The First Play Thread of First Plays

[kryss]

Dordogne gamepass, switch, ps4/5

Put a couple of hours into this last night and its really sweet, I'm about half way though, so it seems its a short game and very linear so far, but Its the amazing visuals and story that really pulls at your heart strings is worth experiencing.

I was wanting a cozy summer adventure in the vein of Boku no Natsuyasumi, but what this is is more of a dip into grief and loss via a nostalgic look back at hazy summer spent in the French countryside. The story focuses on exploring your grandmas house after her death and triggering memories of the summers you spent their with her.

Its a very simple game you just wander around the locations interact with them to complete your tasks. Theirs a collectable element in hidden stickers to collect, and at the end of each memory you create a page for your journal with sticker you've found photos you have taken and key words you've used to make a poem. its not ground breaking or revolutionary but its worth a few hours of your time if you fancy a nice chilled lazy summer holiday explore of Dordogne

That Crayon Shin-chan game has be localised btw.

[Lebowski]

Inscryption [psn, xbox switch pc]

Ive spent a few evenings playing this and ive been having a blast with it, its a real hidden gem. it's a deck building rouge like where you move across a game board taking on a series of encounters and building and buffing a player deck. The card game at its heart is played on a 4 x 4 grid with the aim being to play and knock out your opponents cards and do enough damage to win a round.

You start with 5 cards and each card has blood or bone cost to place, an attack value a health value, and sometimes a special ability. Central to the game is a sacrifice mechanic, to play any card you must pay its bone or blood cost, you get bones when your cards are defeated and you gain blood by sacrificing cards, certain cards are only there to be sacrificed like the squirrel or the goat and certain cards are there for attacking like the Wolf the Stink bug or the Stoat.

Each turn you get to pick a new card from two piles either a squirrel to sacrifice or an action card, The odds are normally stacked against you as your opponent doesn't always start on a even playing field. What to play how to block your opponent and when to remove cards is key to wining. For example your wolf may have had a few good rounds but is now low on health and will be killed on the next turn, instead of letting the enemy kill it and all you get is a bone you can sacrifice that card so you gain blood. This can start a cascade effect where you get multiple materials and before you know it you have a fully refreshed board and have tipped the round massively in your favor.

To tie all this together you have a central story where your being held captive in a cabin by a shadowy character who's forcing you to play these games. You can get up and explore the cabin at will during your course of play and you get clues on how to interact with the strange contraptions around the room, these feel like puzzles from an escape room game and get you extra cards for your deck and items that you can use in play to tip the scales in your favor (often with quite grizzly results).

Theirs a lot more too it than I'm not explaining too you get story and lore explained throughout by talking cards that show up again and again and you get death cards each time you die. Death cards are super powerful cards created by pulling stats from the cards you have unlocked, the more you die the more of these death cards get added into the rotation so its ok to die a few times. it really dose feel like a one more go type thing where you think this time i'm gonna get a bit further and maybe see the end of this freak in front of me.

[Lebowski]

Carrying on with this months PSN Essential offering Carto was another game i wanted to try, and I'm glad i did, the game starts where you fall out of your grandmas airship and land on a strange island, it's an exploration and puzzle game viewed from top down with the unique hook here is you have the ability to open your map and take any part of the island and rotate flip and move it around to solve environmental based puzzles, These lead to you finding more pieces to experiment with the aim being to help all the people on a islands before moving on with your journey back to your grandmas airship. It's a joy to see your environment grow and come to life and you get satisfying feedback when you get things in the right place. Early puzzle see you doing things like being told to visit someone in a Forrest to solve a specific puzzle, but their isn't a forest on the island

->Open Spoiler<-

so you make one by taking all the tree pieces and grouping them together and Bing up pops a house in the middle of the woods

It's this experimentation and tactile approach to the world that makes it a joy to play. It constantly introduces new mechanics too and while its not super challenging or super long its a lovely world to explore and a real joy to flip your way around the island that gives you some real ah ha moments when everything comes together.

like a warm hug in video game form 5 big grins out of 5

[Lebowski]

Or mental health. Or emotionally absent parents.

There's a place for exploring any and all topics, in video games or in other mediums, but this dreariness is getting tiresome.

triple post, come on you lot post about some indie or smaller games nope ok i'll just ramble on to myself in here

i finished Dordogne off over the weekend, the ending is surprisingly sweet and one that finishes quite upbeat when you think the main story is about finding out about why your gran and father haven't spoke in years, by exploring the house of a dead relative. While it may not offer as much exploration as Boku no Natsuyasumi it really captures that lazy summer vibe and that feeling of lost childhood summers, its a nice place to spend a few hours.

