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Category: Every Game I’ve Finished

  • Zombi (Ubisoft, 1986)

    Zombi (Ubisoft, 1986)

    Developed/Published by: Ubi Soft (it used to have a space in it…)
    Released: 1986
    Completed: 28/10/2025
    Completion: Everyone escaped!

    Man. We’ve absolutely got to get access to old games sorted. I’ve talked about this previously–most notably when discussing MULE–but I think it’s good to reflect on the fact that Zombi is the first game ever released by one of the most recognisable game publishers in the world, Ubisoft, and in order to play it I had to scrabble around online to find it–and then scrabble around even longer to find it English. And then have to fiddle around with emulators because emulating old home computers is just not as plug-and-play as emulating old consoles is.

    Now, you could argue that Ubisoft might prefer that Zombi not be accessible, because one of the first things that you’ll learn about it is that it’s a completely blatant rip-off of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, to the point where–and I’ll go into more detail on this later–you actively need to know the plot of the film to understand how to progress in the game. Which makes sense, considering the game is called “Zombi”, the literal title of Dario Argento’s cut (released, fact fans, nine months before George Romero’s definitive version in non-English speaking countries.) The game was, at best, on some shaky legal ground (you’d think they’d just have ripped off Night of The Living Dead instead–no copyright issues there). For their part, Ubisoft haven’t tried to paint it out of their history–they do mention it right on their website–but its 2012 Wii U title ZombiU has absolutely no connection to it, and then re-releasing that as Zombi on Steam and elsewhere does go some to making finding their first game absolutely more of a ballache, whether that’s intentional or not.

    (It could be worse, I suppose–most of Ubisoft’s other earliest titles, such as Fer &  Flamme (“Iron & Flame”) weren’t even released in English, leaving the likes of the poor old CRPG Addict absolutely flailing.)

    As Ubisoft’s first game, it would probably serve us to dig into the founding of Ubisoft a bit, because it explains quite a lot. Ubisoft began as the Guillemot’s family business (though the family, in effect, does still control it) selling, uh, the things farmers need to farmers. The five sons of the family, however, had bigger ideas: first selling audio CDs (then a brand new technology), then computers and software, before realising that they could buy hardware and software from the UK–where it was half the price of a French distributor–and resell it on to French consumers undercutting competitors and still making a tidy profit. Before long they were engaging in a roaring trade of computer games, and so obviously decided they had to take the next step in (ahem) vertical integration: making the games themselves.

    Well, not exactly themselves, obviously. It’s not like the brothers got their hands dirty with that. As was usual for the time, they got school children to do it for them. Yannick Cadin–still a high school student, though eighteen so I am being a bit hyperbolic by calling him a child–would code the game despite having (in his own words) “never written a program of more than 100 lines in assembler”, along with graphic designer Patrick Daher and screenwriter Alexandre Bonan under Sylvie Hugonnier1, all of whom appear in Zombi as the main characters (though if Cadin looks like his video game equivalent, he’s a terrifying fellow.)

    What makes this even more interesting is that as a French company, the games that Ubisoft will have been importing will almost certainly have been for the Amstrad CPC, because the system was uniquely popular there, meaning that Ubisoft’s first game would be a CPC exclusive for several years until it’s ported to the usual suspects (Spectrum, C64, Amiga, ST, and PC.)

    As a result, I really wanted to play this through on CPC, as it was, after all, my first computer, and I so rarely have a decent excuse to play anything on it. Zombi on Amstrad CPC looks like this:

    At least, this is the version that everyone seems to have online. Intriguingly, in Retro Gamer Issue 204 there’s a claim that there were “separate versions for 64k and 128k machines (the latter benefited from more detailed graphics)” though it’s completely unsourced and I can’t find any other reference to it or difference in versions online. What’s important either way is that Zombi is an absolutely fascinating example of one of my favourite things about this era of game development, something I’ve talked about many times–the fact that genre has not ossified. There are no expectations.

    Zombi is, sort of, a dungeon crawler, with the dungeon here a shopping mall. It’s also sort of a graphic adventure, because most of the game is about collecting objects and then using them in particular ways. But, there are zombies roaming, and you have to fight them in real time, so it’s sort of an action game–maybe the first survival horror! On top of that, characters have to eat, and sleep, so it’s also sort of a pure survival game. And at the same time, it isn’t even that simple, because you have four characters, and you can use them all separately, switching between them whenever you like!

