Articles NewsIt’s Finally Happening: Animal Crossing Switch and Other Nintendo Direct RevelationsSeptember 13, 2018NewsIn a ramjammed Nintendo Direct full of not just announcements but huge announcements, the highlight is the long-awaited new Animal Crossing, confirmed for 2019. Isabelle will also join the roster of Smash Bros. Ultimate. Her special moves will include stationery paper cuts. That is a lie. Other major news includes: A full remaster of Katamari Damacy will come out on Switch later in 2018. A Direct’s worth of news about just Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles remastered with online multiplayer and new dungeon areas, 2019; FFXV Pocket out today; World of Final Fantasy: Maxima with new “legendary characters” mode, November 6; Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon: Everybuddy, “this winter”; FFXII: The Zodiac Age with new speed mode, 2019; and FFVII, IX, and X later in 2019. Diablo 3 with couch co-op, online mode, and other “sparkling goodies” is out soon. Yoshi’s Crafted World, 2019, will revive the “flip” mode of my beloved Super Paper Mario to show players what’s behind the scenes. Super Mario Party, out October 5, includes 80 minigames, a single-player mode, and the return of board-game mode. Asmodee will bring a bundle of board-game adaptations including Carcassonne, Pandemic, and Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game. Settlers of Catan and a “dungeon crawler” version of Munchkin (?!) will follow later. Warframe is out for Switch on November 20. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is out September 21 or tomorrow for pass holders. Cities: Skylines is available now. Daemon X Machina lets you pit customizable mechs called “arsenals” against each other in 2019. You can also turn your human man into Abraham Lincoln: Civilization VI will be out November 16. Luigi’s Mansion 3 will come out for Switch in 2019, along with ports of Kirby’s Epic Yarn for 3DS and the bundled Bowser’s Inside Story & Bowser Jr. Mario Tennis will add Birdo, Shy Guy, Koopa Paratroopa, and Peter Piranha, along with a new co-op mode. The Capcom Beat ‘Em Up Bundle includes seven classic arcade games, including two, Armored Warriors and Battle Circuit, brand new to console. There will be 4-player couch co-op and online play. New Super Mario Bros. U gets a deluxe version that includes Toadette (who becomes Peach) and Nabbit. New Super Luigi U Deluxe is included. The World Ends With You: Final Remix includes a new story, new monsters, and a new reaper character, out October 12. Team Sonic Racing will be out “this winter.” NBA 2K19 is out now. FIFA ’19 is out September 28, with NBA 2K Playgrounds 2 later this fall. There are also a variety of ways for you to spend more money on things that go on or around your Switch or special versions of the Switch you probably already have. These include wireless NES controllers for your Nintendo Online NES games and a Super Smash Bros-themed Switch bundle. ... Dotemu, Lizardcube and Guard Crush Announce Streets of Rage 4August 27, 2018News24 years since the last Streets of Rage game, a surprise on a Monday afternoon. Fans of the classic Sega Genesis games Streets of Rage (or Bare Knuckle in Japan) have been waiting a long time for a new entry into the series – and now Lizardcube, Guard Crush and Dotemu have all taken to Twitter to announce a fourth game, 24 years since the last installment. Are you willing to risk anything on the Streets of Rage?@Lizardcube, @Guard_Crush and @Dotemu are proud to announce Streets of Rage 4. https://t.co/ARohSIBflh #SOR4 pic.twitter.com/PJgxmlb6ok — Dotemu (@Dotemu) August 27, 2018 The reveal trailer tells us a few things – firstly, series mainstays Axel Stone and Blaze Fielding will return as the two main characters – it’s unclear whether the third person in the trailer is a third playable character (as would be traditional for a Streets of Rage title) or a villain – my money’s on the latter. She is standing in flames, after all. The game has a new, updated comic book-influenced graphical style from the team behind Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap, and retains the classic 2D side-scrolling beat-’em-up mechanics that we know and love. As yet, there’s no release date or platforms confirmed for the game, but if it isn’t on all three major consoles I’d be very surprised. More information is available on the official website.... Stardew Valley Multiplayer Leaving Beta — Today!August 1, 2018NewsStardew Valley’s long-awaited multiplayer mode will soon be available for those playing on PC, Mac, and Linux. So soon, in fact, that it might already be available by the time you read this: 1 hour to go until #StardewValley Multiplayer drops for PC, Mac & Linux! Did you know the update also supports cross-play between @steam_games and @GOGcom Galaxy? 🎥 Multiplayer Trailer: https://t.co/NHoALvaPYt — Chucklefish Games (@ChucklefishLTD) August 1, 2018 Multiplayer mode, previously only available through an open beta, allows up to four farmers at a time to play together on a single shared farm. The mode also allows players to marry–and divorce–each other, as well as adds a new multi-day winter event. The update will also be rolled out on Nintendo Switch, XBox One, and PlayStation 4, though a release date has not been confirmed.... No Man’s Sky broadens its horizons with new updateJuly 17, 2018NewsFor new players, returning skeptics, or fans who’ve stuck with the game, it’s a whole new sky Hello Game’s No Man’s Sky has been the topic of intense discussion and controversy almost since the first trailer dropped in December of 2013. Billed as a limitless, infinite world that harnessed the power of procedural generation, the shipped game suffered under monumental hype and an arguably misleading marketing campaign. It garnered as many vocal detractors as it did ardent fans, so everyone expected the developers to quietly let the game grow moss and be forgotten. Instead, the team has been actively releasing content updates, balancing patches and optimizations in a show of support that is echoed by a fiercely loyal playerbase. Their latest addition, announced today as No Man’s Sky Next and available for free on July 24, may realize the series of promises made nearly five years ago. Among the list of additions is true multiplayer support, as opposed to the previous system where you could stumble upon the changes wrought by another player (and even occupy the same physical space) but never interact. But Next will allow players to team up for exploration, base-building, and in another exciting addition, ship-to-ship combat. From the May 18 devblog: You’ll be able to explore the universe with a small group of friends, or bump into random travelers. You can help friends to stay alive, or prey on others to survive. Tiny shelters or complex colonies that you build as a team are shared for all players. Fight as a pirate or a wingman in epic space battles with friends and enemies. Race exocraft across weird alien terrains, creating race tracks and trails to share online. Also teased in the trailer are enhanced visuals and the ability to construct and customize a fleet of frigates that players can use for exploration or to tackle “challenging multiplayer missions.” Long-time players will also notice that the game will now be playable in third-person or first person, whether you’re exploring on foot or zipping around in your personal ship. This is part of a larger visual overhaul that encompasses enhanced graphics, improved terrain generation and more detail in manmade features like spacecrafts and buildings. Reckoning with the Past It is next to impossible to discuss No Man’s Sky’s future without recalling the media blitz that quickly soured once the game was released in June 2016. Many blamed the two and a half years between its initial announcement and eventual release. Expectations ballooned beyond reason. Others laid the fault at the feet of Hello Games and it’s founder, Sean Murray, for going on a spree of interviews that deployed misleading and too-hopeful language. In either case, the game’s release polarized fans: many demanded refunds for delivering a product far short of what was advertised, while others still found the experience enjoyable. Time passed, the media moved on to other things, and No Man’s Sky quickly became a tired joke about investing too much personal stake in an unreleased game. But players stuck around for the quiet and meditative cruising through a beautiful, if ultimately empty universe. Their gripes with inventory and lack of interaction were leavened by gameplay that truly couldn’t be found in anything else this generation. And, luckily enough, the developers hadn’t given up, either. Through a series of patches and larger updates, Hello Games kept their game afloat and interesting. The Foundation Update introduced base building, frigates, and different game modes like Creative and Survival. The Pathfinder Update gave players access to a variety of planetside vehicles, support for PS4 Pro, ship customization and the first major visual overhaul. And the latest addition, Atlas Rises, developed the game world further than ever before with missions, a revamped story, galactic