Stories on Tuesday - Visual Novel: I.B. - Part 1 - Chapter 1

The new game in the Stories on Tuesday series is the iOS version of Visual Novel: I.B. from Entabridge. 

This is Part 1 and it covers the game's intro, which the game itself doesn't label, and the first chapter.

Cloud Monday - Sand Land - Part 1 - Video Isn't Effected By Sand, Quick To Get Access To Saves

This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing Sand Land on PS4, via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

I checked out the DEMO for Sand Land, https://youtu.be/Vb6Z6DHvTJ4, back in March 2024 so i knew what to expect from the game. the difference here is that back then, the demo was installed on my PS4 and this time it's being streamed from the cloud to my PS4. What i'm focusing with Cloud Monday is how the game's save system works and whether or not all the sand dust in the air makes the drops the quality of the video i'm watching, much like how YouTube struggles with fireworks and confetti. 

This was one of the clearest streams to my PS4 i've had in a long time. if there were any issues, they didn't last more than a second. the game looked great throughout and the stream didn't seem to have any issues with the sand and dust. i didn't notice any drop in bitrate or resolution whilst playing this part of Sand Land.

The game makes it clear what the auto save symbol is and i did clearly see it during gameplay. but, i was never able to see the actual auto save file. so, at the end of this video, my guess is that it auto saved after the fight but i'm not too sure and would have to check my video. Thankfully, i got access to the manual saves in less than 10 minutes. getting to the save option and saving also seemed quick. on PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service, we're only given a 20 second warning before we're disconnected. unless we're in a cutscene, which we can skip, getting to the save menu and saving should be fine.

It's only been 1 hour, but i've enjoyed my time with the game. the characters are fun, the world has an interesting story, and it looks great on my base PS4. i'm looking forward to the next part and maybe i'll keep playing it in my own time.

Mobile Friday - SushiMon Defense - The Game As A Whole Falls Short, But I Would Still Recommend It

For this week's Mobile Friday i tried SushiMon Defense from developers Dreamplay Games, on my iPhone 14 Pro.

I start this video by talking about what caught my attention from it's #App Store page and whether or not it could pull it off. what i failed to talk about was whether or not "Random Summon! Random Merge! Random Level Up! Random Skills!" would equate into a fun experience. after playing it, i think SushiMon Defense is a fun simple game at it's core but fails to build on it. you could say it's a roguelike and therefore it's fine for it to not tell us a lot about it but i can't help but feel that it tries so hard with it's tutorial at the start for that to be the case.

SushiMon Defense isn't perfect. the tutorial stops before key gameplay mechanics are explained. the summon animation didn't show the first time, so when it did the second time i thought that an advert had started playing but then it abruptly stops in a way which makes it seem broken as nothing really happens in the animation. i was surprised there was an animation as the comic introduction worked so well, i thought they would've used that. i also feel that at times, the controls weren't responsive enough and the game insisted on doing upgrades whilst i was trying to move stuff which caused some minor issues.

And yet, the core to SushiMon Defense still holds up. i want to continue playing it, i haven't deleted it off my phone, unlike a certain Jump King, and i would go so far as to recommend it. but it's going to fall short of game of the year and may not make my top 5 as the game as a whole falls short.

Version 14.4 Played.

Demo Play Thursday - Nif Nif On Switch

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Nif Nif.

Via the Mobile Friday series, I have tried several roguelike deck builder card games. I'm always interested to see what unique spin they're going to have on that style of game and how they're going to introduce it to the player. Will they go hard into the Roguelike aspect and not even offer a tutorial or will they focus on story and world building. When i saw Nif Nif on the eShop, i was intrigued by it's style and that it seemed to focus on animals. i wondered if this game was aiming at a much younger audience.

Quite quickly it's revealed that the goal of this roguelike deck builder is to clean and to stay clean. the foes you face on screen are dirty and seem to want to get our character dirty, too, so it's up the us, the player, to pick the best cards to deal with it. this concept is introduced smartly in the tutorial and it uses videos to show how to play the game. But much like the mobile games of this type, the tutorial in Nif Nif stops early and forgets to get across key concepts of the game and what on screen icons do. as it's a demo i felt OK experimenting myself.

I don't think Nif Nif is aimed at a young audience. it's still a Roguelike game and as such it still has a level of difficulty. the first area we play in doesn't feel like it's been designed to be a low level beginners area. personally, i feel this is a missed opportunity. the game already starts with a great tutorial, it could've continued into concepts and suggestions throughout this first area before letting things get more difficult from the next area onwards. This demo only has the first area and i couldn't beat it on my first try, in-fact i beat it on my third. But like all good roguelikes, you can see that i learned from each run and did the next one better.