    It is a lot, an astoundingly broad game design for a teenager at a completely inexperienced company to pull off, and apparently it only took about six months (Cadin, modestly, claims it could have been done a lot faster.) What gets so interesting about it is that there seems to have been absolutely no thought taken to make anything about the way Zombi tries to pull its disparate genre ideas together match anything gamers of 1986 might have already seen.

    Now, to be fair, it is France, it is 1986, and it is the Amstrad CPC. Games such as The Bard’s Tale wouldn’t hit that system for a couple of years, so I really can’t say if the Zombi team had ever seen a first-person dungeon crawler. But if they had, they apparently rejected samey corridors to instead prioritise making each location visually unique over every other consideration, because the interface is completely bonkers.

    Most apparent will be the menu at the bottom of the screen. The Amstrad CPC didn’t have mouse as a default input, so they had to get creative, meaning that you have to scroll back and forth through a list of everything you might want to do (bafflingly, the scroll direction was backward from my input, which I imagine must be how they intended it.) That already makes doing really anything awkward. But navigating is even more insane. Rather than a “dungeon” it’s better to imagine the world of Zombi the same way as a text adventure–each screen you see is a series of rooms with distinct entrances and exits. However, the game doesn’t tell you what exits there are. While you can work some of them out by what you can see, in many cases (for example, things behind you) you have to blindly attempt moving there–and the game on CPC has absolutely no feedback when you do anything wrong. You almost can’t be sure you’ve even done anything in many cases.

    (Well, unless you’re outside, in which case you stumble into a horde of zombies and immediately die. Or if you move backwards off the mall’s balcony without a rope, and fall to your death.)

    You don’t navigate the world by doing anything sensible like moving with the arrow keys, however. Instead on screen a tiny wireframe representation of the space appears, and then you have to select what direction you go (for example, selecting the outer frame to move backwards.) It is completely inelegant in a way that somehow also feels like a stroke of genius, in that it’s arguably far clearer than movement in an early first-person dungeon crawler (think how many times you could move in those wireframes and not actually be sure you moved) but is also unbelievably clunky and frustrating.

    You can see the wireframe representation in the middle here. I’m trying to move right.

    The game has some other quirks–similarly stylistic, similarly related to developer immaturity. The game honestly looks good for the system, with a stark grey and black palette (that again makes me wonder why they didn’t go for Night of the Living Dead) and the clever decision to make anything on screen you can interact with pop with a bright blue colour. The game feels genuinely atmospheric and lonely as you creep around the dead mall, scavenging for what you need, but it does seem that they didn’t quite know how to get the zombies into the game in an exciting way. When you’re in a room with a zombie, they’re just given a portrait on the same line as your heroes portraits, and after a number of seconds you’re officially attacked. What this means is that you have to bash keys rhythmically (boo!) to beat them to death with your hands, taking damage the whole time. You can avoid this if you have a ranged weapon–you can use the gun before you’re attacked, and take part in a simple, almost golf swing-meter like system where you just have to hit the button at the right time to kill them.

    Unfortunately, navigating the menu to get to the gun in time was, for me, like trying to solve a Rubik’s cube behind my back, and so, unfortunately (and I’m not proud of it) I had to give up on the Amstrad CPC version for my own sanity. Thankfully, when the game was ported to Atari ST and Amiga four years later, Alexander Yarmitsky took over porting duties and changed the interface to something more contemporary, so I pulled up the Amiga version to try it there.

    In the ported version2 all the weird controls are replaced with, thankfully, a cursor-based system and direction arrows around the screen so movement makes more sense (well, there’s some double duty taken where “forward” and “back” also mean “up” and “down” but I’ll take it.) You can also see zombies now, who sort of… toddle across the screen so you can headshot them with the cursor before they attack you. It’s maybe too easy, but it’s certainly more engaging.

    I’d love to say that makes the Atari ST or Amiga version definitive, but… it’s in full colour! Not only does this remove all of the atmosphere, it means that you literally can’t tell where any of the interactibles are on the screen, turning what was a perfectly understandable adventure game into a baffling pixel hunt. It is… ruinous, and it really means that if you want to make sense of the game you have to use a walkthrough (and probably a map).

