Mobile Friday - Space Squad Survival - Assortment Of Bugs Keep This Great Game Off Game of the Year

For this week's Mobile Friday i tried Space Squad Survival from developers Rebel Twins on my iPhone 14 Pro.

I was quite excited to play Space Squad Survival. the screenshots and video on the App store reminded me of FTL: Faster Than Light, a PC game i've played but never finished. 

the game starts explosively and the first thing i noticed is how weird the controls are. it certainly took a little bit of time to understand how it worked. all the while, the game's story is still going. when it came to stuff on our ship, the tutorial was simple but effective, perhaps lacking a reason why we're doing what we're doing. But when it came to the planet stuff, that first planet was a blur. the ship is talking to us, there was my shipmate and I trying to adjust to the controls, dodge what's attacking up, whilst there's a timer, and then the whole stage blew up. and wow, it's a lot to take in. i didn't really grasp what to do until by the end of the second planet we visit. 

Quite quickly the loop of what's expected of us is revealed. we need to go to other planets to gather resources. we then use them on upgrading or building new elements on/in our ship. at the end of the video i discover there are other 300 stages, i only got to stage 5 in an hour. so there is a lot of content in the game.

Unfortunately, the game is too buggy for me to recommend right now. i encountered a game ending bug where i was stuck in the ship. the game forgot i had completed a stage by watching a video and by using gems so i lost the games and had to do it all over again with no compensation. 

As these bugs effect gameplay, they will knock Space Squad Survival down the list of the best played games this year. but i still had fun playing it. perhaps the biggest surprise was how Space Squad Survival does adverts. there is an actual countdown to when the advert plays. that's absolutely fantastic and something i've been asking developers to do for years. and it's not just text on a screen, they've created art that fits the game's to tell us this. I cut out about 6 minutes of adverts from this video, but as the player it never really bothered me because of the game's approach to it.

I would recommend Space Squad Survival in it's current state. i think that there's enough to it and enough that works for it to be an enjoyable experience, i know i had one. at the very least, it's worth downloading now and checking update notes when they come out. it may not make the number 1 spot, but it could still make it into the top 5 of my free to play mobile game of the year awards just 'cause it's fun to play.

Version 1.0.06 Played.

Demo Play Thursday - Hogtie On Switch

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Hogtie from RedDeer.Games and Alacrity Games.

there were a decent number of puzzles to playthrough in this demo for Hogtie. as you play it, it's clear where the cut off for the demo is. as there appears to be no story, such a cutoff doesn't feel weird. what's nice is that we're given puzzles across two different biomes, which means a greater number of types of puzzles are available. in this video, i played through all the puzzles i could, but i didn't get all the stars. for the purpose of this video, getting all of them wasn't important. but it does seem that progress is gated behind ability. So if you're bad at this game, you won't gain access to much of it. it's not ideal but as this isn't a story based puzzle game it is understandable. What's unknown is whether our playthrough of the demo would carry over to the final game or if we get a bonus start or two in the main game for playing it.

i'm not great at puzzle games, so i always hope that there's a clear tutorial or a sensible ramp up in difficulty, or preferably both. With Hogtie, i appreciated how they showed each new ability in action and the controls needed. what they didn't show was when to press the controls. so i had to experiment a little with tapping, holding buttons until i understood. but the videos were very clear in showing what the goal of the puzzle was. i also appreciated how quick the puzzles were to restart by hitting the replay button on screen during the puzzle or the replay option at the end. but i don't know if "replay" is the least confusing word to chose. when it's after the puzzle i would suspect it means watching a replay of our game. i think retry would've been a better choice.

This communication problem occurs at least one more time. some of you may be watching and thinking the audio is quiet, and i would agree. i have not turned down the game audio. actually, i've turned down my commentary audio a little. and yet, i show in this video the audio options and i genuinely couldn't understand what it meant. if you have labels, they must be universal and clear. but i've seen all 3 of those labels used for all sorts of audio stuff. i even turned it up in-game. so i have to imagine the audio is a little broken in the demo so let us know if the final game fixes it.

Overall, i thought this was a good demo for Hogtie. if you're curious about the game and the puzzles in it, trying this demo is a great place to start. remember, the game is skill based so if you struggle to complete the demo then you're unlikely to get enough stars in-game to progress. the controls are good, the tutorials are great, the art is fun, and the mood is casual. it's a nice game to have and to make slow progress through.

Backlog Conquering - Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition On PS4 - Part 6

Welcome to Backlog Conquering. This is a series were i play a game from my backlog that i may or may not have played before. the goal isn't necessarily to finish the game, the goal is to play it. that way, i can have an opinion about it.

In Part 6, the platforming got more challenging overall. instead of one long section of difficult platforming, it felt like there were more shorter segments instead. the buff the enemy got was still felt here, but i did think the boss fight at the end was easier than expected. we also got the final ability so this could mean we're a part or two from the end of the game.

You can watch other parts:

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/y20ZZ5IllmY

Part 2 - https://youtu.be/OxoUuZ8dYno

Part 3 - https://youtu.be/aSABHs1VrF4

Part 4 - https://youtu.be/RkrZPlBT1f4

Part 5 - https://youtu.be/WZHkHZEaD0Q

Stories on Tuesday - Visual Novel: I.B. - Part 3 - Chapter 3

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

This is Part 3 and it covers the game's second chapter.

