It’s probably just as well that I wasn’t planning to try and finish this off before the release of Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth… with just days to go the map screen tells me that I’ve reached 28% completion thus far… ho hum.

February 25th

There is a second point in the game where the decision towards which ending you’re playing towards can be set, following the passing of the witch Siridean, and upon seeing the devastation that has beset Seeker, her pupil, Red and Antea discuss whether they’ve made the correct decision… I stick with the Oath pathway and still have my sights set on a second play for the Resurrection ending.

More so as, after your first meeting with Siridean, you’re faced with a choice of destination… the Harrows where some of the New Eden townsfolk have chosen as the new site for a settlement… or a Fort in the opposite direction… as I went to the Harrows this time, I’ll go to the Fort next time.

Whether this split path decision makes a huge lot of difference I don’t know, considering that the next main mission I’m being prodded into going to is the Fort, the initial decision may have been entirely arbitrary.

As it is, I can now remove the magical vines that obstruct my path at numerous places (but not the mystical webs that block others) which makes some of the other missions I have unlocked to this point easier… but, as appears to be the case with the game, after each major story beat the game unlocks more tasks and hauntings to be resolved… and being the type of gamer that I am this is what I’m focused on next… there are several hauntings I can now work on, and other activities which I’ll attempt to clear totally before I head to the Fort and move the story on.

It may be early doors but the full 1,000 Gamerscore on offer is beyond me, collecting all 88 items of equipment seems excessive, all cursed chests, all treasure maps and so on… not sure I really want to be doing that much grinding throughout but we’ll see.

February 26^th

The game continues to give you a reason, in EVERY haunting case, to blame the person being haunted thus giving you reason to kill them and bring Antea back to life… the last one especially… what’s more, in all but one of the cases the “closure” element of each case is done with a near complete lack of witnesses to your deed.

The game makes a big deal of the “consequences” of your actions… after each major story mission there’s a small scene showing you the settlement you’ve just been to moves on… and not always for the better… you may have spared the Governor of the township, but has the embarrassment of being unveiled as a fraud taken its toll? Has the towns sudden swing to a very puritanical regime changed things for the worse?

You may have saved the Hunters camp from the Beast in the woods, but has doing that left them open to attack as the solitary protector of the camp leaves rather than face the music for having sent people off to an almost certain death?

32% of the map complete at this point, several “?” on the map to clear up and a couple of additional hauntings to work through before I head to the Fort for the next main quest mission.

March 2^nd

Many hours of play later… seems the choice between The Harrows and Fort Jericho is a false one, once one has been completed, off you trot to the other to move the main plot on, which concludes with a quite impressive boss battle, but one that annoyed.

A new mechanic is introduced where Antea can see a weak point in a chain, which can then be hit to break the chain, either a punch, a swing of the sword or a shot with the rifle, all well and good throughout the mine… but in the boss battle you have to hit the weakened link in a set time limit… which I fluff repeatedly at times.

More annoying is that the boss has a three part health bar, once the chains have been weakened you rush in to “banish” the boss and one part of the bar is gone, so three times in all… at the end of the first bar the boss grabs Antea and binds her in chains, so Red has to free her, pick the wrong light and you release a large Specter… all well and good, but at the end of the second run through this process… Antea repeats the same action as before and gets bound by chains again… repeat.

With the boss defeated, and another part of Deborah released into the light (not here that Deborah is the true identity of the Nightmare that awaits in New Eden, having been wrongfully accused of being a witch she was executed by the folks you’re now helping) the story moves on… new abilities are unlocked (you can now remove spectral webs blocking paths, and Fuse your powers so Antea wields Red’s sword in combat to do more damage) and new cases appear on the map.

This also proves to be a rarity as there is no ghost to banish (the one that does appear turns out to be a puppet controlled by the boss so vanishes shortly after the boss is banished) and you have to decide who is to run the Fort going forward.

With all haunting cases there is an added on smaller mission after, in my case I left the current commander in charge and, having jailed the Rebel who tried to overthrow him, wants her hunted down after she escapes… as a good honest soul I don’t want to kill her, and it turns out she would make an ideal candidate for becoming a Banisher, so you send her off to get a good education, along with a message that will let her potential trainer know that Antea has passed on… good writing, way better writing than you’d expect for a supposed mid-level game.

Naturally rather than move the story on, I’m working through these new tasks and clearing up the remaining “?” symbols on the map… if I want to pop the Achievement for having 8 equipped items all at the highest class then I need to complete some Void areas to upgrade Antea’s equipment fully.

Story-wise I need to find Seeker, who has gone walkabouts, but I suspect she used to be a pupil of Deborah when they first landed as there is a letter to Grace from Deborah which indicates that Seeker is Grace and may have a connection to the Nightmare.

Basically, there is a lot a “busy work” to take care of before I decide to move the plot on… and, for a change, I don’t mind it at all… the game is a delight, way better than I expected for what amounts to a second level title, at best an AA game, and I’m looking forward to a second run bringing Antea back to life at the end… but maybe not as soon as I finish the first run… I’m almost at 43 hours to this point and can see that hitting 70 before I roll credits.