economy and trading, and a host of UI optimization. It also introduced simple, limited versions of Next’s multiplayer and space combat systems. But the fans were just as busy. They created their own civilizations, which banded together to form a galactic government called the United Federation of Travelers. They established holidays, fought for a calendar, and went to war with each other. They searched for a rare species of giant mushroom beetle, and they began establishing a volunteer police force. The No Man Sky community thrived under the care and curation of the developers, and never gave up home that the game they loved was actually as good as they all believed it was. The addition of Next might be an update-sized vindication. Flying Towards the Horizon Just going off the press release blogs and trailer (which is a faithful reshooting of that 2013 trailer I mentioned at the top) No Man’s Sky Next could be the perfect opportunity for those who skipped it the first time. Buying the pase game on XBox One, PS4 or PC gives you access to everything released up to the present, and Next will be available to all for free when it drops July 24. I was one of those turned by the upswell of negativity when it originally released. I’ve watched the drama and discoveries from the periphery but always found excuses not to make the plunge. But I am excited to finally jump in the cockpit of my very own cruiser to see what mysteries the universe has to share. Being able to do it all of it with my friends makes it that much sweeter.... Twitch Prime is giving users 19 free games this month!July 3, 2018NewsAmazon’s going all-out for Prime Day! Our reporter Caroline takes a look at the titles on offer. As part of its capitalist drum circle for Prime Day, Amazon’s Twitch Prime will give away 19 free games to subscribers during the month of July. Games range from Obsidian titles Tyranny and Pillars of Eternity to quirky Battle Chef Brigade and puzzlers like Uurnog and Qube 2. Users need to use Twitch’s desktop client in order to download the games, which means they probably boot through the desktop client and can’t be run separately. By releasing so many free games at once and on a clever schedule, Amazon guarantees a certain number of daily logins to the desktop client while also giving users enough of a library for them to stick around in it for at least a while. Critics have called Twitch’s game sales side underdeveloped and unintuitive, but an influx of new users might incentivize Amazon to spend some money upgrading its infrastructure. Here’s a complete list of the games to be offered during July: Battle Chef Brigade The Bridge Broken Age Brutal Legend Deponia Doomsday Gonner Hue The Last Blade Manual Samuel Metal Slug 3 Next Up Hero Observer Pillars of Eternity Qube 2 The Red Strings Club Tacoma Twinklestar Sprites Tyranny Uurnog... FeaturesReturn of the Obra Dinn Boasts the Strongest Opening in Recent MemoryJanuary 14, 2019FeaturesNo time for hand-holding when you have a job to do Let’s talk about tutorials for a second. I started noticing tutorials about halfway through the N64’s lifetime. The title of what game burst the bubble is lost underneath two decades of memories (probably a perfectly decent but not great platformer), but it was akin to that feeling when you first realized movies could be bad. I knew how to press the jump button, and I knew what those spiky enemies meant. And I sure as shit knew how to collect all the slowly spinning dross littered about each level. But here was this game, explaining everything in excruciating detail via a signboard or anthropomorphic, bespectacled animal. Game tutorials serve a necessary function that’s hard to neatly fold into the rest of the experience. Give players too much benefit and you risk miscommunicating control schemes and major mechanics. Hold their hands too much and you make them feel like a teenager having their faced cleaned in the middle of the mall. All this is to say when a game like Return of the Obra Dinn shows up, it faces a daunting task right out of the gate. The presentation is unique, from its pointillism-inspired art to dialogue delivered without any visual accompaniment. The action certainly doesn’t explode from the title sequence; this is a game of decisions, not reactions. And yet, the opening minutes of Obra Dinn are masterfully done, onboarding players to the tone, mechanics and narrative hook of the game all in one sequence that plays out like a choreographed dance. [Heavy spoilers beyond this point for Act X: The End and the beginning of Act VII: The Doom] The game opens on a poster detailing the assumed fate of the Obra Dinn and its recent auspicious reappearance. Next is a letter addressed to you, the player. You’re an insurance claims adjuster for the “Honorable” East India Company. The style and font is period-appropriate, and might remind you of a replica promoting one of Shakespeare’s plays your high school drama teacher had tacked to the wall. Then, there is a black screen and the sound of water lapping against the side of your small boat. A sailor is ferrying you to the Obra Dinn, his gruff voice letting you know nobody wants to get close to the vessel. You’ll soon find out all dialogue is conveyed this way. Once you’re safely tied to the Obra Dinn, you’re allowed to go aboard and walk the deck for the first time. It softly sways in the water, barely noticeable unless you stand still and focus. A steady wind riffles through what remains of the sails and rigging. What strikes you is just how empty the ship is. Lifeless. You might feel that tingling sensation somewhere along your neck that occurs when a deeper part of your mind recognizes something wrong but can’t pass along the message. Then, you find a body. It’s been dead for a while; bones draped in old cloth plot out where a full person once lay. It’s almost a relief because it means you aren’t exactly alone up here. You wander a bit more before your companion calls you back to the rowboat. Your suitcase of gear is far too heavy to bring up the ladder, he says. Come open it here, he says. Inside you find two items. One is a journal, a nondescript book without any marking on the cover or spine. The inside is a different story. A title and preface from one Henry Evans seems to imply that someone has knowledge of what happened on and to the Obra Dinn and its crew. The book also contains maps, deck plans, sketches, a crew manifest, and pages beyond pages of blank whiteness. Huh. Shutting that, you pull out the second item. It’s a pocket watch with a stylized skull set in the center. As you examine it the screen cuts to black. Memento Mortem. Remember Death. Okay, then. At this point the game has allowed you time to acquaint yourself with the physical space of the ship and a captivating art style that might throw some out of their more realistically rendered comfort zone. It let you organically discover the body but held back your means of interacting with it. Until now, of course. You ascend the ladder and return to the body. Your character extends her hand, the Memento Mortem resting in her palm. It flips open, and a spiraling black engulfs the screen as a musical sting plays (by the way, this game has THE BEST musical stings). There are voices, rough and aggressive. Something is happening but you can’t be sure what. A gunshot. The scene that smashes back to you is one frozen in time. The music — a lumbering collecting of low strings that evokes all your memories of sailors and pirates — swells, and you face a man with a gun in his extended hand. Particles form the trajectory of a fired bullet, and as you turn you see the intended target. His blood fountains behind him, and in this still frame it could almost be comical. You are swimming in details and trying to take it all in when that swirling blackness returns. Your book flips open to Act X: The End, and details are penciled in. The game smartly waited until just now to introduce you to the puzzle box of Return of the Obra Dinn, after you’ve been first intrigued by the space and then thrown headlong into a supernaturally revealed murder mystery. Now, the game says, do your job. “Solving” each death requires providing three pieces of information: who died, who did it, and with what. It’s immediately familiar to anyone who ever played Clue, but this game is much more coy with how it reveals information. There is some light prompting from the game as to how you can try at answers, but it warns you that brute forcing would be both boring and unproductive. I agree. Luckily, the dialogue and details of this first scene let you get tantalizingly close to solving all three of those parts. It’s just the first part of a very clever bait and switch. You return to that grisly, frozen scene and are given free reign to explore. You notice for the first time a fourth figure making his way towards the stern of the ship, a knife in his hands. How interesting! There’s also a door that transports you back to the real world where time ostensibly moves like it should. You notice the door to the captain’s quarters is now open, and a second pile of bones lay just inside. You approach and flick that pocket watch open once more, primed to do more