Conarium Draw Line

On a technical level, the visual design is okay, even bordering on good. Conarium is built on the Unreal Engine 4, which usually means a game will look perfectly fine, unless the developers really don’t know what they’re doing, but not exceptional, unless the developers really know what they’re doing. My biggest gripe about UE games is always the damned lighting, where every single.

/It is always interesting to see what route developers take when they intend to adapt Lovecraft. I would say that most merely take monsters or settings and plop them into an experience of their own design, which hardly ever works well. The savvy ones look to capture the tone that Lovecraft evoked, the mounting mystery that leads to overwhelming terror that no hope can repel.

When a developer actually succeeds at doing this, as those behind Conarium did, the result is a truly singular experience. Not every part of Conarium works as well as the atmosphere, mind you, but it feels like an understatement to say they got the important part right.You are Frank Gilman, and you awaken to a strange device flashing otherworldly signals into your face. That proves to be the least of your concerns, because the Antarctic base you find yourself in is entirely deserted. Disturbing notes detail the team’s strange experiments and discoveries, bizarre life forms lie dormant in the laboratories, and something ominous stirs deep beneath the base. Coping with terrible revelations about your own part in this expedition, you are urged through caverns and ruins lost to history by a voice on the other end of a radio.

But no good can come of unbridled curiosity when eldritch forces are involved.I’ll avoid spoiling as much about the story as the store page does (seriously, don’t read it), but this is very clearly a tale set alongside Lovecraft’s own At the Mountains of Madness. Frank’s journey will take you from the forlorn base through a tour of some quintessentially Lovecraftian locales, complete with references to the mythos and representations of the more famous creatures. Along the way you’ll find loads of notes, sketches, and maps that expand the scope of the story and help place Frank in his role for this drama. There are a few particularly impactful discoveries that are left entirely to the player to acknowledge, which is a refreshing change from revelations in most horror games being dropped with huge stingers and setpieces.I mean, Conarium still has those moments, of course.

That’s a hallmark of Lovecraft’s tales of horror, the slow build to the great DUN DUN DUNNN moment at the very end. They haven’t forgotten this, and Conarium has a truly excellent ending (well, one of the two at least) that fits perfectly with Lovecraft’s own flair for the dramatic. And the road to get there is lined with the very sort of quiet, dreadful exploration that filled his stories. The atmosphere is what makes this game work so incredibly well, the long stretches of wandering, investigating, and puzzling out meanings that lead to yet more terrible discoveries. This is not a game lousy with jumpscares or chase scenes, and when they do happen it’s to very effectively remind the player that they are trespassing in places never meant for humans.As effective as it is, it won’t be what everyone is looking for in a horror game. Parts of the game are indeed quite slow, and getting tripped up on any of the puzzles can draw that out into moments of tedium.

This is not a puzzle-heavy game and the puzzles that are present tend to be simple environmental affairs, but failing to notice an interaction prompt or an open door may lead to some needless wandering. There’s not much feedback on the actual game systems, and this carries over to moments where you are actually threatened. Without spoiling too much I will say that there is an achievement for completing the game without dying, and I have it, and I’m honestly not sure why given some of the things I think happened.It’s really quite a minor quibble against a game focused so heavily on atmosphere and mystery, though. Conarium does exactly what it needs to do, which is capture the nigh-unfathomable dread that comes of exploring something entirely out of your depth. There are moments that blur the lines between past and present, memory and experience, and they’re far more effective than the illusory horrors you get in other indie titles. The graphics carry much of the game with moody, colorful environments rich in detail (though I’m not a fan of how your flashlight washes things out), and the soundtrack is muted or oppressive right when it works best. Games that channel the spirit of Lovecraft are rare, but Conarium succeeds in all the most important ways and makes a compelling adventure of it.

Ryan Engverson

04/25/2018

Where the Water Tastes Like Wine is a game I want to enjoy more than I do. It has a lot I enjoy and find interesting. I wanted to finish the game before I wrote anything up but I’m having a hard time pushing myself to complete it. It’s lasted longer than I thought it would and honestly it’s lasted longer than it should, given what type of game it is. I will eventually finish it, I want to, but it will be a slower process. It’s not an unplayable game but if you do choose to give it a shot you should keep a few things in mind regarding the experience.