There are a couple of advantages to being a multi-console gamer… you don’t have to worry about missing out on a great game (and you don’t have to go online, on a site like IGN for example, and hide your disappointment by claiming it’s a terrible game you would never play) because of blind console loyalty… and if the game runs a little rough on one console you can always play it on another.

I played The Witcher 3 on PS4 because I wanted the best possible experience and, at the time, I only had a base Xbox One so the PS4 had a power advantage… when I pre-ordered Cyberpunk 2077 at that point I’d upgraded to an Xbox One X which was more powerful than my base model PS4… and I wasn’t foolish enough to think a base Xbox One or PS4 would be able to run that game anything close to acceptable… by the time it released I had an Xbox Series X and all was good.

Today sees the launch of arguably the biggest game of the year… Final Fantasy VII Rebirth… and despite having enjoyed the first part of the remake… I won’t be buying the game.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve swung from not buying, to buying, to picking up in a sale, to not touching… which is where I am now.

The more information released, and the State of Play dedicated solely to the game, made me wary… I don’t mind a mini game or two to pass the time (and I spent far too many hours playing Gwent) but the list of mini games buried within Rebirth seemed excessive.

Then there was talk of new combat systems… I’m a simple, older, gamer… don’t try and confuse me with Limit Breaks, Synergy attacks and combos… debuffing enemies and the whole works… I’ve fallen off games before where the developers over-complicated things.

So, I downloaded the demo… and played through Cloud’s return to his home village, and saw the devastation rained upon it by Sephiroth… it allayed some fears, what I saw was good.

Then I listened to the IGN Beyond podcast… and the revelation that, to do everything and max out all the characters, materia, complete all the mini-games etc… took, for an experienced player, over 120 hours… and that is one big nope from me.

I spent, according to TrueTrophies.com a total of 36 hours in the first part… I didn’t unlock everything, but I never expected to do so either… I enjoyed what I played and that was that… even knowing that I won’t unlock everything the 120+ hour gamer did, I’m still looking at over 100 hours of play… and I don’t have the time or energy for that.

I’m no stranger to long games… The Witcher 3 has had me sink around 130 hours, Forza titles always consume 100+ hours of my time… and I’ve ordered the Deluxe Physical Edition of Baldur’s Gate 3 which will consume weeks of my life when it arrives… but the content for those 100+ hours has to be worth it… and from what I’ve learned of Rebirth, the content isn’t going to do it for me in any way.

So, I’ll watch as others play the game and enjoy every second, good for them, gaming should be fun… but I know that I’d almost be going through the motions a little rather than the hours racing past as I get lost in the game… and I’m okay with that.

In the past I’ve had differing experiences with Dontnod games… Vampyr was a delightful discovery, as you wrestled with your moral compass playing a Doctor both obligated to saving peoples lives, whilst quenching your thirst as a Vampire… whereas Life Is Strange was, to me, flat out garbage I wish I’d never played… the number of times I just stood there watching Chloe get nailed by that train was too many to count.

Banishers grabbed my attention, while it was obvious from the first trailer that the woman explaining the haunting can only see 1 of the 2 characters in the building with her, the idea that they were there to aid her in getting rid of a spirit, when one of the 2 was clearly a spirit themselves, appealed to me… it offers a very obvious good/bad moral dilemma… and I like that.

Even before they announced the Trophies/Achievements for the game you knew there would be separate unlocks for going down each path towards the end of the game… so unless these can be manipulated by time appropriate game saves, 2 runs taking a distinct path each time was looking to be the way to go.

In this version I intend to take the path where I stick to my oath, to banish souls/spirits to the other side and to protect the general populous, knowing that this means I will lose the love of my life in the process.

Beware, this will include spoilers.

February 12^th

There’s a reason I use one particular online retailer for my games… and that is confirmed when the game arrives on the Saturday before the Tuesday release… 3 days early… sadly, as I try it out, the Achievements have yet to be activated so I play around 20 minutes and call it a day.

First impression… damn them for putting the “use health” action on the button usually used for attacking an enemy, so I end up drinking 2 of the 3 health items I have whilst testing the controls.

A couple of days later, when I see people have unlocked some Achievements I go back and restart the game, wary of the X button that drinks health potions… and really get into the game.

You’ve been asked by an old friend, Charles Davenport, to help remove a curse from the land of New Eden, and you arrive mid-June, to find the weather bares more of a winter tinge, you also discover that Charles has perished fighting the Nightmare alone.

By all accounts an actual Nightmare is a rare thing, stronger than any other Spectre or Ghost, and rumour has it they can’t be merely banished from the world.