    This is something you’ll want to do after a while, because you’re eventually going to need something to do. If there’s one truly disappointing thing about Zombi–outside of there not being the perfect mama bear option for me, our retro game Goldilocks–it’s that as just a survival game it’s not that interesting. It’s neat to wander the level, kill the zombies, and have to eat and sleep, but there’s no incident. I think as a kid it could have been something I loved to noodle around in–there’s a lot of space for your imagination–but the CPC’s controls just kill any thought that I would have.

    When you actually intend to beat the game, it’s weirdly trivial (when it’s not tedious) as long as you can actually spot where the things you need are and know the plot of the movie. First you have to block all the entrances to the mall; then you have to kill all the zombies and put them in cold storage so they don’t reanimate (I’m not sure if you have to turn the electricity on in the basement to do this, but I did.) Once you’ve done that, the mall is immediately attacked by Hells Angels, and you just need to steal petrol from their truck for your helicopter, get in and escape. 

    If it wasn’t for having to trawl the whole map for every zombie–don’t forget you can move backwards, because I missed one and had to cover the map about three times–and then lug them down to the cold storage, only being able to carry about three at a time, this would be over in about ten minutes. But I don’t even think they made you kill and store all the zombies to pad the game out–I think it’s just because, well, that’s what happens in Dawn of the Dead, isn’t it?

    I’m not quite entirely sure how to explain it, but a raw enthusiasm for the source material shines through via touches like that, and even if functionally they’re not good game design, something about Zombi is charming. I don’t know if I recommend it as such, but I think if there was a monochrome “can see objects” version with the updated controls I actually think I would.

    At the very least, more people should know about it. I guess I’ve done my bit!

    Will I ever play it again? Come on Ubisoft, release a 40th anniversary ultimate version with the proper colours. I dare you. 

    Final Thought: If you want to play through this, the best help is (surprisingly) Amiga Action’s walkthrough, even though as an Amiga Power boy I’d never admit it. They do screw up the map a bit–they don’t distinguish between inside and outside on the first level so it’s confusing, so you might want to use it in conjunction with this other map which is, sadly, unsourced (but I assume from one of the many French CPC mags.) Or just draw around the mall interior with a pen or something. But as usual, I recommend not just jumping straight to the walkthrough–it’s more fun to noodle around first, even just the big beats I gave you above should be enough to get you through the game really if you’re willing to map it yourself.

    (Actually, that’s a lie. Even with the map and solution I usually couldn’t find where to click on most of the screens to use buttons and things without basically clicking everywhere. Sigh.)

    1. This is a bit of an assumption. Most sites explicitly state Hugonnier was director of marketing/PR, but Cadin refers to a “certain Sylvie” who “explain[d] that she was approached to set up a video game publishing house and, as she ha[d] some experience in this field, she [was to be] the director of this new company.” Surely the same person. ↩︎
    2. Well, in the ported version for Atari ST, Amiga and the ZX Spectrum. Cadin ported the PC version and doggedly stuck to his original control scheme and the Commodore 64 porting team followed his lead. Unfortunate. ↩︎

  • The Texas Chainsaw Massacre / Halloween (Wizard Video, 1983)

    The Texas Chainsaw Massacre / Halloween (Wizard Video, 1983)

    Developed/Published by: Ed Salvo (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Tim Martin and Robert Barber (Halloween) / Wizard Video Games
    Released: 1983
    Completed: 22/10/2025
    Completion: I played ‘em!

    The schedule for new articles has gone a bit squiff due to life difficulties (let’s just say: if you weren’t already a subscriber, I’d be asking you to subscribe here with big wet wobbly eyes) and I had planned to do a really interesting game–the first from a very well known company, yet it doesn’t get talked about much–this week, but it’s simply taking too long to get through. So I’m going to lean on the crutch of some crappy Atari games (not least because I only mentioned The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in my Poltergeist essay) and then of course write far, far too much about them anyway.

    I’m combining them because it’s sort of hard to talk about them separately without repeating yourself relating their provenance, which relates very much to the absurdities of the pre-’83 gold rush and the resulting fallout.

    It begins with Games by Apollo, a company formed purely as cash grab by someone with no knowledge of video games–unusual at the time, but surely not the first, and absolutely not the last. That company would have its own “gang of four”-esque exodus led by Ed Salvo (who would go on to develop The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) because the company was apparently so mismanaged: The founder, Pat Roper, grew the company beyond its means to compete with Activision, and frustrated with traffic in Dallas got distracted with a plan to create two-person helicopters(???) Within a few weeks of the exodus the company collapsed.