You can check out the previous parts at these links:

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/yclMfGCp1Uo

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

Cloud Monday - Battlefield 2042 - Part 1 - Unwelcoming For New Players, No Online Matches Found

This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing Battlefield 2042 on PS4, via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

It turned out i knew nothing of this game. i thought it was a traditional Battlefield game in that it would have a single player mode and a multiplayer mode. but from this video it looks like there's only online mulitplayer.

Apart from a cool opening cinematic, the rest of my experience with Battlefield 2042 wasn't great. there was no tutorial, it placed us into a game mode that resembled some sort of Dynasty Warriors Muso game. but with no context, i set of walking to the objective not understanding how large the map was. there was no tutorial on the controls. there were tiny icons with controls on them but when selected they had even tinnier text. 

What was frustrating about this first mission we did was how un prepared for it i was. if i new there were going to be tanks, i wouldn't have picked a class that can't deal with them. i never found a weapon to deal with tanks either. it was weird that the game made us choose a class without really telling us what the class does or even how suited it would be for the map we're forced to play. it's an immediate example, and one that's repeated over and over in this video, of the game simply not giving us the information we need.

I have tried on 3 separate occasions 3 different Call of Duty games, Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 https://youtu.be/-F5LygJiO2U, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War https://youtu.be/Iudl4sz5Kd8, and Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile https://youtu.be/4PhpBH6yceQ, and all 3 games have the same problem with poor UI and a poor user experience. i don't know why Battlefield 2042 has copied this. what's weird is that there are great accessibility options presented to us before the game starts and then we're presented with some copy of the Call of Duty messy home screen and interface. it really made me think that the game isn't designed for new players, rather they set out to poach Call of Duty players by offering them a familiar experience. 

Once i worked out that this was a multiplayer only game i set about to trying it. i picked a mode and after some waiting the game would connect me to a match. But it didn't. It says "Game Searching" so i understand what that means. then it changed to "Game Starting" but what happened next was not what i expected. instead of joining a game or lobby, it actually created a lobby for me and we have to wait for people to join. in this video, no one ever did. i don't know what region the servers are connecting to as that was never revealed to me. all i can say from this first video, or two, is that no one is playing Battlefield 2042 online. even with cross platform play enabled.

The stream held up fine and i noticed no issues with the video or audio. but this PS4 version was suffering from long load times, pop-in, and the image quality didn't feel 1080p, rather it felt a little soft and under textured. 

Mobile Friday - Can't Work Today - Ads Get In The Way Of A Fun Hammock Gaming Experience

For this week's Mobile Friday i tried Can't Work Today from developers ponos corporation, on my iPhone 14 Pro.

The screenshots and video for this game on the App Store looked ridiculous in a fun way. i was really curious and genuinely wanted to try it for myself. so that's why this week's game is Can't Work Today.

There is no tutorial at the start of the game. it wasn't entirely obvious how to even start the game. it doesn't come across as particularly welcoming even tho it's premise is so whimsical. as you'll see in the video, i did stumble upon the solution, we touch our speech bubble to start it and use the arrows to move our hammock.

Once things get started, Can't Work Today is a lot of fun. it doesn't tell us a lot and there's no list of things it suggests we do. as there's no tutorial we didn't know what happens for a lot of things. throwing our character up gives us points and money. for some reason there's cake that gives us points. there are things trying to wake us up which we need to avoid. thankfully we're given 10 snoozes. so when an alarm hits us, the snooze keeps us asleep. but, as you'll see in the video, if our character falls out of the hammock they wake up and it's game over.

The biggest frustration with Can't Work Today are the adverts. even tho it told us there would be some, it never said when they would appear. so it immediately took me out of the experience when the first one appeared. the adverts feel like a lazy addition to the game and could've been implemented in a smarter way.

There's no doubt that the core gameplay in Can't Work Today is fun. but very little that's been built around it works to add to the fun. it's needlessly obtuse, adverts appear and take us out of the experience, and it doesn't tell us to spend the money we earn even tho we could get costumes and hammocks that have positive modifiers which could make the next runs go better. 

Version 1.0.1 Played.

Demo Play Thursday - Day of the Shell On PS4

For this week's #Demo Play Thursday i played the #PlayStation4 version of Day of the Shell from Duper Games.

I didn't know about this game before trying this demo. i thought the icon art was cool and that was the main reason i chose to try it out. But i'm glad i did. whilst it was a tough time and i didn't complete the demo, overall i'd say it was a good demo.

I liked the personal message at the start from the developers. the message also gave some hints as to what was in the demo and what extra stuff could be in the final version. a trailer or a message to check out the latest trailer would've been a nice addition. 

the game starts with a good tutorial. it uses videos/gifs to show us what we need to do. i found the explanations to be quite clear as well. but i found that it ended too quickly. i discovered i could move the camera by accident, it's something that the game should've told me about itself. i found that the game keeps too many secrets in general. when there's such a good tutorial at the start and then a helpful goddess and priest, it seems out of character for them to not reveal more about the world.

the story we got told to us didn't quite work with the retrying element of this games' roguelite elements. for example, it's clearly mentioned that one of the gods is sinking the island we're on. but we come back to that island and nothing is said as to why the island is back. nothing is said if we're travelling back in time and doing a loop. so the game tells us one thing, shows us it, and then shows it's been undone without any reason why.

the core gameplay is solid and how it ties in cover is smart. the music and graphics they use are also great. it's just the tutorial and story aren't as cohesive. the tutorial stands out because it starts strong and just stops, for example. but i would say Day of the Shell is worth checking out. for roguelite players they may find it easier than i did and would be able to complete the demo.