In the early parts you switch between the two characters, starting as Antea the senior of the two characters, you investigate Charles home, and his wife gives you access to his study and papers, from there you move to the Cemetery where he met his end, the first “real” ghost you meet (that of an actual person wander than a non-descript wandering spirit) is Charles himself… he wants to help, but you know that Ghosts such as he, will eventually yearn for essence that can only come from a living being… they are not to be trusted.

Having ushered Charles onto the next world, armed with the knowledge that the Curse is being wielded by the Nightmare he has locked into the towns Meetinghouse, you retire for the night.

Here the first real character switch occurs, Red awakes to find Antea missing and heads to the meetinghouse to assist, believing this is where she has gone… in the early scenes before this Antea scolds Red for being a little to quick to rush into situations… and this is played out here, Red rushes into the building, unaware that Antea is not there… he has been lured by the Nightmare… boss battle.

I managed to take out 1 of the 3 life bars the Nightmare had before the cut scene kicks in, where Antea is mortally wounded and Red dropped into the Ocean… as he sinks into the depths the title screen kicks in.

What is (apparently) a couple of weeks later Red awakes in a cave by the sea, having been rescued by Seeker, an apprentice Witch, sent by her mistress to aid him, once she departs you explore the cave for equipment and the game knows this will happen, among the items you find is a note from Seeker mocking your inability not to be nosey.

As you leave the cave you hear Antea’s voice calling you… and you discover her spirit… you’re then into what is almost a second tutorial level, the first being your walk from the coast to the first settlement… as interactions and game mechanics with Antea are explained.

You decide that you need to meet the Witch who sent Seeker to help you… a few new mechanics are laid out for you explaining just why you need to switch to Antea at times, as a Ghost she can see different things in the world, can see clearly through the Spectral mist you occasionally encounter, and has a different range of attacks for different enemies.

And then, as was explained when you encountered the ghost of Charles, she starts to suffer from the hunger… she needs essence, and handily, you encounter your first haunting… a trapper named Jacob, scared in his shelter, awaiting his friend Ben, but consuming some very questionable food.

You search for Ben and discover he met an untimely end, at the hands of Jacob, who is now surviving on the flesh of his friend… it’s not a long “case” to solve, but explains the basics… and is also the point where you decide which of the two outcomes to Antea’s plight you will work towards.

With your help Jacob comes to terms with what he’s done, and he is prepared to pay for his crimes with his life… you can choose whether to maintain your Oath and, once the Nightmare has been killed and Anteas body reclaimed, ascend Antea to the next world… or you can use the essence of people to bring Antea back from the dead going against your own strict principles.

The autosave system here is good… having Banished the ghost and absolved Jacob, I save the game and reload an autosave and this time Blame Jacob thus starting on the path to resurrect Antea and I save in a different slot… it’s taken 4 hours to get here, 4 hours I won’t have to replay later.

Having taken the Oath to uphold the Banisher principles and make a promise to ascend Antea once the Nightmare is no more, you start the trek back to New Eden, not before a teleport mechanic is explained where Antea can use a spirit power to traverse broken bridges and large jumps… and I call it a day… from what I have played I’m going to enjoy this.

Nor will I go into quite so much detail over other hauntings I come across going forward… else this whole thing will balloon out of control to immense proportions… nobody wants that.

February 15^th

I’ve had the chance to move the game on a little, 2 more hauntings cleared up and (so far) they’ve made it very easy to consider killing the person being haunted to bring Antea back had you chosen that path… both people being haunted will have given you reasons to kill them… a Spy and a murderer… I’m still following the Oath path so I’ve chosen not to… one ghost Ascended as they hadn’t meant to be causing any distress to their victim, another Banished as they were actively working on revenge… not that they didn’t have reason for wanting the revenge, but all things considered it seemed more apt to punish them.

All this has been done in a small settlement that will be the first location you really arrive at once you’ve left the cave where Seeker nursed you back to health.

There will be an element of back tracking later in the game, I’ve encountered pathways blocked by something I’ll obviously be able to clear at a later date… growths of reinforced wooden blockades… and the game does actually tell you the first time you encounter one that you do not have the requisite ability to pass that barrier yet.

I found my first Treasure map and collected the Treasure, a rare material needed to upgrade a piece of equipment, and I’ve cleared a couple of areas where there are a large number of spirits residing, both of which increased my stats permanently.

I want to complete as much as I can in my first run so that the Revival run can be as streamlined as possible… even if I were to be buying Final Fantasy Rebirth at launch, not a chance I’d be able to finish this in time to start it then.

February 18^th

Per the map I’ve completed 11% of the game… if that’s accurate then I have a long way to go… progress continues, but having unlocked the ability to smash through some of the blocked paths I’m back tracking and exploring these areas, and also working on the remaining “?” symbols on the map I haven’t done yet.

Along the way I also unlock the ability to open some containers protected by spells, for which I have to collect 3 carved figures in the surrounding area before I can cast a new ritual to remove the spell and then loot the container.

Some of the newly discovered chests are hectic battles against a swarm (or nest) of Spectres and ghosts… or a scourge that turns out to be a smaller version of the boss battle against the Beast that is troubling the Trapper camp in the woods.

