’ll just want more. Playing it’s predecessors
isn’t a requirement by any means either, other than the singular scene,
there isn’t any major references previous games that didn’t seem to work
that I noticed, though on a side note, I’ve learned that convergence is
actually a huge reference to Unbound. The gameplay is interesting and
there isn’t anything that’s too complicated to puzzle out, which helps
to keep the plot moving.
The Blackwell Deception can be purchased via the Wadjet Eye Games Website.
So the last Adventure title I tried, Runaway,
was kind of a convoluted guess fest that required the use of a guide to
complete. Blackwell Convergence was, fortunately, quite a different
story. This is the third in a series of games following Rosangela
Blackwell and her spirit companion Joey Mallone. Rose is able to
communicate with spirits and her and Joey work to help displaced spirits
move on from the locations they haunt. It is presented through your
standard Adventure Games format of static scenes with animated
characters and various interactions and dialogues.
Though this is the third game in the series, the game opens with an
unrelated case to help the players get accustomed to some of the
gameplay mechanics and in general how helping the spirits out works.
Your first ghost is a ghost standing on a ledge preparing to jump to his
death. This is almost as ridiculous as it seems since he is a ghost,
but it does help to serve a good purpose to anyone not familiar with the
series (presumably, I was not familiar when I started). Basically, the
ghosts are sort of stuck reliving some sort of final moment from their
lives. In this case, the guy had jumped and now his Ghost is stuck in
this look haunting his old office. The interactions also help push the
idea that the spirits do not always see the world around them clearly as
Rose can pretend to be the guy’s ex wife or an interested investor yet
the ghost doesn’t notice that she is the same person or that she is not
his ex wife. It serves the purpose well of pointing out that, the
ghosts are confused which is part of why they have not moved on.
in case you didn’t figure it out this comes up again rather cleverly
during the first case of the main story. The first spirit is an actor
who died mysteriously of a heart attack. As you approach him, he starts
rambling seemingly random lines to you but it quickly becomes apparent
he’s trying to finish his final scene. Solve the puzzle and things are
able to move on.
Now, simply chasing spirits and jumping through hoops for them could be
a little droll after a while but the plot really picks up after the
first case when it becomes apparent that not everything is quite what it
appears with the death of the actor, or several other recent deaths for
that matter. Rose and Joey soon find themselves chasing a mysterious
rogue spirit while trying to piece together a murderous plot.
The plot itself is certainly what dives this style of game and the
plot of Blackwell Convergence is pretty well done and interesting. Many
seemingly unrelated points come up along the way but ultimately
everything wraps up fairly nicely. Another point that I really love is
that unlike 90% of all murder mysteries, you, the player, can actually
manage to piece it together before the game gets there. There is one
thing I’ve always hated about mysteries is when some Deus Ex plot device
is necessary to solve the puzzle that doesn’t shop up until the 11th
hour. Personally that style of plot device reeks of lazyness on the
writer’s part.
The plot is also helped out by an excellent dialogue track. All of the
characters and lines are voice acted and all are distinctly different
enough to keep them separated. The presentation itself is all very
nicely done. The backgrounds and very attractive despite the retro
16bit style graphics and the interface is simple and easy to use.
The game mechanics themselves also have a few fun twists that I found
interesting. Rose has a computer in her apartment which is used
frequently through out the plot to do searches for addresses or to check
email. There are points when you must switch to controlling Joey, who
can walk through doors and walls and hang around unnoticed eavesdropping
on conversations that Rose can’t listen in on. There isn’t an excess
of item collection throughout the game either, which makes some sense as
realistically, a person isn’t going to be able to lug around 20 random
items collected throughout the city.
The only real drawback, depending on one’s point of view, is that the
game, much like a lot of modern Adventure titles it seems, can’t be
failed. You pick and choose dialogue options and any point of failure,
such as say, reciting the incorrect lines from the previously mentioned
Actor’s Final Scene, simply result in a reset of the dialogue. There
are some action scenes later in the game during the climax that could
potentially lead to failure if the player doesn’t react but i did not
wait to test out if the game would actually punish you for doing
nothing. I don’t want to say it hand holds you through the plot, but it
is linear and generally you won’t get lost as to where to go next. So
like I said, this is only a drawback depending on how you feel about
difficult and not so difficult games.
So in closing, the previous game Runaway came off as a bit Advanced
and bad for adventure beginners, The Blackwell Convergence would be an
excellent choice to get into the genre. It looks nice, the puzzles are
intuitive , it has an interesting plot, this all works to make this game
very accessible to a pretty broad audience.
So Adventure Games are a bit different than your other game genres. You often can’t lose and the emphasis is more on the narrative than the “gameplay”. It’s much closer to being like an interactive novel. That said, the story can make or break an adventure game easily. I’ve done a bit of history already here on my plans for upping my intake of Adventure Games. No need to cover that ground again. Runaway was the first title I chose in this push, it’s a title I’ve been sitting on for a fairly long time in my queue of games and I like the 3D cartoon style graphics it presents.