detective work. Another fade to black, another wonderful musical sting. The man you know now as the captain continues to kick ass, taking care of a yet unknown assailant in his room. You have some details to fill in but not enough for definitive decisions. Too quickly you’re foisted back into real time, but no matter – there’s another body in this room. If you’re like me, this third trip through the Memento Mortem frustrates you. There is no dialogue. Only the sounds of a brutal and ultimately deadly scuffle fill the darkness. You recognize this new man as the knife wielder from before, but the game apologetically tells you there isn’t yet enough information to even guess at his identity. Shit, you think. That’s now three unidentified bodies on your plate. Things are rapidly growing beyond your control. After jaunting out of the Memento Mortem yet again, you take a steadying breath and decide to press on. You’ve already spotted a fourth skeleton in the captain’s chambers. It was during this flashback that I first considered developer Lucas Pope was finely tuned to the emotions his players would eventually feel while playing Obra Dinn, because the fourth body is a tall, refreshing drink of clue water. In his final moments, the captain reveals much and hints at more, revitalizing your vigor for the task at hand. It’s such a smart way to convey to the player how the pacing of the game will play out. Some bodies will provide almost everything you will need to immediately identify both them and their fate. Others will look like sadistic creations to make you tear out your hair. Discovering the full truth of what happened aboard this ship will take deduction, guesswork and more than a little creative savvy on your part. The game even says so at the end of this last scene in Act X. The final message from Pope, a simple “Good luck,” does not sound so much a challenge as it does an earnest wish. Whether you realize it or not, you have everything you need to play Return of the Obra Dinn. You know the stakes of the narrative. You know the verbs of the game and how to interact with its systems. You even know your own limitations and how to proceed when you eventually hit a logic wall. But all of this information, this tutorial, was wrapped so well in building a world and a scene both otherworldly and violently real that you never felt bereft, nor instructed. Pope provided information when necessary, delivered in simple sentences and illustrated within the formalized structure of the book. That clear dichotomy between the exploratory and discovery parts of the game and the deductive parts help your mind work out the 60 odd riddles of the crew’s deaths. As you progress, the game will explore what the Memento Mortem can do but never alter that main exploratory verb. If you made it this far, the rest of the game just builds naturally on a strong foundation. But there’s one more part I consider part of the tutorial, and it’s just as important as everything that came before. If a game must onboard its players, there comes a time when the world opens back up and they can take their gathered tools and really play the dang thing, which can feel jarring and disconnected. Obra Dinn kicks you out into the open seas with a reveal that upends everything you likely assumed about the story and tone of this game. After witnessing the captain’s suicide, you notice a body in a bed next to him. Ah, you think. Sickness, probably. And then you take one more trip through the Memento Mortem. Immediately things are different. The dialogue is muffled by storming winds and lashing rains. Men yell and wood cracks in the distance. A woman screams for her husband and is rebuffed. A thunderous crack heralds you into the flashback proper, and it is a scene from hell. Part of the mast has broken off and crushed this woman’s skull. Around her men are scrambling around a ruined deck, tattered sails and snapped ropes flying everywhere. And outlined in the peripheries is a terrible beast, perhaps missed at first among all the debris and rigging. But it is there, tentacles squirming up the sides of the ship, grasping at sailors, tearing apart wood and bodies alike, destroying all it touches. Now, you have to reconsider everything, but it’s a thrill instead of relief. The task of learning to play the game transitions seamlessly into simply playing. The explaining text and onboarding tasks felt less like playing through an instruction booklet than being shown a neat trick with a new toy. Pope understood how to sell his concept mechanically and thematically without condescending, and it set me up for one of my favorite gaming experiences of last year. ... For Queer Developers, Visual Novels are More Home Than ObstacleJanuary 11, 2019FeaturesVisual Novels, According to Their Creators “Can we please have more queer games that aren’t visual novels? Signed, a queer person who does not like visual novels.” Adam Koebel, author and designer of popular tabletop game systems like Dungeon World, tweeted this at the end of July. The response was varied, but immediate. Some agreed that games either made by, or representing, LGBTQIA+ folk were too mired down in one genre. Others pointed out a laundry list of reasons, both systemic and historical, explaining why queer creators seemed to only develop visual novels. Conversations spiraled out. People quote tweeted and dissected and counterpointed and did all the other things we do when someone’s opinion strikes an online nerve. But the one opinion I didn’t see was from those making the games in question. So, I reached out to the teams behind some popular titles on Itch.io to pick their brains. “I think it would be great to have more queer games outside of visual novels so I can definitely understand that there’s some frustration,” said eZombo, one of the developers on the Boys Laugh + team. “Part of the reason why visual novels appealed to me in the first place was because they were the first games where I saw queer representation.” He and Pectin, another member of the team, were not surprised by the conversations happening on Twitter. To them and the four other developers I spoke with, the abundance of queer visual novels and not much else could be seen as a shortcoming – if you didn’t understand how foundationally important the genre is for this community, specifically. Pectin and eZombo met in college and discovered a shared interest in visual novels through a music mix. Yes, it might have been from a “very NSFW game” but it spurned them to action programming their first game together. Ryan Rose Acaea, developer of the critically acclaimed Genderwrecked, went to school for art but ended up hanging out with the people making games. They had stories to tell, and their new friends were glad to provide the means. Naz Alakeshwari and Asif G., both working on episodic fantasy visual novel Gehennam, turned an online friendship into a partnership in much the same way. Asif began learning to use basic dev tools, like Ren’Py and Twine, as a means to breathe life into the characters in his head. Dovah, one half of development duo Argent Games, discovered his inner fire at an ill-fated university game club. Without a supporting community, he went online with his ideas and was lucky enough to find an interested partner who eventually became his best friend. These are the people who agreed to share their stories. Their backgrounds vary, but as we talked it became clear visual novels were not holding these creators back. Instead, the genre had provided them an open door into game development, an effective tool for exploring themselves, and access to a community otherwise hidden from them. “Visual novels are such an accessible thing that anyone can make a game,” Asif said. “Which is also why I think a bunch of LGBT and PoC creators go towards visual novels because they’re just so easy to make.” If you’ve never played a visual novel, a too-derivative explanation is “interactive story book”. Artwork and static images provide backdrop for a dialogue driven experience where the player’s agency may only extend to choosing responses in a conversation or prompts to action. Except, that’s sort of missing the forest for the trees. Asif was drawn to visual novels because of how easy it was for him to simply start making a game, despite having almost no conventional coding experience. He learned as he went, turning to free online tutorials, or friends like Naz, when a problem needed solving. “I have always been a fan of visual novels since I was little. But I’m not an artist, so I learned how to use Ren’Py and started creating little stories,” Naz said. “It’s super easy to learn and put in a bit of effort to actually create something.” Very few of the developers I spoke with sought out a formal education in game development. They either bumped into it incidentally or were introduced by a friend, who often enough was roped in as a project collaborator. With visual novels, you don’t have to be a CG animator, level designer, artist and writer all at once. Ryan Rose headed the transgender advocacy group at the University of Southern California, which they were attending for art. “At a certain point, it turned out that more than half of them were