I’m fairly close to reaching the next main plot section, finding the Witch in the woods who sent Seeker to aid me after the first encounter with the Nightmare… hauntings continue to give you a justifiable reason to kill someone if you were working on bringing Antea back… all good thus far.

The Frog Detective dropped into game pass and more than a couple of sites referred to it being something along the lines of a “cult classic” or a “fan favourite” title… having played it I must have really, really missed something along the way here… unless “cult classic” is a term given to a game which provides an easy 1,000 Gamerscore these days (in which EastAsiaSoft have been releasing updates to “cult classics” rather than “blatant shovelware” for years) or I’ve just missed something huge.

There will be spoilers here… if you intended to play if for the easy 1,000 then you’ve probably already played it, if you haven’t played it these may save you 2 hours of your life that could be spent playing something more worthy of your attention.

February 1^st

From the outset this is as basic as they come, there is nothing in the game that couldn’t have been done on a first-generation PlayStation or Nintendo 64… not only are the graphics incredibly basic, it’s all first person so the level of animation needed during gameplay is minimal.

It’s also incredibly easy… A needs object B, C will provide B if you can find D and give it to E so they will give you… and so on, it becomes one large chain of fetch quests, in a usually very small location with a cast of animal-based characters.

There is an element of humour to the game which, it turns out, is the sole reason for sticking with the game through the three cases on offer… three cases that apparently were originally released as separate instalments, all bundled up together in this Xbox release.

Case 1 sees you sent to an island to solve the mystery of a ghost haunting the residents, once you’ve established that the ghostly sounds are coming from a cave you have to collect the items need to make dynamite (which include Gold and Pasta apparently) you blow the cave open and discover what is making the noises… and that’s it… really, that’s all there is to it.

In this case that Character B had entered the cave to practice in secret for a dance contest, and the noise of their radio is funnelling through the cave system which sounds like ghosts to the characters outside.

End of case and there’s a long scene, of said dance contest, interspersed with the credits… and it’s onto the next case.

Case 2 is in the woods, and a party/parade for a new resident has been vandalised and nobody knows who it was, repeat the same process as before… collect object A for character B and so on, which leads to the discovery that the parade was destroyed by the new resident (an invisible witch) who had lost their glasses and was fumbling about… case closed, long scene of a new parade, credits… case closed.

Case 3 is in the wild west where someone has stolen all the towns hats, repeat process as you find object A to give to… you know the drill… it’s dumb, so simplistic that it borders on barely doing anything at all, and almost feels patronising by the end… as you solve the crime and find the hats the only twist of the game is revealed.

Throughout the game you’re referred to as the Number 2 best detective around, behind Lobster Cop… seems Lobster Cop has spent too long enjoying the stardom and has been lax on the crime solving side, and has gotten worried that with Frog actually solving mysteries, he’ll lose the Number 1 slot so has framed Frog for stealing the hats.

The case ends with Frog locked up for a year in the Bad Room in the Sherriff’s office with just a computer to spend his time on, as he posts the story on his blog, a character from the first story sees the injustice and helps him out… Lobster Cop is fired and goes to work in the post office, the Number 1 crime solver position is now free… only to be filled by Mystery Monkey from the haunted island who discovered the set up perpetrated by Lobster Cop to frame the Frog.

Case over… cut scene, credits… end of title.

Now there is simple gameplay and there’s mindlessly simply gameplay… were this aimed at kids then fine, but it’s not (as far as I can see) and it feels cheap, this is truly a Crapfest title in disguise… it’s only the humour which drags it above what I’d describe as “Gamerscore fodder” that we see being given 6 monthly “updates” to add another 1,000 to your score.

Even then, the humour grows old in Case 2, the interruption in each by the developer explaining that what Frog is saying isn’t strictly true, is obviously going to happen in every case… and stops being funny in the second case.

You could argue that playing all three cases back to back to back isn’t really how they’re meant to be played, but even if you had no idea what you were doing or had never played a game before, you could complete all 3 inside a couple of hours… on their own it’s barely 40 minutes play which would leave you feeling cheated… like Jusant this is a title I’m glad I didn’t have to pay for… it ended up with a score of 53% boosted by the humour.

Distraint was a weird subject for a game… playing as a trouble lawyer, hunting down promotion within his legal practice by evicting a series of tenants from their properties whilst dealing with the whole moral dilemma of it in discussions with his deceased parents.

It also had a very distinct look about it as well with all the characters having huge heads.

It’s unusual for me to play a sequel on a different console, Distraint was purchased for pennies in an Xbox sale, but as I’m trying to avoid playing too many games merely for the points these days, as the sequel was included in a PSN sale… I grabbed it… it’s not like I don’t know the story from the first game, so I’m hardly going to miss out.

