Full-Contact Gardening: Lili: Child of Geos

Imagine you're a university student finishing up your degree on magical plants. Not that much of a stretch, right? As part of your final thesis, possibly your dissertation, you travel to the far-off island of Geos and discover it to be inhabited by a society of animated, wooden constructs and the spirits who created and oppress them. (Plus one Information Fish who provides occasional exposition when not insulting you.)

The game looks and feels like a Gamecube-era adventure game, like something out of the Zelda franchise. It has that feel as you run around the colorful town, talking to people with their bubbles of repeating text, and bursting into people's homes and opening their treasure right in front of them.

I hesitated to do that last one. Lots of the game's many treasure chests are in out-of-the-way places, tucked into homes closed off by order of the mayor, but one early chest is in the home of one of the constructs. And he's home, watching you. After a half-hour's play determined that the game expects you to open every chest, I went back and stole all his goods before his eyes, to no consequence other than becoming marginally richer.

Besides currency, each chest contains unique items, each an homage to some other video game. The collection features a "plumber's hat," a "hero's shield," and a ninja sword suspiciously stained with fruit juice. Nearly all of them are extraneous, but the game surprised me when two wound up having a use in the game's explore-until-you-find-a-solution puzzles.

As you play, you learn that besides being oppressive, the spirits are plain jerks. They steal the flowers that you pick for your thesis, and thus begins your quest to acquire magical flowers by stealing them from where they grow on spirits' heads. This is the main gameplay skill to learn: you ride the spirit like a rodeo bull, yanking flowers off its head while avoiding thorns that make it harder to hold on. Get enough before the spirit throws you and you can pick its red spirit flower, defeating that spirit. The construct resistance requires that you return with yea-many red flowers before they'll help you to the next stage of the game.

The minigame feels like it was designed for a touchscreen, and a bit of research reveals that Child of Geos was first published for the iPad. And while I call it a minigame, it's really the main part of the game. There's no other skill curve to ascend; the rest of the game is exploration and talking to enough people in the right order that you unlock the next batch of spirits to wrangle.

Standing on a bipod of exploration and full-contact flower-picking, both legs need to stand strong. The spirit rodeo was not engaging, and the exploration... varies. The writing is irregular and seems almost divided at times. Much of the text, such as the spirit profiles you see after defeating them, relies on tired, stereotypical jokes: this one is female and doesn't want to give its weight, or another lists her age as 16 on some days and 21 on others. This one is male and likes to watch.

In contrast, some of the dialogue is clever, self-aware, and mature (as opposed to juvenile). When you rescue a construct from a building you unlocked ages ago, you point out that she could have left any time. Her reply? It feels so good to be the hero, and she didn't want to take that from you. The flying mailbox-slash-mailman visits at first to bring letters, but then because it's worrying about Lili, and it helps Lili figure out what she really wants.

In the end, the core gameplay is unexciting, and the inventive, interesting dialogue is at least matched by the derivative or outright insulting bits.

Lili: Child of Geos is available on Steam for $3.99, or apparently on the iPad.

Like Old Times 2

"Tell us who took the seal or I'll put my fist through your throat," she said. "Woah, woah, woah," I pulled her off him. "We don't need to hurt this person. Look, I'm sorry," I said to him.

"Like hell we don't," she said. She shoved me. "He's not gonna help without some encouragement."

"We can offer incentives other than freedom from violence, you know."

"Like what, a toaster? A pretty little benefits package?" She shoved me again. "This? This is why our marriage failed. You could never go the distance. You just don't push through to get the job done."

"You're blaming the divorce on my lack of trying? Really?" I shoved her back. "Lady, I tried. I tried like hell. What killed it was your complete inflexibility. Your way or the highway, over and over, and I eventually chose the highway."

"Yeah?" she said, "well maybe you'd like my fist through your--"

"Shut up," I said, "he's talking."

"I said," said the guy, "the seal's at the Ouroboros Club on 43rd."

"Huh," I said. "That was surprisingly easy."

"Anything to not hear you two fighting like an old--," he muttered.