from USC games. So I started hanging out with the games kids. Do that for too long and something starts to bleed over,” they said. Every developer seemed to have a story where their interest introduced them to friends who would become partners, or collaborators who would become friends. Visual novels tied these folks together, creating tight-knit teams with a shared vision. But when I asked about their involvement in the larger visual novel dev scene, the responses were starkly different. “I’m not that into the dev scene only because I’m a reclusive person. I’m sure if I got into it I’d learn more, but I’m just not very into those groups,” Asif said. “I looked on some forums to answer questions but never got involved. I never looked for that community,” Naz said. “I’ve had a couple of people push me to be more involved. I’m kind of bad at that sort of thing,” Ryan Rose said. None could pinpoint a reason why they weren’t more connected with other teams creating similar games, even though they all mentioned their recent favorites, or exemplary titles like Brianna Lei’s Butterfly Soup, or Christine Love’s Ladykiller in a Bind. They admitted they should reach out, but most were either full-time students or working multiple jobs. Creating games was an activity for the free time left after paying rent and buying groceries. That’s something I tend to forget, which I’m sure means plenty others like me (read: not a developer) do, as well. The latest indie darling visual novel is often a passion project crafted over countless late nights and weekends in the bedrooms of people without the luxury of budgets or advertising teams, much less a formal studio space. They’ve crunched the math of their days, and found rent and groceries more pressing than self-promotion. Which is probably why everyone sang praises for Itch.io, a game storefront alternative to Steam that has become a bastion for niche genres like the visual novel. Besides offering some of the most generous revenue splits (creators decide how much the platform takes), developers love the wealth of options for tagging and classifying games. “They are so queer friendly, and I love them. They have a tagging system that’s always bustling with visual novels and other popular games,” Ryan Rose said. The tagging system allows users to search specifically for visual novels and then limit that search by what kind of experience they want: gender of protagonist, horror, anime art style, or in the case of Ryan Rose’s Genderwrecked – “queer, weird monster art.” All of the creators I spoke with told me making visual novels was inextricably linked to their experience as a queer person, and in some cases helped them come to terms with parts of themselves. “Games have this ability to make you feel better. There’s a way they connect with you andgive you experiences you can’t have in real life,” Asif said. “While [players] are struggling in real life, they get a break through games. Everyone can relate to that. Everyone deserves a time and place outside of their struggles and their harsh, harmful realities.” Naz admitted their characters were often self-inserts and helped them explore social and emotional situations. Their writing career sprouted from wanting to make the characters they loved “a little bit gayer.” “The story gives you a sort of safety net to express who you are. I can be any character Iwant and others will respond positively to that,” they said. “I guess as gay people we have a hard time finding a community, and it can be scary and hard to open up and reveal who youare. But through something like VNs you can do that and people will accept you.” Ryan Rose directly addressed visual novel’s efficacy in portraying not just the queer self, but how community helps that self become a lived reality. “I want to talk about people and the relationships between them because my friends arethe most wonderful and important things that have happened to me in my life,especially as a queer person. And to be able to pour that into these avatars is really easyin VNs,” they said. “It makes a game about creating relationships and then a community. Which is really what Genderwrecked is all about.” Despite the praise, the creators understood why players would be frustrated by the dearth of queer games in other genres. They, too, want to see representation across gaming’s landscape – both indie titles and AAA productions. “I think it would be great to have more queer games outside of VNs so I can definitely understand that there’s some frustration,” eZombo said. “Part of the reason why VNs appealed to me in the first place was because they were the first games where I saw queer representation and I think that’s the case for many people.” Some wondered if the sentiment gestured towards a larger frustration. “As much as I think VNs are wonderful, there are so many other kinds of games. It’s fair to want more and be able to experience queerness in other kinds of play,” Ryan Rose said. “So I think that frustration is not so much ‘Fuck VNs’ but more ‘fuck the fact that nobody is giving us the resources to make anything but VNs’”. They mentioned Dream Daddy as one game that found unusual success but was ultimately treated as a lark. Being developed by popular web series and YouTube channel Game Grumps certainly helped. To them, the market seems to only have space for one standout visual novel a year but will happily pile on as many action-adventures or first-person shooters as possible. “I don’t know what a first-person shooter about gay dads would look like, but I bet it would be awesome having a team of gay dads to play with Overwatch style,” Ryan Rose said. So, what’s to be done? Players are restless. The individual devs are underfunded. AAA publishers seem keen on largely ignoring a niche, but passionate community. Those I spoke with aren’t so easily pessimistic. “I feel like on one hand it’s not a problem with the players; it’s a problem with the overall community and the capitalist mindset of studios. They don’t want to be “divisive” and anger the really big part of the player base that’s super homophobic,” Ryan Rose said. Their comments echo others who blamed larger studios that seem unwilling to risk public opinion turning on them when a character is more than a “token queer.” Worse still, they claimed, is when they attempt representation without consulting actual queer people. “When companies tried to support queer people by including related themes without proper research and advice the game tends to stereotype LGBTQ+ issues,” Pectin said. “If the content is informative as well, players unfamiliar with [those] themes might think more open mindedly about them.” The developers want to empower the people who play games to be agents of change. They are more confident in the public’s ability to shape the future of the market than in big publishers shifting where they invest their money. “Make a lot of noise. Be excited about gay visual novels when they come out. Play those games, share those games and support the queer creators who make them,” Ryan Rose said. “When Christine Love made Ladykiller, people were like ‘Oh, all queer games are VNs.’ And partly in response to that she’s now making Get in the Car, Loser, which is an RPG style queer game. So, you see what happens when you uplift and support creators no matter what kind of games they are making.” Lack of faith in AAA publishers is not hard to understand. We’re still less than five years out form the height of Gamergate’s hate-fueled crusade, followed by a tepid (if at all existent) response from industry leaders. More recently, the twitter accounts for GOG and the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 tweeted out transphobic jokes in the name of promoting their products and brands. Instead, the dev’s appeals focused on individuals and communities promoting visual novels – and queer games at large – from within, relying on grassroots support that circumvents online channels where known hatemongers reside. “Supporting the game, talking about it, encouraging interest in these games is the most important thing and maybe the most difficult,” Asif said. “Instead of a stranger saying, ‘Hey play my game’ but a friend did it, they will trust their friend more.” “We thrive on feedback. We eat and breathe feedback. Tell us if you liked our game or didn’t like our game or whatever you feel,” Naz said. In the end, a frustrated tweet helped me discover a small part of a community of artists expressing themselves via a genre too often maligned with pornography (shaming of pornography and sex workers is a whole ‘nother can of worms). If you’re fresh to visual novels and curious about the stories they tell, I asked the devs to provide suggestions from their recent favorites: Butterfly Soup, by Brianna Lei We Know the Devil, from Pillowfight Ladykiller in a Bind, by Christine Love [NSFW link] Dream Daddy, by Game Grumps Heaven Will be Mine, from Pillowfight Extreme Meatpunks Forever, by Heather Robertson Hardcoded, by yoplatz [NSFW link] And if you’re out there wondering if you have what it takes to start making games like these, the devs could not be more supportive of growing their ranks. “If you wanted to create your own character or put yourself into a story, that’s what this genre is for. You are placing yourself into the absolute truth of a character,” Naz said. “Don’t be afraid to fuck up. You are gonna fuck up. It’s not going to be perfect, but just get it done!”