Where the Water Tastes Like Wine takes place in America during the Great Depression. At the start of the game you are tasked with traveling across America’s landscape to collect stories. Stories you collect are treated like items in an inventory. Along your journey you encounter other travelers. Successfully tell them the stories they want to hear and they’ll slowly reveal their own personal story. The game ends once you have completed revealing the stories of these fellow travelers.

The Great Depression setting is a compelling one. Periods of distress in American history are not often explored in video games. It is a period rife with potential for narrative focused games. Unfortunately, it doesn’t feel like you get a greater sense of that history from the game. While the personal stories convey the struggles people went through you don’t get the narrative of the Great Depression itself. If you’re not familiar with the history it will just be some time in the past when America was poor.

The art style and music of the game initially drew me to the game. The pre-release marketing didn’t reveal much about the actual gameplay of the game so I didn’t know what to expect in that regard. The art and music did not disappoint. Both fit the setting pretty well, though the art style is the more unique and pleasurable aspect of the game. The voice acting is top notch. The majority of the game is voice acted with pleasant narrations of the stories you experience.

The focus of the game is stories and it is the most polished mechanic of the game. The main way you collect stories is by investigating locations and experiencing something which then becomes a story you can tell. When you come across the fellow travelers, you tell these stories to them. Except they request certain kinds of stories. I mostly enjoyed this except for one aspect.

Each story is a certain kind of story (tragic, funny, hopeful, etc.). Most of this is clear cut, except for thrilling or scary stories. Stories are not labeled as such, you have to figure that out yourself. Which can be difficult if how you define a genre is different from how the game does. Progress in the game is defined by how much the other travelers reveal their own story. This only happens if you tell them the kind of stories they request. It’s really aggravating to tell stories you think are thrilling but they read as scary or vice versa. Otherwise I enjoyed the mechanics of collecting and telling of stories and would like to see it developed and adapted in other games.

There are some other mechanics in the game. You walk around the map using your choice of controls. You interact with smaller locations or cities to collect stories. Larger cities can be entered where you are able to look for work or experience a unique story in the city. Otherwise there isn’t too much more, the cities can feel a little repetitive. Surprisingly there is a health mechanic in the game. It didn’t register to me until I died. I think I only lost health after hopping trains. The railroad people find you and beat you. You can heal yourself by eating food in the cities. There is also a currency and sleep mechanic. You use money to buy food or to pay to be on a train instead of hopping. And you usually get sleep when camping with other travelers.

Where the Water Tastes Like Wine firmly falls into the walking simulator genre. These games usually last just a few hours. Any longer and you risk losing your player. I played about ten hours of the game and I’m having trouble keeping my interest and engagement up. There is no personal narrative to entice you along. Just stories from other travelers where the pacing is dependent on how well the player does with the other the travelers, so things can feel drawn out or repetitive. The mechanics are not varied enough to carry the game for hours on end. Even for others who enjoy the walking simulator genre this may be a tough one. Looking around, the game takes around twenty hours to complete. Which feels somewhat like a chore now.

The game should not be avoided completely. It has merits but it is a niche game in a niche genre. I’m not surprised to read that the game is not doing as well (sales wise) as the creator hoped (I have my own thoughts on his reflections concerning video games and the landscape of video games but that is a conversation for another time). The game is enjoyable but falters because it is a longer game for the mechanics and gameplay loop it offers. But it is still a game that can offer us a lot to reflect on for what we do narratively and mechanically in future games.

Articles; snippets; about; dustforce; about; buy; videos; images; music; maps; community. Dustforce art. Dustforce is a platform video game developed by Hitbox Team. The game was released in January 2012 for Microsoft Windows via Steam, and Mac OS X through Steam in May 2012. A Linux port was released as part of the Humble Indie Bundle 6. Capcom published the game for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and Xbox 360. This is essentially a segmented run made by the entire community: it includes all #1 times at the time of recording, edited together with nexus movement by myself. By no means is this a perfect. Dustforce is a independent platform video game developed by Hitbox Team. The player controls one of four janitors who are attempting to sweep away a world corrupted with dust and filth. The player uses a number of acrobatic skills, such as double jumping and wall jumping to progress through the.

