Steam catchup
I had planned on playing these games over the holiday, but technical difficulties and social obligations got in the way. Ah well.
OneShot feels like it’s the game that inspired Undertale at first, what with its rpgmaker origins and fourth-wall-breaking metanarrative, but that’s about where the similarities end. Where Undertale is a – at least in form – traditional JRPG where the backstory is still central and enemy encounters are random (albeit bullet hell avoidance fights instead of turn-based stat management), OneShot is a more traditional puzzle game and the metanarrative is the backstory. It’s clever and heartwarming in its own way.
Orwell probably has more in common with a swath of games I have not played, but it felt like a combination of Ace Attorney and Her Story to me. It’s neat, kind of clever and with an intriguing mystery – although I can’t shake the feeling that it would have been so much better if the central concept of the story had been more believable. It also forces your hand a bit too much to leave any lasting impression, but it has a lot of heart and well-written characters.
Fossil Echo is mostly a precision platformer. Not a spectacular precision platformer – It doesn’t have a very high skill ceiling and doesn’t leave a lot of room for creativity – but a competent one with solid controls and a nice presentation. It is short, a couple of hours at most, but it gets done what it is trying to do without getting repetitive.
Four Sided Fantasy is about as long as Fossil Echo but a puzzle-platformer rather than a reflex challenge. It’s pretty and has a few interesting puzzles, although it doesn’t go too deep into any of its mechanics. Still, it is very pleasurable to play and I can certainly respect going for a shorter game when the cool thing you’re trying to do does not require more.