Game 15 of 2023 - Dave the Diver

 Dave the Diver

Developer: Mintrocket
Publisher: Mintrocket
Platform: PC
Genre: RPG, Sim, Casual

Difficulty: Easy, mostly
Hours: ~22

Finished: Yes
Final Rating: 9/10

Picture this:

You're exploring the glacial depths of the Blue Hole where no man has gone, when you come across an ancient geothermal vent. 

That's when you see Dunkleosteus!

This ancient, armored fish lived during the Devonian period, thought to be extinct for like 300 million years, but here it is, right in front of you!

What do you do?

I'll tell you what you do; you bring your trusty rifle to bear, shoot the shit out of this living fossil, and make sushi from the corpse.

Bancho makes goddamn incredible sushi from anything you put in front of him.

Dave the Diver is awesome. It's a mostly lighthearted adventure where you dive into the depths of the Blue Hole during the day, and help your bud Bancho run his sushi restaurant at night. Bancho relies on you to bring him fresh ingredients from the Blue Hole, including, Vampire Squid, sharks, octopus, and sea urchin. You can also find stuff like mayonnaise and sesame oil during your dives.

Bancho often hosts cooking contests and VIP customers. Gather rare ingredients to impress!

The environment is beautiful and the aquatic denizens are colorful and varied. Dave always has his trusty harpoon while exploring, so he can gather tasty looking fish and defend himself from the Blue Hole's more aggressive denizens. You also get a rifle early in the game, and while it's powerful, ammo is limited. Don't worry, you can find more while diving.

No killing this guy, I'm afraid.

There's a few other distractions, like farming, phone minigames, and raising fish, but you'll spend most of your time diving for cool stuff and serving customers at Bancho's. You run yourself ragged waiting on the patrons, but luckily you can hire help as Bancho's makes more money.

I considered giving Dave the Diver a perfect score, but I had to dock for a particularly frustrating boss fight: the Helicoprion. You control two characters during the battle, but the camera doesn't seem to want to focus on either of them and Helicoprion hits like a friggin' Mac truck. Argh.

Otherwise, it's great and highly recommended!

Game 9 of 2023 - Imposter Factory (2021)

Imposter Factory

Developer: Freebird Games
Publisher: Freebird Games
Platform: PC
Genre: Casual, Visual Novel, JRPG, Adventure

Difficulty: Easy
Date Started: Mar 31st 2023
Date Ended: April 1 2023
Hours: ~3

Finished: Yes
Final Rating: 8/10

Oh, Imposter Factory. You sly little devil. You tricky little piece of shit (I'm kidding the game is good).

Here I am, thinking I'm playing a quirky murder mystery starring a freaky little cat, but nope! Imposter Factory pulled the old switcheroo, and I found myself playing a tragicomic (is that a word) adventure that explores what it means to live a meaningful life.

"Hey Dad, you're up early," my son says to me at 6am Saturday morning. "What are you playing-hey, are you crying?"

Well done, Imposter Factory.

C'mon, show it. Show it you fucking cowards.

Game 8 of 2023 - Season: A Letter to the Future (2023)

Season

Developer: Scavengers Studio
Publisher: Scavengers Studio
Platform: PC
Genre: Adventure, Casual, Meditative

Difficulty: Easy
Date Started: Mar 23th 2023
Date Ended: Mar 31st 2023
Hours: 6

Finished: Yes
Final Rating: 8/10

Another game, another banger. But this isn't a banger in the traditional sense, this is a slow, meditative banger that explores themes of remembering (or forgetting), spirituality, and loss.

You take control of Estelle, a child of prophecy who is tasked with leaving her village to chronicle the end of a Season. A Season is something like an age, or era; past Seasons were sometimes grand (like the Golden Season) or were times of war, like the Season that proceeds the current one.

Estelle gets some worldly advice from her departed father.

Estelle's mission is to go forth and record anything she can for future generations to study. She is armed with a camera, a sketchbook, and an audio recorder. Each area you explore gets its own page in the sketchbook, and you can fill it with pictures you take, sounds you record, and quotes you read.

God, what a shithole.

Season does a remarkable job of letting you discover the world at your own pace. You can take your time and mosey around an area, taking in the sights and filling your sketchbook with pictures and sketches as you like. As you explore the world recording the current era for future generations, you begin to piece together the events of the previous eras through contextual clues and conversations with NPCs. Estelle's world is familiar yet alien; taking place in what at first seems like a near future Earth after some grave conflict, but beneath the surface lies an ancient, magical place where prayers to weathered stone gods go answered in desperate times.

Season is a joy to explore. Mostly.

Season excels in atmosphere. The lovely, cell-shaded art, epic landscapes, and ambient soundtrack help enhance the mystery of Estelle's realm, and I felt the same sense of discovery she felt as she uncovered more and more of the past.

You get a bicycle at the beginning of the game which definitely helps you get around. If I had a criticism, it's that the game has some collision issues. So many collision issues that the menu has an 'unstuck' option in case you get caught in the world geometry. Which is going to happen, I guarantee. Also, navigating around Estelle's sketchbook took a little getting used to.

My playthrough of Season only lasted six hours are so, but they were a satisfying six hours. This is definitely getting a recommendation out of me!

Game 7 of 2023 - Salamander County Public Television (2022)

Salamander County Public Television

Developer: Tinzone Games
Publisher: Tinzone Games
Platform: PC
Genre: Minigame, Action, Casual

Difficulty: Easy
Date Started: Mar 20th 2023
Date Ended: Mar 21st 2023
Hours: 1.5

Finished: Yes
Final Rating: 7/10

I'm glad this exists. I'm a big fan of WarioWare, and this game is kind like that, I guess?

SCPT nails the public TV aesthetic.

As far as I can tell, SCPT uses stock videos and photographs to tell its story. You, the player, known only as player, are hired by the public television network as a "doer of things." Unfortunately, your ratings are bottom of the barrel because the residents of Salamander county have all disappeared. You need to figure that shit out by the end of the month or the boss is gonna, you know, *makes throat cutting motion*.

Thank God for Ember.

Your job is to film assignments, which are silly minigames for each day of July. Find one too hard? Just skip it, you'll be fine.

I guess mushrooms ARE wheels.

Some of the minigames are hilarious, there are a few that are annoying, and several are just plain confusing.

"That's beans."

I finished SCPT in a lean 90 minutes and had a few laughs. I'm going to give this a recommendation and a score of 7/10.