[Deuteros]

triple post, come on you lot post about some indie or smaller games nope ok i'll just ramble on to myself in here

i finished Dordogne off over the weekend, the ending is surprisingly sweet and one that finishes quite upbeat when you think the main story is about finding out about why your gran and father haven't spoke in years, by exploring the house of a dead relative. While it may not offer as much exploration as Boku no Natsuyasumi it really captures that lazy summer vibe and that feeling of lost childhood summers, its a nice place to spend a few hours.

EDF is consuming all of my free time. Again!

But yeah, Dordogne caught my eye when it was announced as coming to Xbox Game Pass. If not earlier, I'll get to it when they announce it's leaving the service.;-)

[Neon Ignition]

Tchia
I like the light and soothing visuals but it got old very fast, it's pretty much just a very basic and quickly repetive mini-game/fetch quest title

[Lebowski]

Tchia
I like the light and soothing visuals but it got old very fast, it's pretty much just a very basic and quickly repetive mini-game/fetch quest title

I'm with you on this i wanted to like it but the game feels very unpolished tand repetitive, it doesn't look nearly as good as it did in the trailers, its in very mid tier PS4 territory.

[Neon Ignition]

I'm trying the PS+ game about the family of Foxes atm and that's losing me the more it goes on too.

[Lebowski]

I'm trying the PS+ game about the family of Foxes atm and that's losing me the more it goes on too.

I steered well clear of it, its another of those puzzle platform games like Inside, and Limbo, bastard children of Another world with whole sequences of trial and error where instant deaths is your reward for failure.

[Neon Ignition]

Yep, though they've grown fairly stale I could have weathered a narrative title but the puzzling around protecting the cubs isn't engaging

[Tobal]

Pseudo Regalia pc(steam) £5 seems to be a short 3/4 hour game if you know what you're doing. It's a throw back 3D platformers which picks alot up from Mario 64 and marries it with Metriodvania formula of linked areas, locked doors that need keys, movement powerups needed to traverse into new areas and couple of bosses to fight.

Alot of the stuff online said it looks like a PSone game... it doesn't, no PSone game looks like this (maybe Soul Reaver comes close), but to me it's a pure N64 homage, the blurry textures, those light beams and purple textures, the 2D iron grate and wooden panel textures, all N64. Controls are very smooth and it's not long before you get the triple wall bounce and start getting yourself into all sort of trouble. Combat isn't great, took me a bit to learn what to do and not do on the tutorial area boss, but i have it down now (specially when i reread the weapon description which says it can heal as well), don't bother using the lock on, free style and have the slide ready to get in and out after a couple of whacks.

I can see most of the games length will be getting lost in the castle, figuring out what powers you have right now will get you past whatever you're stuck platforming on. Definitely worth a pop a £5.

[Lebowski]

was trying to work out why the main protagonist hasn't got any trousers on/stolen her style from Donald duck,

the top two review on steam made me realise why

the schmoovement is on point and the booty is clapping.

fat goat thighs

looks like their catering to a specific crowd

[Dogg Thang]

The furries are a big market.

[Asura]

Pseudo Regalia pc(steam) £5 seems to be a short 3/4 hour game if you know what you're doing. It's a throw back 3D platformers which picks alot up from Mario 64 and marries it with Metriodvania formula of linked areas, locked doors that need keys, movement powerups needed to traverse into new areas and couple of bosses to fight.

Alot of the stuff online said it looks like a PSone game... it doesn't, no PSone game looks like this (maybe Soul Reaver comes close), but to me it's a pure N64 homage, the blurry textures, those light beams and purple textures, the 2D iron grate and wooden panel textures, all N64. Controls are very smooth and it's not long before you get the triple wall bounce and start getting yourself into all sort of trouble. Combat isn't great, took me a bit to learn what to do and not do on the tutorial area boss, but i have it down now (specially when i reread the weapon description which says it can heal as well), don't bother using the lock on, free style and have the slide ready to get in and out after a couple of whacks.

I can see most of the games length will be getting lost in the castle, figuring out what powers you have right now will get you past whatever you're stuck platforming on. Definitely worth a pop a £5.

Oh wow, I LOVE the look of this.

[Tobal]

In the options menu they include putting 'pants' on as Americans would say if Goat bottom and thighs are to much. And in video options you can turn off the extra stutter they added to the animations.