    Somewhat desperate to get their fledgling company, Video Software Specialists (VSS) off the ground, a very strange saviour would swoop in, obviously attempting to cash-in in what was–by then–a rapidly collapsing market: Charles Band’s Wizard Video.

    If you’re familiar with Charles Band by this point, it’s probably due to his relentless, desperate exploitation of whatever IP he happens to have to hand and can make something as cheaply as possible with. Perhaps you’ve seen one of his eight (eight!) Evil Bong movies [“Don’t forget the Gingerweed Man spin-off.”–Ed.] or one of the fifteen (fifteen!) Puppet Master films? [“At least some of those are… ok?”–Ed.]

    At the time however, most of those films were but a twinkle in Band’s eye, and Wizard Video was his home video distribution company through which he was able to distribute titles such as (yes) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. On Band’s own website he describes the decision to get into video games thus:

    “A forward thinking company, Wizard foresaw the potential for massive growth in home video gaming and produced adaptations of THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and HALLOWEEN for the Atari 2600, which were in effect the very first horror console video games ever released.”

    I genuinely love the use of “in effect” there, because they absolutely weren’t, and they literally chose to do this while the market was crashing, which makes the portrayal even funnier.

    Either way, it seemed that Band’s idea was to exploit the IP of the most popular videos they’d been distributing, and try and make hay with the fact that these were adult video games (Mystique’s “Swedish Erotica” games had come out the year earlier.) There were three planned games, and ironically the most adult, Flesh Gordon–based on the 1974 sex comedy–would never see the light of day with not even a prototype found1. The other two games would however, with both The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween seeing release at some point in 1983–seemingly close to the Halloween season if we can base that off the timing of contemporary review (we probably can’t).

    The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

    According to Ed Salvo, this was developed in “about six weeks” and he told Digital Press that he was “not real proud of this one, but we had to eat.” Which is actually a change of tune, because in 1983 he wasn’t even willing to admit he’d worked on it, with an aside in the announcement of the title and Flesh Gordon in the Feb 1983 Videogaming Illustrated stating:

    “We were asked–make that begged–by the designer of these Atari-compatible cartridges not to reveal his/her name. We won’t.”

    (They actually hint that you can work out who it was by reading the previous issue, but I couldn’t. I found this funny quote from Bette Davis though?)

    Frankly, it’s completely fair that he wouldn’t want anyone to know he worked on this, because it’s absolutely terrible, even by the low bar set by any Atari 2600 game (buy exp. 2602, etc.) As Leatherface, you run right (or left, doesn’t matter) to chase “tourists”, trying to avoid fences, thickets (makes sense) cow skulls (ok) and wheelchairs (lol) to catch up so you can chainsaw them to death. 

    There’s supposed to be some tactics to this; your chainsaw is constantly idling, creating a timer via remaining fuel and when you actually run the chainsaw the fuel runs out faster–and you only get extra fuel for a certain number of successful kills. But it doesn’t work at all, because there’s no meaning in which direction you run as tourists always appear, and then when you try and chainsaw them they… teleport behind you? Repeatedly?

    There may be some kind of timing aspect to starting your chainsaw otherwise they “dodge” you–but I couldn’t work out the timing at all. Worse, probably, is getting stuck on one of the obstacles, where you get awkwardly frozen for what feels like an age. The wheelchairs that fly onto the screen are very very funny–clearly one of the few things they pulled from the film, which apparently they hadn’t even seen before getting the contract–but it’s otherwise just annoying.

    The game also has a bizarre coda when you lose all your lives: one of the tourists runs onto the screen and appears to kick Leatherface in the balls. It made me laugh the first time I saw it, but it does, well, make a mockery of the whole thing.

    I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this game was originally planned to be a touch more in-depth–because you can move left and right, I assume they were planning a kind of Defender-like system where you had to run around the level getting all the tourists to then move onto the next, but in six weeks they just ran out of time or (more likely) just couldn’t be arsed because they knew they were shoving out a dog to a company that didn’t know what it was doing during a historic market crash.

    Halloween

    Ed Salvo, again via Digital Press, notes that although this was produced by VSS, it was actually contracted out to a couple of different ex-Games By Apollo developers, Tim Martin and Robert Barber. It’s possible that these names ring a bell if you’re a real old-head, as they’re two of the founders of MicroGraphic Image, and there they would develop the beloved (sort of!) and influential (also sort of!) Spelunker!