... Autosave Staff’s Games of the Year 2018!January 11, 2019FeaturesSorry it’s late. We wanted to be really sure. That’s right, we’ve taken almost two weeks of 2019 just to be sure nobody made the best game of the year in the last week! Don’t say we don’t treat you right. And sure, not every game here is from 2018, but we’re all about enjoying games your way, which is exactly what our crew did. Here are the games that made our year: Reuben: Monster Hunter World There’s nothing quite like Monster Hunter. No game manages to blend such mechanical complexity with as simple a premise. There are monsters, you must hunt them! What that entails is a deeply tactical process of studying and tracking the given creature, learning its attack patterns from body language and audio cues and perfecting your preferred weapon (of which there are a dozen varieties) to exploit its weak points. There’s also always the chance that something from higher up the food chain will stumble by and decide that you and your prey both look like lunch! But with each successful hunt you learn a little more, you harvest parts to improve your gear and weapons and the next attempt becomes a little easier. In the process of earning enough parts to get the armour you really want you’ll come to know the creatures inside and out, and there’s little more satisfying than executing a plan with panache and style. Plus a bunch of talking cats will sing you a song as they cook you dinner. 10/10 Game of the Year. Owen: BATTLETECH 2018 has been the Year of the Mech for me. Narrowly beating out Into The Breach for my top pick is BATTLETECH. This game was a painless onramp to a decades old lore rich franchise. Adapted from the tabletop game of the same name, BATTLETECH is an isometric turn based tactics game (think XCOM) on the surface, and a deep mechanics heavy mercenary sim under the hood. With a wonderfully written campaign and effortless inclusivity, it is a joy to spend time in this universe. You could sink tens of hours (and I have) deviating from the main story to chase contracts through the stars, collecting the broken war machines of your foes, and putting together an unstoppable MechWarrior lance. Highly recommended for fans of science fiction, strategy games, and storytelling. Kelso: Octopath Traveler Someday, I’m going to find time to put together all of the emotions I felt playing through Octopath Traveler in a proper article, but for now, I’m just going to settle for giving it my GOTY. The JRPG-lite style structure was just complex enough to be interesting without having so many pieces I felt overwhelmed as I so often have playing JRPGs in the past. The ability to dual equip classes allowed me a lot more flexibility in covering “weak spots” in team comp as I went along, and as someone who often likes to pick favorites in characters and classes, it removed a lot of the frustration associated with “oops, I didn’t level the right character up for this encounter”. The graphics are beautiful and even now, I still can’t get enough of the combination of shaders and pixel art creating a strange 2.5D world. Beyond how it plays, this game was released the same week my father was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer, and it provided me with not only distraction and escapism the way I hope a good game can, but also reflections on grief and what it means to grieve via (minor spoiler?) Ophilia’s storyline. I couldn’t have stumbled into a better game to get me through the most difficult period of my 31 years to date, and the best part is, I still have so much more of it left to play. Chase: Return of the Obra Dinn The best thing about Lucas Pope’s maritime whodunnit is not the old Macintosh-inspired 1-bit graphics, nor is it the supernatural plot that draws on sailor’s tales, folklore and myth alike. It’s not the incredible musical score, full of haunting chimes, keening woodwinds and cellos that sound like waves bashing the side of a ship. It isn’t event the incredible voice acting and award winning sound design that helps sell the game’s completely auditory vignettes. No, the best thing about Return of the Obra Dinn is the masterful flow of the game, slowly leading players deeper into the mysteries aboard a seemingly cursed vessel while simultaneously add new dimensions to the game’s systems. One clue leads to another; each body telling a bit more of a story more twisted than ill-kept rigging. Like any good puzzle game, the solutions are both clearly obvious and cleverly hidden. Pope keeps you from brute forcing your way to the end, and doing so would only deny you one of the year’s best experiences, game or otherwise. Jack: Super Smash Bros Ultimate To anyone who knows me, this being my game of the year is the opposite of a surprise. I’ve been waiting for Smash on the Switch since the Switch has been a thing, and not only have Nintendo granted my wish but they’ve done it with exceptional panache. Super Smash Bros Ultimate is, as the name suggests, the most complete entry to the series yet, boasting a character count in the 70s, a stage count of over 100 (over 300 counting variations), and a “Spirits” single-player mode boasting nearly 2,000 classic gaming characters to collect. It’s a Smash fan’s dream, and the Fighter Pass brings the promise of even more fascinating characters to be had down the line. Honourable mention: Destiny 2: Forsaken. I have poured a huge amount of my life into this over the last couple of months, and the fact it’s an expansion to a base game released last year is the only reason why it isn’t in the running for my top spot. Joseph: Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (the best game I played this year) When it comes to the most beloved development studios on the planet, Monolith Soft doesn’t get as much praise as they deserve. If any other studio had the stellar five game run (Xenoblade Chronicles, Project X Zone, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Project X Zone 2, and Xenoblade Chronicles 2) that Monolith Soft has had since late 2010, they would be omnipresent in the realm of gaming; with legions of stans at the ready to berate anyone that says a negative word about their creations and an entire industry making every attempt to recreate the magic of one of their most vaunted titles. That is where I have absolutely nothing but effuse acclaim for 2017’s action-JRPG Xenoblade Chronicles 2 for Nintendo Switch. Two years after the criminally underrated Wii U title Xenoblade Chronicles X blew high expectations clean out of the water, Monolith Soft proved that you can indeed capture lightning in a bottle while making it even more potent than before. Chronicles 2 is, without question, a glorious, compelling, and drop-dead gorgeous game that any RPG fan would fall in love with. The epic story of Rex and Pyra is one that must be seen to be believed. Charles: Octopath Traveler Checking out the free trial of Octopath Traveler based on Chase’s recommendation was one of the better decisions I made in any aspect of my life this year. Square Enix’s gorgeous “2D-HD” JRPG absorbed more of my gaming time than anything else in 2018, seeing me pour hours into its exceptional combat and stunning scenery. The boss battles in particular were something else entirely – combat is normally the aspect of RPGs I struggle with most, but I found myself relishing taking upwards of half an hour to tactically pick apart bosses. The game was, for me, a beautiful journey between incredibly satisfying fights, with the lovely added touch of travel banter to start the process of bringing the eight stories together. Despite that, I still haven’t finished it. Particularly spoilery spoilers ahead! I’m at the final boss battle, which is hidden via a myriad of seemingly innocuous sidequests, and which I probably would never have found or even thought to look for if I hadn’t learned about it accidentally beforehand. I got absolutely obliterated on the first attempt. And you know what? I absolutely cannot wait to get obliterated twenty more times before I figure this fight-puzzle out, especially as the bits I did manage to get past revealed exactly how the characters’ stories link together to form the endgame proper. Octopath Traveler is not easy, but figuring it out has been an absolute joy. And with that, we wrap up 2018! Thanks for being part of Autosave’s first year. We’re super excited for what 2019 will bring! ... Retro-Spective: Al Unser Jr’s Turbo RacingOctober 16, 2018FeaturesIn this series, I plan to wax nostalgic about the more obscure games I played growing up and hopefully introduce some of you to new gaming experiences with old games. Al Unser Jr’s Turbo Racing Developed and published by Data East NES, 1990 When I was young, we had a next door neighbor named Russ who raced NASCAR stock cars at Elko speedway here in Minnesota. Russ convinced my dad to start racing too, and he did for many years. I have many memories as I grew up of going to the races to watch my dad