So she punched him in the throat anyway.

Like Old Times

I was drowning. I'm pretty sure I'd done something to deserve it, but deserving it didn't mean I liked it. Strong hands pulled me up and into fresh air. After vomiting up the water, I said, "Okay, I'll tell you everything."

"I don't wanna know anything," said the gorilla holding me. Then she pushed me under the water again. Damn. Sometimes I regret divorcing her.

Next time she pulled me up, she slapped the water out of me. "Now tell me where the idol is."

"I thought you didn't want to know anything?" I gave her a leaky grin. Whoops. Back under I went.

We tried it again. This time I said, "Listen. You know I'm a stubborn SOB. I'd rather drown than tell you what I know. You'd rather kill me than not get the idol." She tensed to push me under again. "But, butbutbut," I said, "we could partner up." I could tell she liked the idea by the way she didn't go back to drowning me. "It'll be like old times, except without the fights and the sex." I looked up at her. "Unless you'd prefer it with the sex?"

One more drowning later, we were partners.

Mine's Bigger: Massive Chalice

This article was supposed to be some kind of dick joke, but instead, I'm too amazed: Why didn't anyone tell me that Massive Chalice is basically X-Com Fantasy Edition? I would've played it rather than let it sit in my Steam library for months. I'm not sure that knowing earlier would've led to me finishing the game, though. I've made it halfway to... well, I'm getting ahead of myself. The title says nothing about the game, and strikes me as something of a joke. Someone a Double Fine thought embodying the game's joint narrators in a giant cup was funny, and they named the game after it. At least that's my guess. And I'm not saying the people in my imagination are wrong, just that it's one reason the game sat, within reach but ignored, like a cup of tea that's spent too long cooling.

Massive Chalice is the story of a small nation besieged by monsters. Gameplay takes place in two arenas: the national stage, where you manage bloodlines to breed better heroes; and the battlefield, where you command your latest batch of heroes in fighting the monsters.

They execute the tactical combat well. You have three main classes, or hybrids thereof, and take advantage of their stealth, range, toughness, and burst attacks to destroy your enemies. Use line-of-sight and each hero's two actions wisely to find and eliminate the threat. It works well, and is basically identical to X-Com except with less of a cover system.

Between battles, you manage your kingdom, trying to keep it alive for three hundred years so the massive, talking chalice that advises you can gather enough power to destroy all the monsters everywhere. You assign heroes to marry and raise the next generation of heroes; your choices determine the next generation's heroic classes, hereditary traits, and learned traits. The choices are difficult, because assigning a hero to breed removes him or her from the fighting pool. You must weigh the benefit between keeping your good heroes in the field or letting them pass that experience on to a new generation.

You also select research projects to improve your heroes' armor, weapons, available items, and so on. As if the combat wasn't enough, I think this pushed me over into the game feeling just like X-Com.

So, at this point I've elected not to finish the game. I'm a bit more than halfway through the three-century chalice-charging process, and I feel trapped. My bloodlines produce nothing but the alchemist and alchemist-hybrid classes, which limits my combat options significantly. I just hit the point where I felt like I could manage the monsters well with foresight, cleverness, and a bit of luck, and the game upped all the monster difficulties on me. I recognize the need to keep a game challenging, but I feel like they just pulled the rug out from under my advancement.

The other reason is that the story just isn't there. X-Com had a series of plot-driven missions, taking aliens captive or capturing new technology. I could also interact with the engineer and scientist for some personality. Here, there's only the next mission and the long-term, unchanged story goal of reaching the three-hundred-year goal. Part of me wants to see it through to the end, but the rest of me knows I'll be more frustrated than happy doing so. And I can watch the ending on YouTube.

Massive Chalice is available in early access from Steam for $29.99. Note that since the game is still in development, just like this article's dick joke. I played the late February, 2015 build.

