Interesting Games Thread

[moon]

So I recently (like, 10 seconds ago) learned about this game from this Bluesky thread (gonna work on getting these to embed...) about a 1993 doujin game called Tarotica Voo Doo, which has somehow, after all this time, been translated completely to English (including the handmade instruction manual/guide?!) and released on Steam. It's billed as a puzzle game, where you have to save a family before "an airplane crashes into their haunted mansion." It's only a couple hours long, so I'm going to give it a try sometime soon.



Anyway, what else has tickled your fancy lately?

[monti]

I got QVADRIGA on sale and it was the best $5 I ever spent, not sure I'd get it at full price but it's a lot of fun if you like lofi games.

[moon]

Oh this looks exactly like a Monti Game (said lovingly and with great respect)

[Chem]

I played Tarotica Voo Doo all the way through a few years back and I can confirm it's really charming, loved the controls and the way everything looked like pixel scribbles. Might be my favorite MSX game but I haven't played enough to say for sure

[Rhys]

I've been playing Atelier Ryza recently, which is interesting in how low-key and comfy the game is. Like, a major plot point was Ryza's mom threatening to lock her out of her room if she didn't help out on the family farm. It's been so chill I was actually a little bit annoyed when a dragon showed up that I had to slay. Fortunately I had to make bait for fishers immediately afterwards, so it's all cozy again, but I know that edgelord Lila is gonna try to drag me into more Ultimate Evil slaying. I just want to make items and solve mundane problems, Lila!

[gsilverfish]

I've been playing the MegaCD version of Popful Mail recently. I felt like I had played the English version a ton, so when the itch came I wanted to try something that might feel a little different. Anyway, maybe I'm not as familiar with it as I imagined, because I keep encountering dialog and thinking "whoa, that's different! What did they say in English?" Then I go check a longplay video and it turns out it's basically the exact same thing.

[moon]

That's Working Designs, right? I'm surprised they stuck so closely to the original Japanese! Then again, that was pretty early days for them, right? Maybe they hadn't gotten a big head about that stuff yet.

[gsilverfish]

Yeah, it came out a few months before Lunar 2, for what that's worth. I think it's just that it was a pretty funny game to begin with and they hit the tone pretty consistently. I do remember trying to compare some scenes on youtube in both languages before and finding that in general the English dialog tended to be longer, so I do think they tended to reword things in a way that gave them more room for jokes. There is one spot where they really crazy with that, like the Sven T. Uncommon character, who was given several screens worth of Schwarzenegger jokes, but my impression is he was kind of outlier.

I also think the difficulty change is not as severe as people say but I am coming from the US version, so I may not be an effective judge there. It's not like Dynamite Headdy, where I found the Japanese version shockingly easy by comparison, haha.

[Ghirga]

i’ve been playing Mystia’s Izakaya, a chinese touhou restaurant simulator fangame where you play as the night sparrow youkai Mystia Lorelei. the portrait sprites are very cute (the overworld sprites are a little default rpg maker). been enjoying smoking a bunt and playing a few nights.

im on my phone so adding images is hard but i’ll post some soon ok

[gsilverfish]

I haven't played this yet but Steam just reminded me I put it on my wishlist:



It's an edutainment title from 1995 where Cam Clarke, as a puppet (?) dinosaur, assists you on your mission to save dinosaurs from floating brains by answering dinosaur trivia. Even though this was peak Jurassic Park time it looks like all the dinosaurs are stop motion and at first glance I was sure Clarke's character was CGI but the more I look the more I think he's a real life puppet.