On a technical level, the visual design is okay, even bordering on good. Conarium is built on the Unreal Engine 4, which usually means a game will look perfectly fine, unless the developers really don’t know what they’re doing, but not exceptional, unless the developers really know what they’re doing. My biggest gripe about UE games is always the damned lighting, where every single.

/It is always interesting to see what route developers take when they intend to adapt Lovecraft. I would say that most merely take monsters or settings and plop them into an experience of their own design, which hardly ever works well. The savvy ones look to capture the tone that Lovecraft evoked, the mounting mystery that leads to overwhelming terror that no hope can repel.

When a developer actually succeeds at doing this, as those behind Conarium did, the result is a truly singular experience. Not every part of Conarium works as well as the atmosphere, mind you, but it feels like an understatement to say they got the important part right.You are Frank Gilman, and you awaken to a strange device flashing otherworldly signals into your face. That proves to be the least of your concerns, because the Antarctic base you find yourself in is entirely deserted. Disturbing notes detail the team’s strange experiments and discoveries, bizarre life forms lie dormant in the laboratories, and something ominous stirs deep beneath the base. Coping with terrible revelations about your own part in this expedition, you are urged through caverns and ruins lost to history by a voice on the other end of a radio.

But no good can come of unbridled curiosity when eldritch forces are involved.I’ll avoid spoiling as much about the story as the store page does (seriously, don’t read it), but this is very clearly a tale set alongside Lovecraft’s own At the Mountains of Madness. Frank’s journey will take you from the forlorn base through a tour of some quintessentially Lovecraftian locales, complete with references to the mythos and representations of the more famous creatures. Along the way you’ll find loads of notes, sketches, and maps that expand the scope of the story and help place Frank in his role for this drama. There are a few particularly impactful discoveries that are left entirely to the player to acknowledge, which is a refreshing change from revelations in most horror games being dropped with huge stingers and setpieces.I mean, Conarium still has those moments, of course.

That’s a hallmark of Lovecraft’s tales of horror, the slow build to the great DUN DUN DUNNN moment at the very end. They haven’t forgotten this, and Conarium has a truly excellent ending (well, one of the two at least) that fits perfectly with Lovecraft’s own flair for the dramatic. And the road to get there is lined with the very sort of quiet, dreadful exploration that filled his stories. The atmosphere is what makes this game work so incredibly well, the long stretches of wandering, investigating, and puzzling out meanings that lead to yet more terrible discoveries. This is not a game lousy with jumpscares or chase scenes, and when they do happen it’s to very effectively remind the player that they are trespassing in places never meant for humans.As effective as it is, it won’t be what everyone is looking for in a horror game. Parts of the game are indeed quite slow, and getting tripped up on any of the puzzles can draw that out into moments of tedium.

This is not a puzzle-heavy game and the puzzles that are present tend to be simple environmental affairs, but failing to notice an interaction prompt or an open door may lead to some needless wandering. There’s not much feedback on the actual game systems, and this carries over to moments where you are actually threatened. Without spoiling too much I will say that there is an achievement for completing the game without dying, and I have it, and I’m honestly not sure why given some of the things I think happened.It’s really quite a minor quibble against a game focused so heavily on atmosphere and mystery, though. Conarium does exactly what it needs to do, which is capture the nigh-unfathomable dread that comes of exploring something entirely out of your depth. There are moments that blur the lines between past and present, memory and experience, and they’re far more effective than the illusory horrors you get in other indie titles. The graphics carry much of the game with moody, colorful environments rich in detail (though I’m not a fan of how your flashlight washes things out), and the soundtrack is muted or oppressive right when it works best. Games that channel the spirit of Lovecraft are rare, but Conarium succeeds in all the most important ways and makes a compelling adventure of it.

Ryan Engverson

04/25/2018

Where the Water Tastes Like Wine is a game I want to enjoy more than I do. It has a lot I enjoy and find interesting. I wanted to finish the game before I wrote anything up but I’m having a hard time pushing myself to complete it. It’s lasted longer than I thought it would and honestly it’s lasted longer than it should, given what type of game it is. I will eventually finish it, I want to, but it will be a slower process. It’s not an unplayable game but if you do choose to give it a shot you should keep a few things in mind regarding the experience.