As the third game of Indie Fest 2024 it also has a hard act to follow, GRIS was a wonderful little platformer that didn’t go out of its way to frustrate or overwhelm the player, and had great graphics and sound to boot… that I can’t remember any soundtrack from the original Distraint leans me towards believing that, if there was one at all, it wasn’t of any notable quality, and graphically I’m expecting more of the same…

January 28^th

Jessie Makkonen, the sole author of this, certainly has a style… and it’s visually distinctive… small bodies, huge heads and a much-reduced playing area… this all takes place as if you were looking through a letterbox, and it’s a very dark game graphically… even with the brightest turned up to 11 this is occasionally difficult to make out things on screen.

That it’s also an extension of Pixel-Art graphics do not help here.

In the first game you played Price, a junior in a law firm aiming to become a partner in the firm, thus he went about his job which, sadly for him, seemed to revolve around repossessing people’s homes… when one little old lady who has been evicted because of him, dies… it’s all much.

Throughout the game he wrestles with his own moral compass… he hates his job and the old ladies passing brings it to a head… it’s here that the sequel kicks in.

Price has decided to take his own life, and appears to be in a sort of limbo as he battles with his inner emotions… REASON points out him that he can make a good life for himself, if he just find HOPE… at the same time, FEAR is stalking him (and must be hidden from when he appears) and GREED, who helped get him into his current predicament, has to be dealt with as well.

All this is done through a series of locations, puzzles and dialogue in both the present and through flashbacks to his childhood… occasionally, as encouragement, Price gets to see the idyllic life he could have were he to find HOPE and move on without blasting his own brains out with a Shotgun.

It’s not a long game… but the strain on my eyes trying to see where I’m going at times has made a full run in one sitting impossible… and prompted me to book in another eye test in a week or so… but, while the subject matter is fairly dark, did the graphics have to be as dark as they are?

While I can accept that not every game I play through with an Indie budget is going to be as beautiful to look at as Gris, this game is an assault on the eye balls… in a previous title, Heal, the developer has shown they’re capable of so much more than we’ve been handed here.

February 1^st

The end comes fairly swiftly, as Price discovers that the HOPE he’s looking for in life is inside him all along (which wasn’t hard to work out if you’ve played games for more than a few years) and that he just needed a little prompting to come to terms with that.

In the triumphant ending all his emotions and persona elements come together to help him break free, to give him the HOPE to not blast his own brains out with a shotgun… an action which leads to his meeting with his new neighbour, who bears an uncanny resemblance to LOVE that he had encountered in his visions, and the final scene leads to them going off for a drink and a chat.

While I enjoy Jesse’s output, the visual presentation here really lets the game down… it’s not full screen, the art style leads to some severe eye strain, and they’re just way too dark… sound could be better, while the dramatic music when you’re hiding from FEAR is fine, the rest is all rather sparse.

It’s delivering a message more than anything else, and while it does a really good job of getting that across, that is achieved despite the way the game is presented rather than because of the game itself… and as such my Indie Fest score here works out at 60%.

The joys of gaming on two consoles… even though I’ve been trained to play over the years for the sweet, sweet sound of an Achievement or Trophy popped as I complete a quest, or gun down my 500^th enemy with a machine gun… I can still get that dopamine hit on an old game I’ve already played, by buying it for the console I didn’t originally play it on.

As an added bonus, it’s usually cheaper second time around as a year or more will have passed in between.

When “Murdered Soul Suspect” was originally released I was excited by the premise of the game… I ordered the collectors edition… and promptly cancelled it when the review scores came in an it bombed, these being the days when game reviews would appear before the launch day.

I waited it out a little, picked up a copy of the standard edition… and actually had a good time… years later I fancied another play, checking Ebay it was just £6.99 including postage… ordered there and then… only for it to land on a PSN sale 2 days later for £1.59

Well it turns out the Ebay seller was a dick… took them 8 days to mark it despatched, 10 days later it hadn’t arrived, so I requested a refund (which was approved within 10 minutes, and the game despite being sent still hasn’t arrived) and used that money to buy the PSN sale version.

Game on!

January 16^th

It’s fair to say that I’d forgotten a lot of what happens in this game… I remembered that you died in the opening scene and were trying to bring your killer to justice, but beyond that I wouldn’t have been able to give you many details.

That said it started to come back as I played through the opening couple of sections, as I revealed collectibles, solved a murder for a ghost who couldn’t settle without the knowledge of where her body was hidden, questioned a few spirits as to how they passed on… standard ghost stuff.

I’d forgotten about the demons roaming the land, and thus the second of these ended my game in my impatience to take him out… not a good sign as the one other scene I do remember is dodging demons on my way through a park.

Graphically it’s showing its age a little, this is a game released at the start of the PS4 generation so also had a PS3 version, it’s not going to be winning any awards for CGI or stuff like that, but I’ve seen worse, the ghostly look of other spirits works well, even if it feels strange to encounter load screens just to go back to where you had previously been when there weren’t loading screens to get to where you are now.

