Mobile Friday - Arcane Knight: Idle RPG - Good Art And Action Don't Stop It Feeling Generic

For this week's Mobile Friday i tried Arcane Knight: Idle RPG from developers Eastmoon, on my iPhone 14 Pro.

On the App Store, i thought the artwork and the trailer for Arcane Knight: Idle RPG were interesting so i wanted to give it a go. it seemed like the main focus for the game was the action and even tho it's an idle game we, the player, still had a decent amount of control over our character.

 Arcane Knight: Idle RPG starts with a pretty decent tutorial but it kinda fizzles out before, i feel, it has finished teaching us about the game. many of these idle games forget to teach us about all the little icons and red dots they put on the screen. but there was another element that i had no idea what was happening because either the game forgot to tell me or the game told me but the information was on screen for too short a time. this happened quite frequently where something useful was put on screen but was only up for a second or two before being removed and not mentioned again.

Thankfully the game does give some advice when our run ends on how to do better next time and the tutorial does try to show us these options. But because of how generic Arcane Knight: Idle RPG ended up being, anyone familiar with this genre will know what to do here. There were moments of poor translation but, again, i knew what to do.

I did appreciate the game not forcing it's shop upon us, there were no ads either. this video is longer than normal as it was easy to play and i didn't feel like i had reached the point where i needed to grind away by putting the game to idle mode. the downside of this is is that the game never explained the idle mode. there was no tutorial for it nor was there a story element for it. i remember reading the start of a warning about it, but the text left the screen far to quick.

Arcane Knight: Idle RPG is a fine game. it looks nice and the action is pleasant to watch. but i found the music and sound effects to be poor and in my time with it it didn't seem to offer anything new or interesting in comparison to the other idle games. It's not a bad game but perhaps it's more for fans of the genre.

Version 1.0.11 Played.

Demo Play Thursday - Jack Barau On Switch

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

I had hoped to play this DEMO a few weeks ago, when i first saw it listed on the UK eShop page but when i clicked the Download Demo button nothing would happen and i didn't see the demo on the Switch eShop either. when it finally was available on the eShop i jumped on it and even tho the game is out now i still wanted to give it a go.

The Jack Barau DEMO goes straight into gameplay. there's no trailer, no story cinematic, there's just a world map. i do appreciate that the map clearly shows where the demo ends, but like most demos the game never says if our save file will carry over to the final game. it took me about 20 minutes to complete the demo and another 10 to get all the possible gold stars. once it's finished, there's nothing left to see. there's no trailer showing what's coming in the game, no screenshots or artwork, and perhaps strangly for this game in particular there's nothing talking about the motivation behind this game because Jack Barau highlights an issue on the island of #Réunion of fledging Barau Petrels getting lost and confused by human made lights. the eShop page mentions it a little but with nothing said in the demo it feels like a missed opportunity.

The only other knock against this demo was the odd audio bug that occured on occasion when our character Jack spoke. it sounded like the audio was peaking and distorted even tho it was the same level as the rest of what he said. But other than that it ran great, it looked great, and after some initial adjustments to the controls is played great.

The difficulty of what we played was fairly low but it didn't detract from my time with the demo. i had fun and i wanted to continue playing to get more story and to try and collect more of the fledglings. i'm unsure if there is more than just the island we saw on screen to play through so you'll had to judge whether the price is worth the risk. but if you're curious i'd say try the demo, but i think there's something fun here.

Backlog Conquering - Deliver us the Moon - From Start To Finish On PS4

I played Deliver us the Moon from September 2022 to October 2022, before i had started the Start to Finish Playlist. i recently found my original video recordings so i decided to stitch together all 7 parts of my Deliver us the Moon playthrough on Backlog Conquering. 

I have cut, or tried to, the moments where i died and occasional times when my PS4 would freeze. so the cuts are a little rough due to the audio or camera placements being very different. this is also true when splicing together each part.

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/j0csLiQPBCc

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

Part 3 - https://youtu.be/_Tg93U-lKdY

Part 4 - https://youtu.be/q3qXka0U8IM

Part 5 - https://youtu.be/SrBoxHnBoH4

Part 6 - https://youtu.be/bRuBjxfe-G8

Part 7 - https://youtu.be/zhukq2kkGa0

Stories on Tuesday - Arcade Spirits - Part 5 - An Eventful Day At The Beach

The new game in the Stories on Tuesday series is the PS4 version of Arcade Spirits from Fiction Factory Games. this is the disc version of the game, published by PQube.

