Mobile Friday - Rail Rescue: Puzzle Lines - Nice Single Screen Puzzles And Frequent Adverts

For this week's Mobile Friday i tried Rail Rescue: Puzzle Lines from developers INFINITY GAMES on my iPhone 14 Pro.

The App store page for Rail Rescue: Puzzle Lines really highlights what this game is. there are train themed single screen puzzles. by completing a set, you get a star. you use stars to build buildings in your town. Whilst the puzzle aspect was pretty good, the building the town aspect of the game did seem to just be filler. there were no bonuses to building the town, nor did you have any control over where they could be built.

The problem with Rail Rescue: Puzzle Lines is that it can come off as rude. when we started there was a download. it's small, but there was no announcement made before hand, no warning about doing the download over wifi and not using your data by downloading it over a mobile network. it didn't even tell me what the download was for. The game has adverts but there was no warning when they were going to start. what's weird about them is how they happen during the results screen, but not once the results are finished. instead the adverts appear in a weird place. there's no effort made to hide them or incorporate them into the game world at all.

The game then does have a sale message about buying the game and turning adverts off. i don't mind the developers trying to push their store. but  then we got a sale offer that involved the game's in-game currency. at no point in this video was the currency used. trying to sell stuff to make money is fine, but i've said it for years now, the player needs to know the value of what you're selling. i had no idea about the currency, i don't know if that's a good deal or not. as for the adverts, i cut out 14 adverts from this video!

Rail Rescue: Puzzle Lines looks good. i thought the music and effects were fine, too. the tutorial is good and so is the gameplay. there is a lot to like about Rail Rescue: Puzzle Lines. but the forced download and repeated adverts make it hard to recommend. it'd be worth making this a paid for game instead of releasing a spoiled free to play experience. 

Version 1.3 Played.

Demo Play Thursday - Holo's Hanafuda On Switch

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Holo's Hanafuda from Gemdrops.

I currently live in Japan and i've heard of Hanafuda and seen the cards. they are typically really beautiful to look at and make a great gift. but i have no idea how to play the game. a majority of the people i've spoken to here also don't know how to play it, often saying it's something their grandparents play. so for me, i was interested in trying this out not from the holoilve perspective but because of the hanafuda.

This is a timed demo and it's clearly labeled as so when you start it. it's also clear that save game doesn't work. 20 minutes does seem a little short but i think it's down to them not wanting the story spoiled and so that the player doesn't learn how to play hanafuda just from the demo, negating the need to buy the full game. 

I found the tutorial in this game to be great. not only were the explanations clear, but also playing Hanafuda was clear, too. the tutorial kept it nice and simple and at a slow pace. we were then taken into a game where the tutorials kept happening and giving us a chance to use what we learned. 

I don't know if the portrayal of the hololive characters is accurate, but they never felt like getting in the way. the story elements were fine, but critically when i was playing it never got distracting. the same with the graphics and music, it all worked well.

If you're interested in learning about Hanafuda, this maybe a great way to do so. i'd certainly recommend those wanting to learn give it a go and hopefully fans of hololive will like this too. unfortunately, i don't know about hololive so maybe viewers can comment and let me know if this game was good for them.

Backlog Conquering - Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition On PS4 - Part 10 - The Final Part

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.

I beat the boss!

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

Part 6 - https://youtu.be/VMNT2XpjDhE

Part 7 - https://youtu.be/RX5hM88wIyM

Part 8 - https://youtu.be/TJZAYKYTjrM

Part 9 - https://youtu.be/8-_eQuHzpB4

Stories on Tuesday - Visual Novel: I.B. - Part 7 - The Final Part

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

This is Part 7 and it covers the game's final chapter titled Final.

You can check out the previous parts at these links:

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

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

Part 3 - https://youtu.be/I0W5ejOVq6I

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

Part 5 - https://youtu.be/I7g8FoFqT1Y

Part 6 - https://youtu.be/0V-653R46BU

Cloud Monday - F.I.S.T.: Forged in Shadow Torch - Part 2 - Frequent Autosaves Might Be Enough

This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing F.I.S.T.: Forged in Shadow Torch on PS4, via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

In Part 1, we learned that the game doesn't have manual saves. This is important to know as one of the disadvantages of streaming games from PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service is that we're only given a 20 second warning before disconnection. In Part 2, we got new abilities, weapons, and completed an important mission, and still there was no ability to manually save so i'm sure this game doesn't support that function.

If we can't save manually, then F.I.S.T.: Forged in Shadow Torch needs to have a robust auto save feature. checkpoints are good for a quick restart in game, but to come back to the game we need autosaves. it seems like F.I.S.T.: Forged in Shadow Torch uses the auto save as a checkpoint. this means that the auto saves are frequent because the checkpoints are. 