    As with VSS and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the money from Halloween allowed Martin and Barber to found MicroGraphic Image along with a fellow called Cash Foley [“when you riffle a stack of paper against a microphone”–Sound Dept. Ed.] and all three would develop Spelunker.

    I think there’s something very serendipitous about the shlockmeister Charles Band indirectly helping the creation of one of the most infamous “kusoge” (and to be honest, that’s the kind of thing that he should trumpet on his website rather than statements that aren’t vague enough to not be obviously incorrect.) Unfortunately, the company wouldn’t last too long even with his largesse; the reason Spelunker is so well known is that it was ultimately sold off to Brøderbund at which point (sadly) Barber and Foley’s names would fall off the marquee. Foley explained on his blog:

    “Spelunker was Tim’s original idea and programmed the game logic. When the game was released, we made a strategic decision to put Tim name out front.  Besides, we were all convinced this was the first of many games and we would all have our turn.”

    Sadly, they didn’t, and Martin and Barber don’t seem to have discussed their time developing Halloween online at all, so I am stuck, as usual, with a lot of supposition and my own interpretation. Foley, for what it’s worth, says:

    “The game was really very good considering the restrictions of the the Atari 2600 and was ahead of its time in content and usage of the Halloween theme music.”

    I’m gonna say he’s being too kind here–although I do think he’s more or less correct about the music.

    With The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I’m really stretching to say that they had plans for the game beyond what you see, but with Halloween there is, genuinely, an actual attempt at game design, and it almost works.

    The screen shows two levels of a house, in which you (in this case an unnamed babysitter) must navigate to find children that you are attempting to rescue from the (also weirdly unnamed) “killer” (you know, Michael Myers2.)

    To do this, you can move through the house left or right, and go into doors which teleport you to another room. When you see a kid, you can press the fire button, at which point they “lock” to you as if you’re holding hands, allowing you to run to the “safe rooms” at the end of each house where Michael won’t show up (there’s no reason given for this, and I wonder if akin to The Empire Stikes Back, they simply didn’t have space to add graphics to make this make sense–like bundling the kids out of the house via a window, or something.) In the safe rooms the doors more obviously move you between the top/bottom levels, which isn’t that important in the game as released, but I imagine felt more important in the game as designed.

    While this is going on, Michael is pursuing you in an amusingly relentless way. I don’t know for sure, but I assume he just spawns from a random screen entrance within a random range of time, meaning that you can run off a screen where he was and have him appear from the other side of the screen within a couple of seconds. Each time he appears a honestly decent (for Atari 2600) recreation of the Halloween theme plays, and you know what? It’s effective! You want to get the fuck off that screen! Immediately!

    Against Michael you have only a few tactics. Obviously, there’s running away. Alternatively, you can try and juke him; if you’re leading a kid, you can let go so you can dodge and then try and grab the kid again, which is high risk. Rarely, you might find a knife in the level, which allows you a very short range stab that can hit Michael if you can get the timing right. It doesn’t give you any extra downtime or anything, but it’s worth points.

    As I’ve said, as a game this almost, sort of, works. Collect kids, avoid the enemy, occasionally get the chance to turn the tables. Unlike The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, even the deaths are rewarding–the babysitter and even the kids(!) get decapitated with a wee Atari blood spray, and there are other touches that show that they seemed to be invested in making something, you know, actually good: some rooms have “electrical blackouts” so the light flicks on and off–you might find yourself in the room, see nothing, have the lights go out, and Michael suddenly appear. That’s fun!

    The problem is that there isn’t really a good solution to the game design’s one obvious flaw: you can get stuck running back and forth between rooms trying to avoid Michael when you’re trying to rescue a child, as he will repeatedly spawn in front of you. Obviously, you’re supposed to juke him; but in practice, it’s much easier to run away and hope that the random number generator will work in your favour, giving you enough time that he spawns behind you instead. 

    It’s possible that players who spent a lot of time with this game did get the dodging down pat and get something out of it–E.C. Meade in a contemporary review in Videogaming & Computergaming Illustrated surprisingly called it a “wonderful game”–but there’s just not quite enough here. Like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it needed to be a Defender-like succession of levels with a set amount of children to rescue and with punishment for letting Michael kill them for this to really pop.