January 21^st

I’m approaching the halfway mark and it’s showing its age a little… as you check items in the Police Station the document itself looks fine, but you lose some immersion when the text thereon just looks wrong, it’ll be straight when the document is off centre, or a font totally out of sync with other items you’ve examined.

The collectables guide I’m using is also annoying, it’s split into segments based on the story… so it only focuses on collectibles in that chapter, ignoring other, very obvious, collectibles along the way as they will be covered in a later chapter… I can’t do that though, if I see a collectable I have to go for it instantly, so I’ve collected several items that the guide has ignored and thus the Trophies for collecting a set amount of items are all different to the guide… hopefully this won’t mean I end up having missed one at a later date necessitating a second play for the Platinum.

January 26^th

Thankfully the infuriating way that the collectibles are collected in the guide I was referring to throughout did not hamper my collection process, and nothing was missed… it also featured a handy counter at the end of the Judgement House section of the game, so that you could check your totals before you progressed to the games “point of no return” segment.

In truth I’d forgotten a few story beats along the way… such as who the actual culprit was, that you had been the vessel used to commit one of the murders and so on… and this includes the rather piss poor ending to the game.

What I did notice more and more as I played was how well the graphics held up at times for a 10 year old game… the effect of your character being transparent works really well, and while it falls down when you read a newspaper headline or something “written” in a book, it could have been much worse than it actually is.

But… the ending is terrible, and while Ronan walks off screen to be with his beloved Julia, you don’t see his ascent into the afterlife… the credits roll and its game over.

For £1.59 it was worth the money, it’s not a bad game all told, but nor is it the AAA title that many had hoped for at release… a solid 6/10 title.

I’ll admit that there are times when I wonder quite why I use my Reward points to keep my subscription to Gamepass Ultimate ticking over… I say ticking over… at time of writing I have 30 months left on my subscription.

Generally, it has been used for Indie titles that, although they look good, seem over-priced… Ravenlok was a great game… but not £21 worth of game, Bramble was a wonderful variant of the Little Nightmares formula… but I wouldn’t have paid £25 for it… Coffee Talk 2 is something I’d have grabbed in a sale rather than paid £12.49 for the privilege of playing.

And here we have Jusant… a cartoon graphic adventure of a young boy, and a weird sky-blue blob, climbing a huge structure in the middle of a desert that was clearly once an Ocean… graphically it reminds me a little of the game Submerged that I played at the end of 2015 where the world was flooded rather than parched… a gentle distraction of a game… but not one I’d be willing to pay £22.49 for.

Chapter One

Full disclosure here… I am using a collectable guide, having found one that doesn’t ruin the story… so between collectables the exploration and progress to the next area is all down to me and the usual trial/error process.

Very much a tutorial level as the climbing mechanic is explained… this may well prove to be a pain, using the left and right triggers to grip so you’re constantly alternating pressing (and keeping them pressed) to progress along ledges, upside so buildings, up ladders and such like… stamina is limited so you have to rest repeatedly on long climbs… for a barely adequate player like me, this may be a problem later.

You can jump to higher ledges, double jumping if needed, swing your rope to reach other climbing points and so on, collectables along the way give a little back story and seem to work well… I complete the chapter and call it a day… I’m in one of those rare instances of playing multiple games at once, but I’ll come back to this for sure.

Chapter Two

It seems the game switches between 2 modes when it comes to progress… the first is where there is a very obvious path to take to the next area, and the second where it seems almost impossible to work out where you’re supposed to go.

A new mechanic is introduced, where your blob friend will make a noise and the local, oddly coloured, plant life springs into action to provide something for you to climb onto.

Two new collectables appear in Altars to spin around, and Frescos to light up, using the same manner as activating the wildlife… but after around an hour of exploration a cutscene kicks in and Chapter Three appears on screen which is my cue to call it a night.

Having looked at the Achievement list part of that hour was spent working through some of the easier, cumulative, Achievements… resting 50 times in a climb, chasing 10 creatures back to their nest (you can chase the same one back multiple times) and placing a piton at the top of a wall run (can be done anywhere) and, even though it will come naturally, I spend a few minutes double jumping whilst climbing just to speed that one up a little.

Chapter Three

It’s at this stage that the games true nature comes to light… for all it’s cartoony graphic styling and cutesy appeal… it is rather dull to play.

The collectible guide has been binned off in favour of a full walkthrough to save time, and I’m 1 hour 37 minutes into a near 3 hour video… it’s slow going because, well, the game is slow going… it also commits a cardinal sin of indie games… slow release Achievements.

There are 21 Achievements in all and, with 80 minutes left of a 180-minute guide, I have unlocked 12… but from the video description the next one to unlock is not until deep into Chapter 5 maybe an hour away… were this being included in Indie Fest it would be heavily docked points here… how about an Achievement for completing each Chapter or finding all collectibles in each Chapter?

To me it smacks of bad design, especially in a game as slow as this one is playing out.

