Without Within

Without Within is a free-to-play visual novel made by InvertMouse. It tells the story of Vinty, a young calligrapher who doesn’t get her works sold and is broke as hell. In this VN you get to know her dreams of becoming a famous calligrapher and her contrasting daily life of hearing complaints from everyone and not getting anywhere with her life.

Unlike Vinty, I never roleplayed while playing/reading a VN. Maybe I should try it and end up getting declared insane or something.

Without Within is pretty easy to read. Simple words and an easy to read font is always a good thing. Every now and then you get to make a decision which affects the continuation of the story. The decisions you make do not have a big impact on the story. Either you chose the wrong option, in which you will get some text telling you what went wrong and the game ends with a bad ending. The other option continues the story. The story is just a simple slice-of-life tell-tale of one of Vinty’s daily adventures. Even for a theme that is short by nature, Without Within is REALLY short by VN standards.

Crimzon Clover WORLD IGNITION

Crimzon Clover is an arcade-styled vertical SHMUP made by indie developer Yotsubane. The game was released for Windows in 2011, but in 2014 the game was updated and released on Steam with the WORLD IGNITION suffix.

Many arcade SHMUPs characterize themselves with simple controls, high difficulty and an advanced or competitive scoring system, and Crimzon Clover is no exception. But that is not all the game has to offer: 5 stages, 3 playable ships and multiple playmodes will give you a sweet time with this game.

Elsword Online

Elsword Online is a MMO beat ’em up made by KOG Games. It is the spiritual successor of Grand Chase, which featured a similar playstyle as this game.

Elsword Online takes place in the world of Elrios, where the land was once rumored to be forsaken by the gods themselves. Some even whispered that it was the playground of the demon gods. A few decades have passed and Elrios is now protected by the powers from the Tree of El. However, peace and prosperity can only last for so long when evil still exists. Recently, the Tree of El’s powers began to weaken and the super continent, Elrios, will never be the same again.

– Elsword Story page

First impressions: Touhou 14.5 ~ Urban Legend in Limbo (Demo)

Touhou 14.5 Shinhiroku ~ Urban Legend in Limbo is the latest installment in the Touhou Project series. It is a fighting game that uses the same aerial battle mechanics from Touhou 13.5 ~ Hopeless Masquerade, but with new characters, plot and random nonsense. I will be reviewing the demo version which was released on Comiket 87.

Urban legends are little stories only backed up by rumours to drive people into fear. They are harmless if people aren’t afraid of them though. Our fearless heroines use urban legends suiting their combat style and harness its power. They even manage to manipulate its power by changing the rumours around the urban legend. Reimu & co thought that controlling these urban legends would keep people from harm. This seemed to be true, until one night…

Astebreed

Astebreed is the result of combining a SHMUP with an action mecha game like Gundam or Zone of the Enders. It uses the basic scheme of having a mecha flying through space while avoiding enemy bullet patterns. Unlike a regular SHMUP, you have a HP bar, melee attacks and dashes which are common attributes of a mecha game. The Edelweiss team didn’t just glue these 2 genres together, they fused it in such a way that one can still notice that this is just 2 genres put together but still make it feel like an all new experience.

Happy new year y’all

May your framedrops be low and your scores be high
downloads be fast and on the fly

May your characters be well equipped and wealthy
but don’t forget to go outside sometimes and stay healthy
A healthy body and mind go hand in hand
like a black mage and his magic wand

Enjoy your time with family and (online) mates
always play fair so no one hates
I also wish you a good time with your husbando/waifuu or boy/girlfriend
and may your relationship meet no end

tl;dr: I wish you the best
from birthday parties to Oktoberfest
I hope you are someones MVP this year
Have fun with family, friends and lots of beer

A happy 2015 my fellow readers and gamers.

– Herr Nyani

Cloudbuilt

Cloudbuilt is a 3D action platformer which is heavily inspired by free-running. You play as a female soldier that is being resurrected and is currently comatose. You play in her mind through events of her post-traumatic stress disorder. The game has a ton of free-running levels where you have to go past obstacles, run on walls, doublejump, airdash and fight your way to the finish.

Croixleur Sigma

Croixleur Sigma is a beat ’em up/hack ‘n’ slash game made by Souvenir circ. The game has some standard game modes being story, challenge, survival and score attack. The game has 2 playable characters, one which needs to be unlocked. For each character there is also a set of weapons that can be unlocked.

The game has a story explaining the reason why the characters end up the way they are, but has no real meaning during the game. The country has 2 factions that duke it out against each other in order to lead the country together with the queen. This battle is done by 2 representatives that must fight their way up to the tower of Neit. First one to hit the top is considered the winner. Lucrezia is the representative of the aristocrat faction, while her best friend Francesca represents the knight faction. During story mode there is more focus on both character’s friendship, but even then it’s pretty vague and clichéd.

Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone

Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone is a beat ’em up RPG featuring cute little girls going on an adventure. The game was made by Lizsoft and was localized by the good guys from Carpe Fulgur (who also localized Recettear: an item shop’s tale). The game tells the story of Arche after she moves to the town of Tonkiness with her parents. The game starts when Arche has her first day at school. This is no ordinary school however: it is the famous Minasa-Ratis magic school, a school where regular classes are given, as well as magic classes for practical use. Arche does have a big problem though: Magic wielders channel their energy from an elemental stone, and she doesn’t have one because her parents couldn’t afford one. After hearing a rumor from a classmate about an elemental stone in a cave, Arche decides to go on an adventure to find that elemental stone.

Narcissu 1st & 2nd

This is the story
of a girl whose heart was standing still
and a boy whose breath was being stolen away,
both of whom die.

Narcissu is a Visual Novel (more precisely a Nakige/Utsuge) made by Stage-nana. The story is about an unnamed main character who falls terminally ill after obtaining his driving license. He is moved to the 7th floor of the hospital, the place where people who cannot be saved live out the last of their days. It is on the 7th floor where our main character meets Setsumi, a girl who shares the same fate as our protagonist. Although quiet and emotionless, she immediately informs the main character about some important rules of the 7th floor.

“On the 3rd time you’re given a temporary discharge, prepare yourself. There is no fourth. You won’t be going home anymore.”

After some slow paced dialogue it is clear that Setsumi is having her second discharge soon, and doesn’t want to spend her last breath at the hospital or at home. After a day of thinking, the main character gets an opportunity to leave the hospital, as the father of the main character leaves his car keys behind in his room. Armed with the keys, medicine boxes and 8000 yen, Setsumi and the main character escape from the hospital to find an appropriate final resting place that isn’t floor 7 or at home.

Agarest: Generations of War (PC version)

Agarest: Generations of War (also known as Record of Agarest War) is an anime-styled tactical JRPG with a Visual Novel-like story telling. The game let’s you join the adventure of Leonhardt and his comrades on a quest to seal the land’s evil and conquer the Gods themselves. After completing his task, Leonhardt will choose one of his companions as a wife, and you will continue the quest as his descendants.

Impressions of the games at Gamescom 2014

As you may have read in past posts, Gamescom was one hell of an adventure of gaming, looting, and having fun. We didn’t go into detail for each individual game yet, so here’s a post to fix that up. The post will describe my opinion on games that still have to be released. If you expect League of Legends, SMITE or Hearthstone, you won’t find it here. If you want to know more about the upcoming Metal Gear Solid or Heroes of the Storm, read on. Also note that this post won’t have any pictures. Taking photos was forbidden on most places.

Gamescom 2014 – Friday: Crash landing

Guten morgen! We arrived yesterday at Cologne and visited Gamescom for the first time in our lives. From the outside it doesn’t look like a big deal, but once you’re in, you know there’s tons of stuff to do. I won’t be making a fully detailed photoreport today, but here’s a short summary of what we did yesterday:

• Arrive in Cologne
• Get lost in Cologne
• Arrive at GamesCom
• Having a brief look at the Retro Gaming stand. There were a lot of oldschool devices and games set up, like the Commodore 128, NES, Atari…
• Went to the Blizzard room and spectated some Starcraft 2 matches: Stephano (Zerg) vs. White-Ra (Protoss)
• I  played a multiplayer match on Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution
• His Axelency went to check on The Witcher 3
• We watched some gameplay footage of the new Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain at the KONAMI stand
• Then we went to check the League of Legends area. We were too late to join in on the fun of playing the game ourselves, so we just wandered around, looking at what Riot had set up. A lot of cosplayers as well, but I expected as much.
• Spectated the LCS semi-finals match between Alliance vs. SK gaming. Froggen is one badass. Alliance won by engaging at baron, at which most of SK got wiped which allowed Alliance to push through and finish the game.

After that we went to have dinner in town and went back to our hotel after. This is all I have to report for now, I’ll be off soon to Gamescom again, and I hope we get to do more fun stuff. I still want to visit the Nintendo area and Epic Games, and His Axelency also still has stuff to do. We’ll report again this evening or tomorrow.

~Herr Nyani

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams – Rise of the Owlverlord

After beating Gurglewocky and rescuing Maria, Giana is being thrown into another adventure. This time, Giana is being captured by the Owlverlord, while he is making his move to take over the dream world and turn it into an eternal nightmare. Giana breaks free from her prison to go after the Owlverlord, going through 7 new stages to take out his army of owls and ultimately the Owlverlord himself.