I enjoyed my time with the demo for Nif Nif and would easily recommend it for those curious about the game. it was designed with the developers autistic son in mind, so if someone in your family is Neuro divergent it could be something to try too.

Stories on Tuesday - Arcade Spirits - From Start To Finish On PS4

The Stories on Tuesday game was the PS4 version of Arcade Spirits from Fiction Factory Games. this was a playthrough of the disc version of the game, published by PQube.

With the story concluded, i have put all the parts together into one long story, from start to finish, including the credits and post credits scene. 

You can check out the previous parts of this playthrough:

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/iPaMcNIB-pI

Part 2 - https://youtu.be/BBr3lviaf2s

Part 3 - https://youtu.be/n2QOLAQm--M

Part 4 - https://youtu.be/S0aaJtoLQz4

Part 5 - https://youtu.be/KeyDE9FhxBE

Part 6 - https://youtu.be/TYxIMh05j-Q

Part 7 - https://youtu.be/2Q3D-sutzCE

Part 8 - https://youtu.be/58EgAPImlIQ

Cloud Monday - Humankind - Part 2 - Great Fit For Cloud Gaming, Poor Fit For Consoles

This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing #Humankind on #PS4 via the #PlayStationPlus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model #PlayStation4.

In Part 1 we learned that the game saves after each turn and that it also has manual saves, too. this already makes it a great fit for being played in the Cloud as we're only given a 20 second warning before a disconnection. but by the end of that video, i was starting to wonder if the console port was actually worth playing.

i could hear audio issues and now we've had a much smoother streaming experience in this Part 2 i feel like the audio is just poor in the game. This PS4 port also felt like a degraded version of the game because of the visuals. we got to meet more characters in this part and each of them looked low quality. from my recordings, i know that the game isn't 1080p either, tho i don't have the ability to determine what resolution it runs at. But the thing that bugged me the most about this port was the apparent decision to prioritise esthetics of accessibility. 

The menus are a joke. you'd really have to get right up close to your TV to read them and the game has no options to increase the size of them either. the tutorials were also frustrating because of their size but also in their timing. there were other minor inconveniences like the camera and cursor being separate meant that i would often see something i'd want my troops to investigate but would have to wait for the cursor to manually move from where it was, resetting the camera to that spot.

There were aspects of the game that gave me the "one more turn" vibe and you can see that by the end of this part. but it wasn't satisfying, i wasn't enjoying my time with the game. so whilst this game is a good fit for being streamed from the cloud, i don't think it's a good fit on the PS4.

Mobile Friday - Jump King - It Looks Great But Feels Like A Basic Port With Inconsistent Controls

For this week's Mobile Friday i tried Jump King from developers Nexile, on my iPhone 14 Pro.

I went into this video not knowing that Jump King was an existing game on other platforms, but i called it early on that it felt like this was a port of a game. i guessed that it was a port of a game designed for a bigger screen like a folding phone and i was kinda right as it was a PC game first. it's a little weird how the game doesn't take full advantage of the phone's screen and doesn't have any options to let the player move the controls around either. the options are extremely basic and are only for the sounds, there's no language options, no accessibility options, and no graphical options.

The music might be broken in this game, or this version of it. i'm unsure so if you know if what i experienced was normal, please let me know in the comments. it's unfortunate that it was so obvious when the music looped as it got quite frustrating. couple this with some grating sound effects, and i honestly wanted to turn all the sounds off but i couldn't because i was recording a video. this has never happened before. then there was the odd sound that came out of a bird, my first thought was that it was a low quality burp! there was also the incident when i got music when i reached a stage and then never got it again.

another complaint i had throughout was the lack of feeling from the game. it never used my phones vibration, nor did it give any visual clues other than a button was being pressed. this lack of feedback made it tough to learn how to play the game. Jump King does not have a tutorial or on screen prompts, it doesn't have a section designed to teach us mechanics either.  we're dropped straight into the world and that's it. not having any sort of feedback gave me the impression that the game is inconsistent, maybe even a little random. Then there was the moment when an old guy said i could glance and look up, but of course they never said how to do so and i never worked out how to do it. 

Jump King may have a retro aesthetic about it, but on mobile it's design just feels old and not in a good way. maybe this sort of community exists on other platforms, but here on mobile it feels like Jump King was just a basic port with little to no thought about taking advantage of the platform it's on. i can't recommend it as i can't think of any group that it's for on mobile.

Version 1.0.10 Played.