End Game

Chapter 4 was just Chapter 3 with different graphics and a new mechanic… and that seems to be the problem here… the two opening Chapters were interesting, not overly complicated and enjoyable… the two final Chapters were highly enjoyable… the two middle Chapters, the two biggest and most drawn-out Chapters, were dull as hell.

And there we have the whole problem with the game… it’s dull… climbing a tower maybe okay for a single level, but to pad it out through 6 levels is too much.

Chapter 5 does at least add in an environmental challenge with strong winds, so you have to time your jumps with the gusts at times, and Chapter 6 is a short, obviously very climatic, affair with the end game being very much in site from the moment your whale crash lands into the ground… hardly a spoiler… if you’ve not played it that won’t make any sense… if you have played some, it still won’t make any sense.

Taking into account the sheer repetitive nature of the game, it’s a solid 6/10 games… I’m glad I didn’t have to pay for it.

There is a lot of, admittedly fanboy level, chatter about people who have Gamepass just don’t buy games… that they pay their service fee every month and only play what is offered to them on that service.

It’s all bull of course, but as some orange buffoon in the US has proven, if you repeat a lie often enough there will be sheep out there who accept it as gospel.

Gris is available on Gamepass and would have been free… yet here I am about to play it on PlayStation 5 where I had to pay for it… granted it was in a sale, but I still paid real money for this thing… all on the basis that I liked the graphical look of the game and felt the urge to play a platformer… the second game of Indie Fest is now is progress.

Now it's rare that I see a game with a guide video that lasts more than an hour where I don't break it down into smaller chunks... for example, the guide for Jusant clocks in at just shy of 3 hours and, mainly because the game is so dull, it's being worked on in 15-20 minute chunks... the video for Gris clocks in at 2 hours and 8 minutes.

I finished the game in a single session.

Gris will be one of the most attractive looking games I'll play this year... a wonderful water-colour art style with some wonderful imagery, backed up with some superb use of colour itself (which is not a surprise given that the aim of the game is to add colour to your world) all of which is backed up with an utterly brilliant musical score... I may only be two games in, but this will take some beating score wise this year.

Gris is one of my least favourite game types, a platformer with puzzle elements... oh dear... but... it's fun, I was transfixed as I jumped, sprung, swan, surged and slid around the world collecting mementoes of my life, feeding small forest creatures square apples, singing to make peacocks display their plummage... avoided the attacks of an evil eel.

I used the attacks of an unhappy bird to reach far off platforms for collectibles, smashed through walls and walked upside down to unearth treasures and finally walked a star bridge created by my love to reach the stars themselves.

The abilities come slowly, and work well whether it be the double jump, swimming and surging through the water, the powerful crushing mechanic to break through floors or smash items… they work well, and don’t get abandoned as soon as a new one is granted… by the end you’re combing all of these to reach your eventual destination.

It's not a game where you can talk someone through it, for much of the time you're just tottering down an obvious route because there's only 1 way to go... and it doesn't matter... it's fun.

Summary & Score

The developers hit a real home run here, difficulty is perfect, there's no difficulty spike to speak of and your various abilities are handed to you at a gentle, but well judged, pace and you never feel over-whelmed by them. That I spent over 5 hours straight playing through it all in one sitting speaks volumes.

Indie Fest Score - 85%

There are some games where, while I like the look of them, the timing has to be right before I buy them.

That may sound a little odd, but occasionally I have to be in the mood to pick up a certain game, or the stars have to align in a certain way before I pull the trigger and pay my money.

In the case of Lake here, we’d just celebrated my significant others 51^st birthday and the meal had been sumptuous… but less than I’d expected… so in my eyes there was money there that had already “been spent” that I could now spend on something else… Lake.

Not expensive and in a New Year sale, most importantly though was that is was a physical copy… one I would be able to sell on once I’d finished with it.

Now it becomes the first game of the year for Indie Fest…

January 9^th

First play… I like the graphical style I can say that much, some of the animation is a little off, Meredith herself walks like she’s desperately trying not to soil herself, or already has, and while there is a button you can hold down to “walk faster” it doesn’t seem to make much difference to her speed.

Some of the scenery is a little rough around the edges, road markings are all straight lines which look odd when you see the lines down the sides of the roads on corners, and even though this doesn’t look like it should be that hard to run on PS5 hardware there are some issues with textures popping in on long drives.

It’s at this point I decide to award games points for how polished they seem to be, while for the most part it all runs smoothly when you get in the delivery van there is a split second when the camera has a fit and you seem to be hovering in mid air before you drive off.

When I first started there was no other traffic anywhere on the roads, next delivery day and no matter where I parked there would be a tailback behind me that seemed incapable of going around me, dodgy AI to the point where, having driven off and delivered elsewhere, the cars were still there when I went back to that part of the town minutes later… why, in one instance, a huge truck would go down one of the smaller side streets and get stuck turning back into the main road.

Early days here, but I feel this is a game that would have benefitted by being bigger, at most you’re delivering 7 or 8 items a day, so why the huge post van?