and even falling asleep in the bleachers because the sounds of the race were so soothing. (I also used to climb into my dad’s race cars while they were parked at home or in his shop so I could strap myself in and pretend to race. I’m still disappointed my dad didn’t build me my own stock car when I turned 21.) Al Unser Jr.’s Turbo Racing isn’t stock car racing, it’s actually CART champ cars, which puts it in Indy 500 territory and not Daytona 500 but I get the feeling most of you don’t know what any of that means and I should probably stop letting my pedantic racing nerd show. What’s important here is that Turbo Racing was… well… a racing game! The game was released by Data East in 1990 and was a port of Famicom game World Grand Prix – Pole to Finish which was published in 1989. The Al Unser Jr. name was attached to only the North American release, as CART racing and Unser Jr himself weren’t really known outside of the region (and I’ll hazard a guess that even within the region, it wasn’t particularly well known by many of the people who had an NES in 1990.) The Unser version of the game made some additions to the core World Grand Prix game it was based off — notably the number of laps, sound design and the addition of Unser Jr. himself as a racing coach. Playing in season mode, you can choose to play the game as Unser Jr. himself, or as your own custom race team. In custom mode, you’re able to choose your car’s colors as well as lay out your stats similar to many racing games today. Starting your own custom team means, however, that you have to race to climb ranks and make improvements to your car. (If you play as Unser Jr., you get a great car right away that gives you the satisfaction of getting wins much quicker, but is that really any fun?) Just like real racing, you have to qualify first before you can join the actual race. As you go into qualifying, advice from Unser Jr pops up on the screen to help guide you. The goal of qualifying is to get the fastest score you can so you can get a better place in the starting order for the actual race. During the race, obstacles will pop up that can cause tire blowouts or engine damage, and once again, just like real racing, you can pull into the pit to get your car repaired before rejoining the race. Driving can be a bit of a challenge, however, as the turns sort of sneak up on you — level design was such that you couldn’t see a lot of the track ahead of you due to the POV being directly behind your race car, just barely above the spoiler. This was a game I really enjoyed playing and I think my dad even played it with me a few times. You can feel the roots of modern racing games in this cartridge, and the element of customization that you find here in Al Unser Jr.’s Turbo Racing is what set my expectations for every racing game I played afterward. For so many reasons, it’s a game close to my heart, and I hope if you pick it up, you’ll find some joy in it, too.... People Are Missing a Huge Part of Octopath TravelerOctober 2, 2018FeaturesSquare Enix’s Switch JRPG has been criticised for a lack of story that’s actually there Octopath Traveler, Square Enix’s much-hyped JRPG on the Switch, has scored itself a ton of praise from critics and gaming communities alike for its deeply satisfying combat and gorgeous “2D-HD” graphics. But lurking in the background of these rave reviews has been one consistent criticism – that the 8 playable characters you amass over your journey don’t really seem to have much to do with each other. This is because there’s a huge part of the story that’s incredibly easy to miss: Travel Banter. From each character’s second chapter onwards, Travel Banter pops up as an option after certain cutscenes – press the + button, and you’ll get an extra interaction between the character whose story chapter you’re currently playing, and another party member. The options vary depending on who’s in your party, but they all add a little bit of extra flavour to the moment and reveal more about the characters’ development outside their own chapters. You see how their perspectives are changed by what they’ve witnessed their companions go through, and there are some genuinely poignant lines that do a beautiful job of conveying the scope and scale of the journeys they’re on. But is it enough? Outside the graphics and combat mechanics, Octopath’s big selling point always seemed to be the customisability of your party, which one could reasonably assume would mean that party dynamics would have a significant effect on the progression of the game. As it turns out, characters don’t even physically appear in each other’s cutscenes, and don’t have any dialogue in each other’s chapters outside of Travel Banter and standard battle and ability lines. It sometimes feels like they’re just there as background support while this particular protagonist’s story plays out. Have Square Enix really, properly delivered on the eightfold intertwining tales promised even in the title of the game? That depends on a bunch of things, the biggest one probably being how long you wanted to wait for Square Enix to finish making the game. Think about the practicalities: you can begin the game with any one of the eight characters’ first chapter, pick the rest up in any order, and organise your party however you want providing it includes the character you started with (until you’ve completed their final chapter) and the character whose chapter you’re playing (if any). If our amateur maths is right, that’s 70 different party combinations even if you have all your slots full. If characters had dialogue in each other’s cutscenes, writing different versions of them would’ve taken forever. And sure, you still miss some of the dialogue by not having the right people in your party at the right time, but that’d also be true if the dialogue happened in cutscenes or normal gameplay. This way, you miss less, and it comes with a feeling of spontaneity that makes the journey feel all the more organic and rounded-out. Plus, if you’re a completionist but don’t have time for multiple playthroughs, every Banter scene has of course been obsessively catalogued across the internet (see this Youtube video of every single one for starters). Travel Banter is a good feature in a great game. While having the game’s inter-character dialogue isolated there might feel like a cop-out in comparison to what could’ve been, it does its job wonderfully as an eminently practical way of accomplishing the aspect of interaction. It might not be the richest narrative technique, but as added story flavour alongside the well-wrought individual plotlines, exquisite combat, and some of the most beautiful backdrops of any resolution, it’s everything it needs to be.... ReviewsYou Should Play Octopath Traveler…Today!July 3, 2018ReviewsThe free demo of Square Enix’s new JRPG is available on the Switch right now, and our reporter Chase found lots to love in the first 3 hours. Octopath Traveler is a new RPG coming to the Switch by way of Square Enix, in collaboration with Acquire. You can experience what’s promised to be a lengthy, character-driven campaign in just two weeks, on July 13. Or… …you can download the demo and start playing immediately! Now, you might hold the rational opinion that demos, while great for sorting out your feelings on a game before purchasing, are for sampling, only. You’ll be starting over with a new file once you purchase the full game. Don’t waste your time. And normally, you would be right. But Octopath Traveler allows players the rare opportunity to transfer over any progress accrued in the demo to one file on the retail version of the game. This gives you a legitimate reason to download it immediately for the low, low price of zero real monies. As the name would imply, you can begin Octopath Traveler in one of eight ways, each corresponding to a potential party member. These prologues are character unique and also serve as tutorials, teaching you the basics of interaction, combat and the special Path Actions they possess. This is the first of Octopath Traveler’s unique characteristics. The eight main party characters each possess a tool for interacting with the world around them, fitting thematically with their backstory and persona. For example, Cyrus the Scholar can Scrutinize people and things, granting him insight into events he wasn’t around to witness firsthand. In the demo, Scrutinize gathered clues for an investigation, and I can see it being used to uncover well-hidden sidequests and optional content. On the other hand, Olberic the warrior can Challenge NPCs to combat, which strikes me as a fairly static and barefaced ability. Other path actions allow you to recruit NPCs to aid you in combat, each with various strengths and weapon skills. Hopefully, the game will provide opportunities to reward players for cunning use. Depending on the character you choose at the beginning of the game, your experience might be drastically different. I started with Olberic, once in charge of protecting a king but who now lives out a quiet existence in a small hillside village – some fantasy as heck stuff. Throughout the demo, the old warrior regarded the circumstances of his disgrace with sadness while also protecting