    But at least there’s an actual idea here. In fact, if you wanted to be really generous you could say this still prefigures things like Clock Tower or the immortal enemies in things like the Resident Evil franchise, or even the hand-holding of Ico. I mean, I wouldn’t go that far, but you could.

    Will I ever play them again? Oh my no.

    Final Thought: But whither controversy? Interesting to note that although E.C. Meade was a fan of Halloween–though cooler on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre–his co-reviewer Jim Clark was much more prudish. On Halloween he stated “It takes a sick human to enjoy this sick game” although weirdly he found The Texas Chainsaw Massacre “marginally less offensive.”

    A few months later Phillip Edwards of Fresno CA would send in a letter to Videogaming & Computergaming Illustrated to say “Make no mistake about it, the games Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween are harmful and dangerous. A disgrace. Jim Clark’s reviews and perceptive insights were right on.”

    But that seems to be about it!

    1. Amusingly, at AtariProtos.com the (anonymous, but possibly Ed Salvo?) programmer claims that Wizard Video stole the near-final version and intended to publish it without paying. ↩︎
    2. What’s annoying here is that they could have referred to him as “The Shape” as in the film’s credits. But I suppose that might have been confusing for Atari 2600 gamers expecting an actual cube or triangle or something, considering that’s what most of the fucking games look like. ↩︎
  • Without A Dawn (Makkonen, 2025)

    Without A Dawn (Makkonen, 2025)

    Developed/Published by: Jesse Makkonen
    Released: 19/05/2025
    Completed: 14/10/2025
    Completion: +++ +++ +++ +++ +++

    [This article includes a major spoiler for Without A Dawn and reference to self-harm. It’s short, so you may wish to play it first, though I will admittedly go on to explain that I don’t recommend you do.]

    Vibes.

    Horror is so much about vibes.

    I know that’s is pretty much baby’s first media literacy, but I was lucky enough to see a work in progress of Joe Meredith’s latest film, Harvest Brood, as part of my buddy Justin Decloux’s 24-Hour Horror Movie Mind Melter, and I’ve been thinking about it because I was so blown away by Meredith’s careful curation of vibe. Despite an obviously low budget, the film uses the SOV (“shot on video”) aesthetic to mix imagery of post-industrial suburban America, “true-crime” documentary talking heads/rostrum camera, and goopy lo-fi gore to create something genuine and unsettling. Something that lingers; a perfect movie to watch in the wee small hours, eyelids drooping, losing connection between what’s real and isn’t. Drifting off, perhaps, into your own reverie of deserted strip malls at dusk, or the feel of damp leaves underfoot as you trudge past suburban homes decked out in Halloween decorations, only to awaken confused or distressed.

    This feeling–the space between the real of the awake and the disordered unreality of sleep, is explored in Finnish developer Jesse Makkonen’s visual novel Without A Dawn, and a preoccupation he’s had across his releases in titles such as Silence Of The Sleep and Afterdream. The visuals, however, of Without A Dawn are immediately arresting, with stark, limited palette pixel art filtered to appear as writhing ASCII art, not so much “All I see is blonde, brunette, redhead” as symbolic of the fog of slumber, that our visual processing can be so easily scrambled by our own systems.

    But vibes are not visual alone.

    A short game–I was surprised to find it the shortest I’ve played this year, even when compared to games such as Cyrano–Without A Dawn concentrates on an unnamed character who has cut themselves off and retired to a remote cabin as a form of escape, but finds themselves troubled, unable to sleep, questioning: did I see something? Is something strange happening, or is it all in my head?

    There are a variety of styles of visual novels, and Without A Dawn takes the most restrictive path, as a nearly completely linear experience with no major branching. There are only a couple of situations in where you even get a choice that doesn’t lead straight back to the same options if you don’t select the “right” answer, and while I do think it’s intentional–the game is about a creeping inevitability, about the illusion of choice–even in such a short game it’s quickly transparent that your choices are meaningless and it’s immediately unrewarding to even have to do them (real “why bother asking if you know what the answer is?” hours.) 

    I think it more than edges the game towards problematic, too, because what it treats as inevitable is… suicide. Now, whether or not it is I think you could debate–perhaps it’s no more real than anything else–but I think it’s just as easy to say I’m soft-pedalling here, it reads clearly as such and even goes so far to reward the player with a climax with an abstract beauty, ultimately telling them this was the “right choice”.