I’ll also preface this by mentioning I used a walkthrough to get through this game. I am a bit of a novice when it comes to this sort of game, though I hope some of the problems I encountered in this title are not the “norm”. i get the whole idea of searching the scene for objects and examining them, collecting clues and useful trinkets. I also get the idea of having to sometimes get creative with items. My issue with how this is handled though are with some of the mechanics more than anything. There are several points where you talk to a person or give them an item, and your next step is to leave the area, then come back to talk to the same person again. Personally, this feels a bit counter intuitive. You successfully complete a step, you’re unlikely to put redoing that step very high on your list of “where to check next”. This could easily lead to some wasted effort looking for clues and feels very much like an excuse for the game to reload a scene or dialogue set more than a need of the plot. It’s a very computer logic reason more than a story plot reason. The game is also inconsistent with this as occasionally you are told “come back in an hour” and the game goes through this action of leaving and returning for you.
I also had some issues with item detection when scanning some scenes. The one that really sticks out is finding a key near a train locomotive. I knew the key was supposed to be there via the walkthrough, I even knew where it was supposed to be in the scene, but I still had trouble finding it and it didn’t show up on the ground visibly.
Also there are a few fairly annoying leaps of logic that one must take to get past certain obstacles. This leads to a bit more trial an error methodology than figuring out where to go based on clues. For example the idea of making bullets out of lipstick tubes is a little bit of a stretch.
Fortunately, the storyline is pretty good. There are surprisingly few holes and conveniences in the plot and it’s interesting enough to keep the player interested. The basic premise is, Brian, the character you control, accidentally hits Gina with his car as she is running from some Mob guys. Brian feels responsible and gets tangled up in Gina’s affairs as they trace down the secret to an old crucifix Gina has. Secrets are revealed as Brian and Gina get closer to the truth and must work to thwart the Mob goons hot on their trail. It closes out nicely as a stand alone plot but could easily lead to the plot of the second game of the series. I am looking forward to playing the second game as well though I’ll be holding off on that for a bit.
The presentation is also great as well, though there is one major flaw which I’ll get to. The graphics are nice and decently animated. I do have some issues with the inconsistent feel during some of the later cut scenes where they seem to have used a few mixed techniques to make the scenes. The shadow technique actually makes the 3D models look particularly terrible. Everything is fully voice acted as well, and it’s done very well, which helps hold the story together all around. My chief complaint is in the cut scenes and their length. If you’re playing this game, make sure you block out some time because you’ll often encounter cut scenes without any warning and there are several which last an upwards of 20 minutes. These tend to occur between chapters but I think there may have been one in the middle of one of the later chapters.
I also am giving some of my general difficulty with the game mechanics some benefit of the doubt in that I am not excessively familiar with this genre of game. Runaway feels like it is a bit more of an advanced title. I found it to be very enjoyable and look forward to the second game, which i hope may not have quite so many of the logic flaws and lengthy cut scenes. It’s probably not a good title to pick up as an entry level title to the Adventure Gaming genre however.
Earth is under attack by aliens from another dimension! Who can
protect it? Why, the Defender of Earth! But why did he let them get to
Earth in the first place? Well, he’s on trial to find out.
Who’s That Flying!? has the player take control of the defender of
Earth as he recounts his exploits in defending Earth from evil invaders
to a trial of his peers. His peers being, the Defenders of the other
planets. For the most part, the trial dialogue though is between
Jupiter, who serves as the Judge, Earth, defending himself, and Uranus,
who is a little pissy about being stuck being named Uranus. The story
follows the trial, which is mostly Earth “describing” how he saved each
city, then follows the epilogue of the trial through one additional
stage.
The game itself is a side scrolling shoot’em up game. There are 5
cities each with 3 stages to play through, the stages are somewhat
themed by the theme of larger monster that shows up. The design of the
game is actually a bit simple as each stages features the same smaller
black blog enemies, one medium sized “theme enemy” and a larger more
difficult to kill version of the theme enemy.
There is a bit of a twist in the gameplay that helps to differentiate
this game from traditional shooter games, Your character is 100%
indestructible. So hey, that kind of ruins the challenge right? The
city you’re defending has health. The more enemies you fail to destroy,
the more health the city loses. This very strongly encourages the idea
of killing everything, which can be tricky. Most of the larger special
enemies of the stages are designed to keep you from killing the smaller
black monster enemies. They will charge you and cause you to get
confused, or spit goop at you to keep you temporarily immobilized.
There are also some special moves at your disposal. The more enemies
you kill without letting any pass, you’ll charge up to unleash Rapid
Fire shots, a laser like Super shot or the kill everything Hyper shot.
Miss one enemy and your charge bar drops to nothing, which is a little
frustrating. It can also be extremely killer when you lose it just as a
large batch of enemies shows up.
The game itself is alight, though it is a bit simplistic in it’s
design. The simplistic enemies is kind of nice, it never gets overly
difficult, but often most levels break down to sweeping up and down
across the screen shooting constantly. The cut scenes are neat, though
the humor isn’t quite as funny as it wants to think it is. It’s not a
terrible game by any means, though it also doesn’t really give too much
to get super excited over unless you’re a real fan of shoot’em up games.
You can find Who’s That Flying?! on Steam here. it is also available in iOS.
It’s still available elsewhere, just not on Steam. It’s made by the same guy who made Bullet Candy.
This does lead to the game’s only real flaw, if you break your combo at all, there is a good chance you won’t unlock anything. The goals tend to be high enough that when your combo breaks and drops to zero, there probably aren’t even going to be enough enemies to make the stage goal combo. The stages are quick though so replaying them isn’t too hard.