the townsfolk from smalltime brigands. In another playthrough I was Tressa, the daughter of a merchant family looking to prove herself after meeting a charismatic trader with a gorgeous boat. Her head was full of big dreams, and her heart is full of adventure. I was immediately enamored with her prologue and Path Action, which allows you to trade with a wide variety of NPCs for items you might not find otherwise. But not all of the prologues were winners. Primrose was a dancer who witnessed the murder of her father and now searches restlessly for the three tattooed man who perpetrated the act. Except, she’s accepted a job as a “dancer” in a dirty town for a dirtier master. Her prologue was paved throughout with constant reminders the people in her life treat her like garbage. At a particularly low point she is being assaulted and coerced by her master, and Prim thinks to herself that she can bear anything except letting those who murdered her father get away. Yuck. Hopefully, her story takes a more positive and balanced tack in the full release. Even though my mileage varied on the characters, the combat was refreshingly engaging. More complicated than simply whittling down a health bar, encounters in Octopath involve a careful dance of breaking an enemy’s shield and exploiting their weakness. Shields can vary in strength depending on the enemy, and once broken you get a single turn to unleash hell before they recuperate. Teammates help with this – diversifying your available weapons and magics make sure someone is poised to blow up the armor chink everyone else opened up. But there’s one more wrinkle: Boosts. If your character used a regular attack on their turn, they will gain a charge of power called a Boost. These stack several times and can be spent to power up any attack or spell by a maximum of four magnitudes. Want to pierce a large baddy with a spear strike? Boost it, baby. Scourge the earth with a multi-target firestorm? Boost! Heal your party from nigh mortal wounds? You guessed it: Boost. You won’t gain a charge on the turn you used a boosted attack, so make sure to plan smart. Beyond everything else, Octopath Traveler looks gorgeous. The developers describe it as having an “HD-2D” aesthetic, but I see it more as a pop-up book decorated with lovingly crafted 16-bit artwork. Buildings and trees dot a 3D landscape like papercraft dioramas while stunning light effects play off rippling waters and moody skies. The visuals make traveling about both towns and the overworld a constant delight. I’ll have more complete thoughts once the game is released on July 13, but you will be hard pressed to find a better 3-hour free experience on the Switch right now. Even if you aren’t normally a JRPG fan, Octopath Traveler’s novel approach to visuals and storytelling might just win you over.... How RBI Baseball 17 Ruined My LifeJune 5, 2018Features / ReviewsRBI Baseball 17 is Randy Johnson, and I am the bird. A few days ago, I was gripped – no, seized – by an unflinching desire. It was powerful, it was overbearing, and it led me to spend £26 (roughly $35) on the Switch eShop. This desire was to play some baseball. Little did I know that this innocent craving would lead me on a journey far more intense than I had ever expected. I had to find a new baseball game to scratch this inexplicable itch, and so my search began. It was a pretty short search, because my immediate thought for any game right now is “is it available on the Switch?” And so, a quick dip into the Switch eShop revealed to me RBI Baseball 17, bathed in radiant light and calling to me in a way that I simply couldn’t resist. So I bought it. Little did I know how much my life was about to change. I’m an English person, born and raised in the UK. The UK doesn’t do baseball, it does cricket – an interminably slow and methodical game in which huge hits are often discouraged and traditional matches last up to five days and can still end in a draw. I do, of course, love cricket because it’s a stupid and ridiculous sport – but baseball has always had an allure. It’s fast-paced, it’s hugely popular, and snacks are mandatory. The thing is that because the UK doesn’t do baseball, I know not one goddamn thing about it. My understanding of the rules of baseball are this: person pitches ball, other person attempts to hit ball very far, people then run. I don’t know how long an inning is, or what RBI even stands for. Turns out that this is a pretty big problem if you want to play RBI Baseball. RBI Baseball is a series which first appeared back in the ’80s, and friends of mine have very fond memories of playing it on their chunky grey Nintendo consoles of the day. It disappeared for years, to be revived recently as the official MLBPA baseball game, overseen by people who actually work in the baseball industry. This is great if you want realism and accuracy, and the game has been applauded for the efforts it goes to in getting small details correct. However, as a pick up and play experience, it’s… baffling. The first thing that happened when I started up RBI Baseball 17 was that it asked me if I wanted to update my roster. Good of the developers to keep the available players up to date, and I did download the update despite each name being as incomprehensible to me as a Lovecraftian horror. I didn’t know any of these people, what they do, how good they are or how badly one might wish to yell abuse at them from the stands. Not me, of course, I’d never do that – the UK doesn’t do baseball. Once the updated roster had been downloaded I was offered an opportunity to customise it – a further experience in bewildering futility to someone as clueless as me. Each screen has an absurd number of statistics that you can use to judge a player and a roster – or could, if they mean anything at all to you. My next choice was to choose my favourite team. An array of incredible names are available, including the familiar Cubs and the unknown-to-me-but-doubtlessly-huge Orioles. I opted for the Pirates, simply because it was the coolest name on the list. At this point, eager to escape the utterly awful menu music, I ploughed into my first game – a “full 25 / 9 innings” game, which means literally nothing to me. My first opponents were the Cleveland Indians, and reader? They absolutely destroyed me. You see, RBI Baseball 17 has no tutorial. It offers little on-screen hints (press B to swing!), but there’s absolutely no indication about, you know, when to do that. This led to me seeing this a lot: Eventually I sort of got into the swing (har har), and even managed to get myself one whole run on the scoreboard, when it switched me to pitching. I guess that that’s how baseball works? Maybe this is what an inning is? I was absolutely none the wiser, but I ran with it and actually managed to get one of the other team out. I had barely got the cork out of the champagne when this happened: It would appear that RBI Baseball 17 for the Switch is a very, very buggy game. This crash was a very small part of the issues that I experienced – the screenshot that serves as the header image for this article is one that I shared directly from my Switch, using the Gallery’s text function to draw a big red arrow to the fielder that had decided to try and make a break for it and escape the stadium, or the game, or reality itself, completely ignoring all of my attempts to steer him back to the field. While I respected his bid for freedom and his slightly alarming resistance to control, it did mean that the match had to be abandoned as it was entirely unplayable. So far, not so good. Despite the crashes and the bugs, I still really wanted to play baseball – not, I think, an unfeasible request. The thing is that I was still completely mystified by all of the names and the numbers and the acronyms. J. Jay has an AB of 347. What does this mean? Obviously it has a meaning to a true baseball fan, one who studied the bat while I was busy collecting rings on Mobius. It seemed that there was nothing for it. In order to truly enjoy this game, I would have to walk the path that was in front of me. I would have to become a baseball fan. Luckily, the excellent name of the (Pittsburgh, I have learned) Pirates means I already have a favourite team to support. Doing a little research I discovered that they haven’t won a title since 1992, and they haven’t won a World Series since 1979. They finished last season in fourth place of their division – out of five. Luckily, I’m all in favour of the underdog, so it was decided – I’m now a Pittsburgh Pirates fan. Luckily for me, the new baseball season started on March 29th, shortly after I first sat down to write this article. In order to get ready for this, I knew I was going to have to dip into some baseball lore. I dipped into the ultimate source of knowledge – Wikipedia – and found that there are articles specifically about a single team’s baseball season. I present to you the 2017 Pittsburgh Pirates season, in which: one of their infielders was found guilty of driving under the influence and missed the whole season, they lost their opening day match 5-3, and one of their outfielders was suspended for testing postive for performance-enhancing nandrolone. Clearly I had