Where the Water Tastes Like Wine takes place in America during the Great Depression. At the start of the game you are tasked with traveling across America’s landscape to collect stories. Stories you collect are treated like items in an inventory. Along your journey you encounter other travelers. Successfully tell them the stories they want to hear and they’ll slowly reveal their own personal story. The game ends once you have completed revealing the stories of these fellow travelers.

The Great Depression setting is a compelling one. Periods of distress in American history are not often explored in video games. It is a period rife with potential for narrative focused games. Unfortunately, it doesn’t feel like you get a greater sense of that history from the game. While the personal stories convey the struggles people went through you don’t get the narrative of the Great Depression itself. If you’re not familiar with the history it will just be some time in the past when America was poor.

The art style and music of the game initially drew me to the game. The pre-release marketing didn’t reveal much about the actual gameplay of the game so I didn’t know what to expect in that regard. The art and music did not disappoint. Both fit the setting pretty well, though the art style is the more unique and pleasurable aspect of the game. The voice acting is top notch. The majority of the game is voice acted with pleasant narrations of the stories you experience.

The focus of the game is stories and it is the most polished mechanic of the game. The main way you collect stories is by investigating locations and experiencing something which then becomes a story you can tell. When you come across the fellow travelers, you tell these stories to them. Except they request certain kinds of stories. I mostly enjoyed this except for one aspect.

Each story is a certain kind of story (tragic, funny, hopeful, etc.). Most of this is clear cut, except for thrilling or scary stories. Stories are not labeled as such, you have to figure that out yourself. Which can be difficult if how you define a genre is different from how the game does. Progress in the game is defined by how much the other travelers reveal their own story. This only happens if you tell them the kind of stories they request. It’s really aggravating to tell stories you think are thrilling but they read as scary or vice versa. Otherwise I enjoyed the mechanics of collecting and telling of stories and would like to see it developed and adapted in other games.

There are some other mechanics in the game. You walk around the map using your choice of controls. You interact with smaller locations or cities to collect stories. Larger cities can be entered where you are able to look for work or experience a unique story in the city. Otherwise there isn’t too much more, the cities can feel a little repetitive. Surprisingly there is a health mechanic in the game. It didn’t register to me until I died. I think I only lost health after hopping trains. The railroad people find you and beat you. You can heal yourself by eating food in the cities. There is also a currency and sleep mechanic. You use money to buy food or to pay to be on a train instead of hopping. And you usually get sleep when camping with other travelers.

Where the Water Tastes Like Wine firmly falls into the walking simulator genre. These games usually last just a few hours. Any longer and you risk losing your player. I played about ten hours of the game and I’m having trouble keeping my interest and engagement up. There is no personal narrative to entice you along. Just stories from other travelers where the pacing is dependent on how well the player does with the other the travelers, so things can feel drawn out or repetitive. The mechanics are not varied enough to carry the game for hours on end. Even for others who enjoy the walking simulator genre this may be a tough one. Looking around, the game takes around twenty hours to complete. Which feels somewhat like a chore now.

The game should not be avoided completely. It has merits but it is a niche game in a niche genre. I’m not surprised to read that the game is not doing as well (sales wise) as the creator hoped (I have my own thoughts on his reflections concerning video games and the landscape of video games but that is a conversation for another time). The game is enjoyable but falters because it is a longer game for the mechanics and gameplay loop it offers. But it is still a game that can offer us a lot to reflect on for what we do narratively and mechanically in future games.

Articles; snippets; about; dustforce; about; buy; videos; images; music; maps; community. Dustforce art. Dustforce is a platform video game developed by Hitbox Team. The game was released in January 2012 for Microsoft Windows via Steam, and Mac OS X through Steam in May 2012. A Linux port was released as part of the Humble Indie Bundle 6. Capcom published the game for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and Xbox 360. This is essentially a segmented run made by the entire community: it includes all #1 times at the time of recording, edited together with nexus movement by myself. By no means is this a perfect. Dustforce is a independent platform video game developed by Hitbox Team. The player controls one of four janitors who are attempting to sweep away a world corrupted with dust and filth. The player uses a number of acrobatic skills, such as double jumping and wall jumping to progress through the.