The stages are designed around staying in the air for longer periods of time.

Rise of the Owlverlord is a stand-alone expansion for Twisted Dreams, offering more of the same in a polished manner. The stages still rely on the twisting of Giana’s dream to get around obstacles. The polish is in the ways these stages have been made. The stages focus now more on dodging projectiles fired from cannons. Yellow and red projectiles can be negated by switching to the nightmare or the dream world. There is also a lot more air time  involved, which can be noticed by the increaing amount of launch bumpers and air currents. It is still a healthy mix of horizontal and vertical action, as there are still a few stages that have a classic platforming design. Speaking of stage design: The stages are still lengthy, but not ridiculously long anymore. This makes it easier to play for people with a bit less gaming time on their hands.

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams

A long time ago, when I was just a kid, I was allowed to play games now and then on the Commodore 64. Some of my favourite games back then were Battleships, Jungle hunt and The Great Giana Sisters. The last one is the first platformer I’ve played in my life, since we didn’t have a NES back then, and it still would take a few more years before I got my Sega Game Gear and the SNES. Although it was just a Mario clone (going as far as copying the first stage of Mario Bros.), I really liked the game. The franchise managed to spawn some sequels despite the fact that Nintendo asked Time Warp Studios to halt production of the first game. The most recent one was kickstarted in 2012 by Black Forest Games, which was named Project Giana, and later renamed to Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams.

The gameplay elements in GS: TD are completely different compared to the first game. The C64 game featured power-ups in exactly the same way as Mario Bros. did. The only difference is that Mario has 2 power-ups (+ the temporary invincibility star), while The Great Giana Sisters has 7 power-up levels. GS: TD removes the power-up approach entirely. Instead, Giana can twist her dream into a shape she wants. She can switch to a nightmare world, where Giana is in her cute form and has access to the Twirl Jump. The Twirl Jump allows Giana to descend slowly, and make use of air currents to go to higher places. The light world causes Giana to enter her punk form, where she can use her Fire Dash which homes in and kills enemies and breaks some types of blocks. Switching between worlds changes the world itself, opening new paths or disabling traps that were active in the other world.

TUMIKI Fighters

For a change I decided to find and review a game that is not on Steam. Something not so popular. Something hidden… And then I stumbled on the website of ABA Games, another 1 man doujin circle developing games, like Team Shanghai Alice/ZUN. Kenta Cho, the man behind ABA Games, focuses around classic games and makes his games with very simple graphics. One of the games that caught my attention was TUMIKI Fighters, described on the site as “Stick more enemies and become much stronger”. Let’s sate my curiousity and review this, shall we?

TUMIKI Fighters (Toy Fighters) is a free to play bullet hell shooter that is set in a toy world, with your airplane and the enemies made of simple blocks. There isn’t a backstory to any of this. You just are a toy plane shooting other toys. Controls are simple: you control your aircraft using the arrow keys, shoot using Q/W. The game also has slow movement if you hit Shift. If you go up or down, your shot is also getting slightly angled up or down, which makes aiming a lot harder. You can lock this angle with Shift as well. The game isn’t very hard, making this a game for people who are new to the genre.

A crapload of 2D/3D game art tutorials

Most of us just stick to the gaming scheme, locking their eyes onto the screen while mindlessly mashing the right button combinations in order to progress at absolutely nothing (slash-sarcasm). Others just want to see what’s truly happening behind the scenes. And then there’s the ones that want to make the scenes. For the latter 2 groups I’ve found some goodies on the ‘interwebs’ . Here’s a list of game art tutorials that was made by Polycount user Niuva. The tutorials discuss the making of 2D art, like tilesets, specific patterns and segments. The list contains even more 3D-related items, like character and face modeling. While this isn’t a review, which you may have been here for, I hope that these little ‘extras’ can be appreciated as well.

List of 2D/3D art tutorials

eXceed 3rd – Jade Penetrate Black Package

EXceed 3rd, sequel to eXceed 2nd – Vampire, is also a SHMUP. You shoot stuff, you score points. And this is where the similarities end. The 3rd game in the franchise is a reboot of the story. Tennen-Sozai put the “Church vs Vampires” story aside, and tries to entertain us with a totaly different setting, put in the same world. This time, a Cardinal Lord retires, and people and magical beings are fighting to claim the position of the new Cardinal Lord. Rayne Lindwurm is a descendant of the Dragon clan willing to claim that position. However, there are a ton of other beings that must be defeated first, including Rayne’s older sister Celestia, the prodigy of the Dragon clan. You will fight alongside Rayne to beat her opponents and her own sister to get closer to the position of Cardinal Lord.