chosen well. Upon telling a friend that I had selected the Pirates as my team of choice, they congratulated me on picking “the losingest team in sports history”. The main difficulty with getting in to any sport is the terminology. Start watching a random game of a sport you don’t understand and you’ll be baffled by words casually thrown around by commentators – in cricket, for example, the bowler can throw a googly down to offside leg, and if the batsman is unlucky he’ll be caught at third man. Maybe he’s going to be more casual because he’s a nightwatchman, and perhaps the crease is a little dry. None of these words mean anything to you if you’re not into cricket, and so here I was attempting to understand the lingo of baseball. What does RBI even mean? I decided to crowdsource a little help, namely by going to Autosave’s very own Charles Wheeler: British fan of American Football. Just how, exactly, is one to get past the initial wall of exclusive jargon? I had hoped that the conversation would be a little more helpful, although it did lead to us both learning of the existence of the dog sport Flyball, which has improved both of our lives to no end. If someone were to make a videogame of that and put it on the Switch I would buy it in a heartbeat, because I make poor decisions. And so, dear reader, you meet me here at a turning point. A simple whim to play a baseball game has led to two things. Firstly, I am now a die-hard fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates and will follow their progress this season with deep interest. I’m deadly serious about this, and I invite you to check in with me on Twitter if you’d like to know how I’m doing. Secondly, if I’m being honest it sounds like they’re having a pretty rough time of it and I’m determined to get good at RBI Baseball purely so I can lead the Pirates to victory in a wholesome, drug-free way. Of course, it does rely on the game not crashing or bugging out on me, which really is a perfect metaphor for how the Pirates do in real life. Ah well. RBI Baseball 18 came out recently. Maybe I’ll give that a try… Since writing this article, further attempts to play the game have been stymied by it crashing literally every time. Caveat Emptor.... Pokémon Quest is a Treat, Hands Down or Hands OffJune 1, 2018News / ReviewsOnce more, the world has Pokémania thanks to The Pokémon 2018 Video Game Press Conference. The surprise release of Pokémon Quest was something we just couldn’t miss out on. Pokémon Quest, which debuted May 29th alongside the announcement of the two Pokémon Let’s Go! versions due this November, offers Switch owners an engaging adventure that doesn’t require much attention to enjoy. What it lacks in the core game’s systems-driven combat is made up in charm and a surprisingly effective hands-off approach to progression. Small parts of the game feel needlessly obscure, but players with an open mind will find a (free!) experience to tide them over until November. The game opens on the enigmatic and colorful Tumblestone Island without much preamble: you are following tales of an ancient civilization that left behind unspoiled riches just waiting to be uncovered. As your humble little boat docks, your Silph Co. brand drone flits across a cubic voxel landscape to surveil things. It passes idyllic green plains full of frolicking monsters recognizable as Pokémon, even with their cubic proportions, before malfunctioning. A clean wipe of its data prompts the beginning of the game’s tutorial, which has you befriend one of five Pokémon – the original generation’s three starters, plus Pikachu and Eevee – before exploring the island’s immediate surroundings on foot. This is where fans will begin noticing differences between Quest and main entries to the Pokémon franchise. The monsters on Tumblestone Island do not need to be battled and subsequently capture in balls. Instead, you befriend them without much fuss. Your first friend is soon joined by two others drawn to your base camp by the aroma of sizzling soup in a huge cast iron pot. Yes, catching new Pokémon in quest requires you to first cook a meal that appeals to the particular taste buds of the island’s wild denizens. Once fed, your initial team blazes a trail through First Steppe, the aptly-named introductory zone. Exploration is automatic, requiring no direction from the player. Your friends seek out and attack targets on their own, but you can choose when to deploy any of the special attacks or when a temporary retreat, called Scatter, might help you avoid a devastating blow from the enemy. Initially, I scoffed at the button that would further automate the game by allowing my team to even use their attacks at their own discretion. It removed my ability to call shots or dodge attacks and felt like removing the only part of the game I was actually playing. But experience made a fool of me because Quest, I think, functions as a neat bridge for between strategy and idle gameplay. Exploration comprises half of Quest’s core loop, where you venture into the wilderness to defeat foes to collect natural goodies and Power Stones, which are vital to the other half of the game. In between treks, you are given the chance to kit out your team with any of the stones you have collected, which boost their two stats: Power and Hit Points. As you progress your Pokémon will unlock additional slots, and the game will reward you with more powerful stones. Thus the loop closes: Exploration gives you experience and stones, which you then equip to allow your team to overcome harder challenges for ever better gear. It’s simple, but effective. By removing the micromanagement of HP and move sets, swapping during battle, and the other intricate systems that comprise the main series’ combat, Quest allows players to enjoy the game without devoting too much of their attention to it. This makes it the perfect transit game, as each stage takes perhaps five to seven minutes to complete. I played it while preparing a delicious Enchilada One Pot dinner for my partner and me, watching my fledgling squad of adventurers tear through a pack of rowdy Rattatas while I caramelized onions. Collecting the cooking materials and stones took only a couple of taps; with a few more touches of the screen they were out again, and I was back to heating water for the noodles. To be sure, this won’t appeal to everyone. I’ve already read plenty of complaints online that Quest is basically a phone game ported to the Switch. And that is…not entirely false? A mobile version was indeed announced in late June so that players need not even bring their Switch with them to enjoy traipsing around the bright environs of Tumblestone. But I contend that criticism is actually a selling point thrown into the wrong light. Why want it to be anything more than a game you can “play” while your hands are busy folding laundry or petting your cats? The game does borrow monetary microtransactions from the mobile gaming market in the form of PM Tickets, which are used to speed up the timer on the soup pot as well as purchasing decorations and larger boxes for both Pokémon and Power Stones. Additionally, players can purchase Expedition Packs in one of four varieties: regular, Great, Ultra, and a 3-pack bundle. Included in each are decorations, certain Pokémon with unique moves, an extra cooking pot, and a bonus to both your battery and the number of daily bonus PM tickets you earn at the shop. It should be noted that players have access to all Pokémon and content in the game for free. The Expedition Packs just help speed along your progression. I have enjoyed my experience with Quest, despite minor quibbles. Of all the systems that are thoroughly explained in the tutorial, cooking recipes are left for you to suss out on your own by burning through your early reserve of ingredients, hoping for something other than Mulligan Stew. Trees, stone mounds, and other terrain crumbles when attacked, but doesn’t offer any real tactical advantage to you or your foes. Is it a cute choice or a vestigial part of what was once a more robust arena design? Finally, the game can feel needlessly grind-heavy if you’re giving it your undivided attention. I breezed through the first two areas, only to hit a wall that forced me back to the training yard. Expect to repeat lower-power areas, if only to level up your team and allow the timer on your stews to wind down. But for every mark against it, Pokémon Quest excels in selling a vibrant and world full of actual creatures. Back at camp all of your friends frolic in the open grass, cavorting children at a playground. I saw my Ponyta hitching a Pidgey-back ride from the hapless bird, while later on my Wartortle, Charmander, and shiny Growlithe stunted into a three-Mon tower. Oh, yeah: apparently there are shiny Pokémon! The Switch has proven to be a wonderful console for providing all manner of game experiences, from sprawling RPGs to platforming masterpieces to weird indie gems. Why not add an ostensibly free, mostly idle game full of Pokémon that are weirdly reminiscent of tiered wedding cakes? Developer: Game Freak Publisher: Nintendo Date of release: May 29, 2018 (Mobile release late June) Platforms: Nintendo Switch (Mobile later)...