This is Part 5 of my Arcade Spirits story and it went in a direction i wasn't expecting. we went to the beach, one which we had been to as a kid. but it all felt out of the blue and sudden. i wasn't satisfied with the link between Part 4 to Part 5 or why not only staff but some regulars joined us. the game was also VERY keen for us to have a romantic option by the end of our day there. there was a distinct lack of artwork during this part and the day's story didn't make too much sense. for example, twice during this part we get to hang out with 2 of the 3 groups. time wise, it feels like we spend a long time with each group, and yet when we join them they've only just started their activity instead of us joining them an hour into what they're doing. For me, this has been the weakest part of the story so far.

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

Cloud Monday - Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed - Ecto Edition - Part 2 - Bots and Things To Find

This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed - Ecto Edition on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

In Part 2 i was able to check out the ghost part of the story and multiplayer. Like the first part, the story is quite long and really slows down the pace before we're taken into the multiplayer tutorial, which itself is quite good. It was just as fast to find a multiplayer game this time, too. But what i hadn't realized about Part 1 was that the multiplayer started out with bots but as we played real players took over.

The same happened in Part 2. when i spawned in to be the ghost character, i took over from a bot and that game was almost over. Unlike Part 1, however, it was only ever me and 1 other player. as i'm new at this, it still felt like a challenge as a ghost and Ghostbuster so i didn't mind. i did see the Ai seemingly doing nothing at times, but overall it seemed quite successful.

We also learnt more about things to find whilst we played. for both Ghostbuster and Ghost teams, there are things to find in the level that give out awards. as a Ghost, i found a page from Tobin's book and as a Ghostbuster i found a newspaper clipping.

So even tho the online community may not be as robust as it once was, i was still able to play satisfying games that provided me XP to level myself up, unlock customisation options, and level up my equipment. i didn't find all the collectables on each stage i played on either. Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed - Ecto Edition has been smartly designed to still be fun and still give players things to do, to unlock, and be able to progress the story even if the community maybe smaller than it once was.

So streaming this from the Cloud has been fine. what issues there have been were noticeable but rarely got in the way of anything. with Macro Blocking, i was still able to tell what was what. there was no lag in the controls as the game isn't a twitch shooter. the weapons take a shot time to charge, which hides any lag if there was any from it being streamed from the Cloud. It is frustrating that i don't know what the penalties are for a disconnection and i don't know when it saves, but because of the type of multiplayer game it is i'm going to say that Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed - Ecto Edition is a good game to stream from the Cloud. it's not the best, but if HDD space is getting tight then it'd still be a fun experience with it being streamed from the Cloud to you.

Mobile Friday - The Mr. Rabbit Magic Show - The First 5 Acts Of This Magic Themed Puzzle Game

For this week's Mobile Friday i tried The Mr. Rabbit Magic Show, from developers Rusty Lake, on my iPhone 14 Pro.

The Mr. Rabbit Magic Show is a free game released to celebrate the developers 10th anniversary. I'm not typically good at these puzzle solving games, check out my attempt at playing Lemon House: Room Escape, https://youtu.be/HcGGKkGw_qY, for a recent example. But i wanted to give this one a go because i liked the art and i wondered if the magic theme would suit me better.

I found that the focus being on what is on the screen in front of you helped, as well as taking some time to try stuff and to look at the smaller details. so i managed to get through the first 5 acts fairly quickly. i stopped as i didn't want to spoil the whole game, but i did wonder how to get the achievements. i went back to try and earn some, thinking that perhaps it was speed related but i instead found the game to be a little buggy the faster you tried to play it.

The Mr. Rabbit Magic Show maybe a short experience, but it's a great one. i'd recommend it to a lot of gamers and suggest people take it at their own pace. it might make the current top 5 free to play mobile games of the year!

Version 1.0.2 Played.

Demo Play Thursday - Labyrinth of the Demon King On PS4

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the PlayStation 4 version of Labyrinth of the Demon King from developer Jacob R. Hudepohl and publisher Top Hat Studios.

Scary games, horror games, psychological games, they're all genres that i don't play because i don't like them. but i was intrigued by the icon and thought i'd give Labyrinth of the Demon King a go. the fact that i couldn't finish the demo doesn't meant that it's a bad game so if what you saw looked interesting i would recommend that you check it out for yourselves.

It's aiming for a PlayStation 1 era look and it gets there but it feels less "janky" than similar PS1 games do so during the video i remarked that it's probably more accurate to call it a "PS1 Pro" style game. at times it felt like this look and the type of game Labyrinth of the Demon King is combined into something that felt old, whilst other times it really worked. from a demo perspective, it's a shame that it's never made clear if save files carry over, and a little disappointing that there was no link to buy/preorder the game from the PSN store.