Strix Game Corner 1

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Been wanting to do this for a while, so expect maybe monthly? game corners, or whenever I wanna write them! It also is obviously written in parts as I play the games and recommend them. As its new, I don't know the structure yet, but I will figure it out.

Really its gonna be anything i want! I plan on it being spoiler-lite. While I wont go into details about everything I will be giving my thoughts on themes and how i interpret things, and sharing images.

StorySeeker

link: Story Seeker by Mosu

This game is one I have thought about since I first played it years ago. "A minimalist narrative experiment driven by your curiosity."

Your a little bird like person, you walks across a world where you piece together a story about the world. The game opens to you sitting in a house, with a sign and a tv. you can walk up to them to interact, and they will say things. This is how you interact with everything in the game world. It is... timely to say the least.

Personally I found this to be the games whole theme. One of a changing world, where community and people still persist and live their lives. Curiosity will guide you, and as it does you will see the scars of the past, and how people have continued to live despite them.

The game is adorable, and funny, and very genuine. As you explore you will find a number of communities. Each one is pretty unique. All of them are persisting in different ways. Some look for solid ground to build nice houses on. Others build tents and housing out of old remains.

Not only do people persist, but animals too. Sheep will baaa at you, and lesbian serpents hunt for snack

There are small interactions here and there that give depth to the world.

people and creatures dot the land scape all over.

Of course there is something deeper here. You get to look into the past. You see the scars of mistakes made by the people before. They did things they shouldn't have and are now looking back and realizing the mistakes they made. Its a must know part of the story, to really piece together what happened here.

Mistakes have been made, the land and world suffered from those mistakes. Now they have to fix it, and continue on. They must persist after their mistakes, live with them, fix them, and move on from them. The world can be dark, it can be scary. The world is also beautiful, and worth living in.

Embershade

link: embershade by Deblue

Deblue is a really interesting artist I found semi recently. I first found them through a seperate game jam game. I highly recommend checking it out as well, named "My sister is WANTED"

But we are here for their recent game. A rogue-lite/like (idk the difference) auto-battler. It is hard to say what this is about without giving away spoilers. SO if you are not cool with slight spoilers go check it out before hand. Its short and not really hard to beat.

My own interpretation of this game is below. This game is about flawed people looking for a way to either fix an issue or to gain riches. There are only very brief story points to be made through out. As not much talking is done except for at the start of a run, when you win, and when you lose. So my interpretation may be a little flawed.

Each character has their own want to get the chest, their own reason. Something I like, is we never get to see in the chest. This is also tru for the playable character. Because the game is also about an antagonist narator.

From the start they are untrustworthy. They are mean, and cynical. When you die they belittle the character you played as. By the end of the game, you want to know what is in the chest, and that is even stolen from you by the narrator.

The game left me wanting more, in a good way. I think its ambiguous and the mechanics are really fun. The game is beautiful, and it left me interested and curious. Like deblue's other games.

Retro Games

So i recently changed my secondary craptop into an emulation machine, allowing me to try a bunch of old retro games because of it.

Obviously most of them will be well known normal games, but i plan on finding some games ive never heard of.

Aquanaut's Holiday.

Playstation, Artdink

This is a chill little game. I don't fully get it honestly, I had to look it up, the goal is to create a coral reef that attracts abunch of fish. How do you do this? I have no idea. However its a super chill little game either way that I plan on learning more about.

Some of my images have apparently gotten corrupted at some point and dont work ( if i fix this delete this part)

You drive a submarine that you dont see, and are dropped off from the research base Its behind you if you turn around, however you are first faced with a cliff that you must swim past and then dive deeper to see the world ahead of you.

There are a number of different sights I have found across the ocean floor (and have forgotten to take pictures of a few) but ill share a collection of the ones i got.

One of the sites I found nearby to the base, was these cool little plants.

after some exploring, I found a floating pirate ship! just out in the ocean

There are also some really weird things youll find! One I found on my recent venture into the ocean was a rock structure.

One thing you will notice as time goes on when your diving, is all the animals. There is a surprising amount of them for such an old game. What I didn't realize until really late you can also interact with all of them! The shoulder and trigger buttons all make different sounds in the world. Based on which you use n animal nearby will either play around and do a trick, or do nothing, or on one of them they will run away. Signaling whether they love or dislike a sound. There are a number of different interesting animals! Overall, I really enjoy the journey in this game, I hope I will learn more about it. Until I do diving through the ocean without a care in the world will do. Very chill, and very worth a dive into if you want to just relax and zoom around please check it out. It had a couple sequels from what i found online, if i can find them i may talk about them at a later time.

There is a lot to be said about a game like aquanauts holiday. People will ask what makes a game, and that question is actually hard to answer. Like "what is art?" a game at the very least obviously needs to be interactable. People will add on arbitrary additions to this like a win state, or a goal. While those are important, and aquanauts holiday does seem to possibly have them. I don't think their as important, this could only be me diving around and playing with the various fish and it would still be a game, and I would still enjoy it heavily.

Love Every Trans Woman You Meet Before It's Too Late.