Reverse House

Beneath the bed lies a door. Through this door lies the reverse house, the space that fills all the walls and floors, all the blocked-off areas you could never get to otherwise. Reverse people live there. They are adults who let you stay up as long as you want and don't make you go to school. They are the siblings who are nice and let you play with their toys. You can watch any movies you want. The cookies are on the bottom shelf of the cupboard, the spoons are stored next to the ice cream, and the salads are nowhere to be found. The zucchini is in the trash.

When you go to the reverse house, you have to be careful. You never know if one of your real parents might come in and clean your room. And if they do, will they put boxes underneath your bed and block the door?

How long do you stay? Can you afford to be trapped in the reverse house forever? If you can't get back, will you miss your real family? Or will you be happy with a life of pancakes and play time, all that you want and more, forever?

A Bit More Time

Quick quick quick! Gotta get there before two, she said, and the bus was late and slow and dropped me at 1:54 and now I gotta move quick quick quick. Said she could help but only if I'm quick quick! Down the street, past the butcher, turn left, then the second right. Was that a right? Do alleys count or only streets? I don't know. If it was Google Maps I'd know, but this is creepy old woman directions and I don't know.

Creepy old women count the alleys, they've gotta count them, so stop staring and run past and count: one the alley, two the street, right and hey.

I've never seen this street before.

Where did this street come from?

Is that really a cobblestone road? Are those buildings made of wood? I've never heard of this part of town. Woah, horse! And why's that guy staring like he sees an alien?

Okay, back, reverse direction, turning right one way means turning left the other way...

There's no street there now. Is that guy walking toward me really wearing a sword?

Maybe I shouldn't've asked that weird old woman for more time before my report was due.

@ Is for Adventurer: Brogue

What I love about Roguelikes are the endless exploration afforded by procedural dungeon generation, experimentation with tactics from all the magic items, and a learning curve to tease my intellect.

Brogue delivers all those in spades, an excellent example of a modern-day Roguelike that follows in the footsteps of Nethack, Angband, and of course Rogue. It includes the other hallmarks of a Roguelike: permanent character death and ASCII graphics, and just describing it makes me want to go play it. (I admit it. I did go play it.) What makes Brogue stand out is two things: It streamlined and simplified the often-complex Roguelike game, and it brought a modern UI sensibility to the genre.

Acknowledging the invention of the computer mouse is a big deal. You can play the entire game without touching the keyboard if you like, though I found I preferred a mix of keyboard and mouse control. It came in most handy for dealing with my inventory and for quick-traveling to places I'd already visited after clearing most of a level. That alone saved lots of time.

Additionally, the game makes wonderful use of color, displaying degree of enemy wounds, showing alarms and magical effects rush outward in a wash of color, and displaying your inevitable hallucinations in a brilliant technicolor.

The game is also kinder than many of its brethren. It will stop automoves and alert you when something changes, as well as asking you to confirm when you want to do something that sounds stupid, such as jump into a chasm or drink a potion of incineration.

Simplifying the game has done much more for Brogue than the UI modifications. There are fewer distinct magical items and monsters, and far fewer commands than in its Roguelike forebears. There are fewer options in general, starting with character generation: there is none. Every character begins identical. It's the equipment you choose later on as you explore that sets you apart, and equipment is the only way you advance your character:

Potions of strength make you stronger, potions of life give you more hit points, better equipment makes you hit harder or harder to hit, magic staffs and charms give you distinct powers, and scrolls of enchantment make your gear better. You don't earn experience points, and fighting monsters gets you nothing but pain.

This is simpler, and it opens up an opportunity to make the game about cleverness instead of might. Since there's no reason to fight, it's a viable strategy to sneak around monsters and avoid them as they wander the dungeon. In many games, including many Roguelikes, you have to fight enemies for experience points even if you'd rather ghost through a level. That discovery alone multiplied the length of my interest in Brogue by at least two.

I am interested in some additional complexity, because the limited number of magic items gets somewhat repetitive. At the same time, I'm far from mastering all the many uses of even this limited selection. I'd also like to see the interesting experimentation start earlier. Perhaps if every character started with a special power instead of having to search for a level or three to discover a neat tool.

You can download Brogue for free.