Bonus points are being awarded for the reference to the British TV show The Detectorists with a cameo from MacKenzie Crook in character, which offers a nice Gold Trophy just for talking to him and discovering that little easter egg… it’s here where I decide I can add a few points at the end for random events.

But… if I had paid full whack for this at launch, I’d feel a little cheated, while I still believe that at £9.95 for the physical release on PS5 the price was too high, I know I can sell it on once I’m down… it’ll launch on Ebay soon enough, it’s not a long game by any shakes and the 13 page guide included 2 large maps and over a page of explanation and controls.

It’s times like these that I start to appreciate Gamepass when it comes to playing small indie titles.

January 11^th

This being the first game I’ve played for Indie Fest, the scoring system is still flexible… I’ve added criteria, reduced the impact of others… I decide to introduce a “difficulty” score… 10 being just right, 1 being way too hard/easy… this is added then reduced to a score out of 5 as 10 seems to add too much importance to it.

I also, as I near the end of the game, decide to include a score for characters… there are some great characters here, and some really annoying ones… scored out of 5 again.

For games where the category of characters doesn’t apply, non-story games for example, it will be simply left out of the score calculation.

I work through the rest of the game, some more polish rubs off as the clipping becomes more noticeable… a couple of times I press the doorbell and Meredith pushes a random spot on the wall, and then leaves the package partially inside a bench or a counter top… there are also times when a character is talking and their lips aren’t moving.

Story wise it all sort of fizzles out, side stories either end in a disappointing manner or don’t end… your Post Office boss is being investigated for using the system to illegally bet on sports, but comes back 2 days later saying he threatened legal action against the boss and everything has been sorted… the romance option I followed only concludes if you choose to drive off into the sunset in a Camper Van… if you go back to the big city or choose to stay you don’t see and ending here.

It's a shame as the game starts out so well, but trails off at the end… rushed, or just lack of a decent ending to a novel idea?

Summary & Score

In retrospect this was the perfect first game… it sets a good bench mark that I can, and will, judge other games this year by, it doesn’t tax the player with anything complicated other than picking which package from the back of the van is the right one for that property, and it’s possible to even have the driving done for you, so it works well as a story where the player nudges it in the directions it wants you to take alongside the main story… I enjoyed my time with the game.

It could have been more polished, there could have been more tunes on the local radio (every time I’d turn it on it was the same one playing) and it could have been a little longer… but these are minor quibbles… it feels like a solid game without being brilliant… worth picking up in a sale with a hefty discount.

Indie Fest Score – 67%

Back in 2020, in a kneejerk type reaction to a drop off in Gamerscore collection (in 2018 months had passed with little activity due to illness, and 2019 was a year of just playing for fun) I embarked on Crapfest… the mass playing of games purchased just for the Gamerscore, that were cheap and, most importantly, piss easy.

In these bursts of hammering out tripe for points even a couple of visual novels were “played” along with some other truly awful titles like Super Wiloo Demake and Woodle Tree Adventures… no more, I’ve even sworn off playing any “updates” to titles where an additional 1,000 has been added for more mindless tasks.

What I have done is to be way more selective in my choice of Indie titles… still purchased in sales (or played through Gamepass) all these titles seem to have something different about them, even if it’s just a different graphical style.

While I’m not chasing Gamerscore anywhere near the way I used to, there’s still the need for a palette cleanser type game, something to act as a buffer between big titles, or to play as a distraction occasionally if a big title is in danger of becoming a little too much of a grind.

Now… I’m a sad bastard who likes a good spreadsheet, I’ll be rating these titles throughout 2024 on a number of criteria to give me, at the end obviously, my Indie title of the year… doesn’t have to have been released in that year, just played in that year… because there have been some Indies I’ve played that have been a real blast… The Gunk, The Artful Escape, Ravenlok and Bramble are all deserving of a mention and praise.

I’m not going to include games where I’ve already played them before on a different console (so were I to replay Ashina: The Red Witch on PlayStation it would be omitted) but all newly played titles, regardless of which console, will be included.

Each game to be scored on the following elements;

Graphics: Obviously… with these being Indie titles I’m not expecting something that looks photo-realistic, but does the game look nice, does the graphical style used suit the game?

Sound: Do the sound effects and music suit the game? Could there have been more/better use of sound?

Story: What I’m looking for most with some of these, a good story told in under 2 or 3 hours can be highly effective… does it drag towards the end?

Gameplay: You can have a great story with mind boggling good graphics that count for nothing if the gameplay that has been added is awful… while I’m enjoying the story in Jusant say, the mechanics of having to maintain your grip as you climb is occasionally really annoying.

Trophies/Achievements: Are these well thought out? Or are they generic guff like clearing Level 1, 5, 10 and so on? Hopefully, as I’m avoiding games purchased just for points, there shouldn’t be any bland level completion unlocks… but that doesn’t mean a game can’t mess up here.