It seems like the auto saves, and therefore the checkpoints, happen before a fighting section, before a boss section, before a puzzle platforming section, and when you use a terminal. In what i've played across both parts, this means that i'm only going a few minutes in-between saves, typically as i travel between one point of interest to another. Whilst this isn't as good as a manual save, it's decent enough for F.I.S.T.: Forged in Shadow Torch.

Because of how frequent the auto saves are, i'm am not going to dismiss F.I.S.T.: Forged in Shadow Torch. it doesn't get my highest recommendation as a game to be played from the Cloud, but it sill gets one as it's a good game to stream. i would say that if you're not looking for a challenge and are in it for the story play on "Easy" as i found "Normal" difficulty to be what i'd expect "Hard" to be.

Check out my first look in Part 1.

Part 1: https://youtu.be/BUe8W8tXM88

Mobile Friday - BlazBlue Entropy Effect - A Polished Hack And Slash Run Based Side-scroller

For this week's Mobile Friday i tried BlazBlue Entropy Effect from developers 91Act on my iPhone 14 Pro.

I'm familiar with the BlazBlue fighting games as i used to have a couple on PS3. but i didn't know about this side-scroller. since i've played this iOS version, i've learned that the game had already come out on PC in 2023 and that there is an Android version.

I Wonder if the Android version was the lead platform as throughout this video you'll see there are moments where the Dynamic Island gets in the way and other times when the curved edges of the iPhone block little bits whereas on my TV i can see things have been cut off. these small things are really the only problems the game has. 

playing the game it felt polished and now i know it's a port of an existing game, it makes sense. the tutorial is mostly fantastic and sometimes only great. there was just one thing i didn't understand and that was implanting crystals. maybe the online multiplayer aspect of the game could've been more defined, but there's a chance i tried accessing that too early into the overall story.

I say that because the big story beat at the end required a power level much lower than what i was doing. maybe i was doing more and going further than what was needed so i could've been hitting limitations because i reached areas too soon.

Also at the end, there was the hint of a plot twist. for this video, i wanted to focus on the main story but a part of me is curious as to what the other character was talking about and whether something will happen to us now. the weirdest part of the story has to be the Mysterious Light Orb in the black and white section. that thing was soo huge it's odd that no one knows about it, especially the janitor standing next to it's section. It seemed to know us, tho we didn't know it, and it did reveal there's a collectable for us to look for. but i have no idea how it does or will tie into the story as right now it's still being revealed.

BlazBlue Entropy Effect does a lot right. it also looks fantastic and i enjoyed the soundtrack. there are a lot of customisation options, too. but, what might stop it being the Free to Play Game of the Year is the additional download at the start. there is no warning it's going to download, no message to the player as to how big it's going to be or that such a download should be done over wi-fi rather than using up data allowance. it's rare to find such a rude download nowadays.

The pick up and play nature of BlazBlue Entropy Effect, the way it teaches you how to play, and how the story's been told so far made it so easy to play and one i kept coming back to, which is why this video is so long. i think BlazBlue Entropy Effect is maybe one of, if not, the best game i've played so far this year on mobile and i highly recommend it. just beware, there's a data download at the start that should be done over Wi-fi.

Version 1.1.0 Played.

Demo Play Thursday - ISLANDERS: New Shores On Switch

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the #NintendoSwitch version of ISLANDERS: New Shores from Coatsink.

I'n my personal time, i have tried the original ISLANDERS game on PS4. whilst i appreciated the art and music, i kept butting up against it's rules and logic. With this sequel, i had hoped that the puzzle aspect would've been tweaked a little and focus would've been put on to the user experience with the game. unfortunately, playing this demo was perhaps more confusing that when i played it on PlayStation 4.

Simply put, ISLANDERS: New Shores came across as a Soulslike. the rudimentary tutorial failed to teach the buttons, with iconography that would be confusing to Switch players, rules that can only be learned through experience, and bonuses that are only spotted when they're briefly mentioned on screen at the result screen though how to get the bonus is never taught to the player.

The game is too quick with the information and this was evident from the start when loading the demo when the message about high scores and auto saves was on screen for 3 seconds or less. it took completing the first two island, if not all three, before i saw all the bonuses that were applied for the score. with such a chill atmosphere, it's weird to see information appear and disappear so quickly.

With randomly generated islands, it's unclear if the islands i played in this demo would be the same as what other players had. if they are, please let me know. this island generator makes it difficult to know how the high score system works. it's unclear in the messaging if the game itself generates the islands so everyone is playing different levels or if the developers used Ai to generate the levels in this game and everyone is playing the same. 

After playing the demo, i know ISLANDERS: New Shores isn't for me. i bounced off the first and you can hear my enthusiasm diminish whilst playing this demo. i'm not saying it's vibe is bad, i enjoyed the art and especially liked the music. i just don't find it approachable and to me it feels more like an expansion of what worked from the first with none of the changes i felt it needed to be even better. So as a demo, it worked for me as i know that it's not for me.