    It feels dangerous. Even if you retry, the game makes it clear that you will, ultimately, never be able to resist or escape it. The only thing the protagonist is allowed to do is end it.

    Like VILE: Exhumed, Without A Dawn struggles with the problem horror often does: what are you actually trying to say? Vibes are not just aesthetic; it is to find a frequency that harmonises with our understanding of the world, and in horror it must find that frequency to create the discord that unsettles us. In Without A Dawn, the inevitability feels false, it feels authored, because it gives the player no real way to fight it. It simply doesn’t ring true, and as a result the game collapses. Particularly disingenuously, as soon as the game ends, the developer appears–still clothed in the game’s creepy aesthetic–to directly ask you if you’ve enjoyed the game and if you’ll give it a review. It’s utterly immersion-smashing, and makes you feel like he hasn’t taken anything he’s shown you seriously. Horror vibes and suicide chic as product, first and foremost, rather than being about anything at all.

    When writing about a smaller game, I want to err towards forgiving. But Without A Dawn isn’t merely hollow, or frustratingly uninteractive; it’s ill-considered to the point of negligence. 

    Will I ever play it again? Absolutely not.

    Final Thought: I hope that Meredith will be able to complete and release Harvest Brood soon, a work where vibes are in service of an exploration of a uniquely American decay. I also hope the trailer convinces you to keep it on your radar:

    Update (28/10/2025): Harvest Blood is available online now, and you can watch it, in full, on Youtube for free!

  • Poltergeist (Tandy, 1982)

    Poltergeist (Tandy, 1982)

    Developed/Published by: Unknown / Tandy
    Released: 1982
    Completed: 02/10/2025
    Completion: Well… I saw all three levels.

    Before we get into the article: you can pre-order a copy of exp. 2602, my brand new zine, right now. If you haven’t picked up any issues yet, there’s a discounted bundle of all three zines! Patreon members get an even bigger discount: subscriptions start at just $1!

    It’s October, which means it’s a time of spooks, Draculas, werewolves, and finally getting to wear that light coat you love. Since writing about Castlevania, I thought it might be fun to spend the rest of October with a bit more of a focus on the Halloween season the way I do for Christmas, but I was quickly struck by a key difference between the seasons: in the Christmas season, everything “Christmassy” actively relates to, or features, Christmas. A “Christmas movie” has Christmas in it–even if it’s completely tangential to the plot, it’s at the very least set during the season. But during the Halloween season, we really don’t need everything to relate directly to Halloween. Sure there’s your, well, Halloweens, your Ernest Scared Stupids, but no one is making a case that you include films that just happen to feature Halloween as “the best Halloween movie” that everyone should watch every year–well, unless there’s someone out there with Die Hard-like passion for Marriage Story, or something.

    What we instead require is that our Halloween content be, well, scary. Or at least a little unsettling. So it felt like it wouldn’t really make sense for me to limit anything I played this month to things that were directly Halloweeny, and instead just nose around the horror genre and pull up anything I found interesting or surprising. Which is how I ended up playing Poltergeist for the TRS-80 Color Computer.

    I’ll be honest–I know absolutely nothing about the TRS-80 Color Computer. In fact, I assumed it was a version of the TRS-80, which would make sense, but it’s actually a completely different system. So it’s not the system that made me think to boot up Poltergeist. I decided to look at it because I think like many people, I particularly associate this season with horror movies, and it just seemed utterly surprising to see that one of the biggest films of 1982–directed by Tobe Hooper, produced by Steven Spielberg–somehow had a game exclusive for a computer that, at this point, is pretty poorly remembered. 

    It gets even more surprising when you consider that 1982 is pretty much ground zero for the movie tie-in. Sure, there have been licensed games before–read all about Superman in exp. 2602!–but in 1982 suddenly movie tie-ins, and Spielberg tie-ins specifically, become big business, with Raiders Of The Lost Ark and (unfortunately) E.T. showing up.

    It wasn’t just Spielberg getting in on the action: we’ve got The Empire Strikes Back for Atari 2600, Star Trek: The Motion Picture for Vectrex, multiple Tron games, even an adaptation of Fantastic Voyage, a movie from 1966! Poltergeist really is an outlier, however, by being released on a home computer where the market lent far more hobbyist. The TRS-80 Color Computer–known fondly as the CoCo–would eventually be popular enough to have several magazines that covered it, but at the time of Poltergeist’s release only The Rainbow would exist, and it really wasn’t much more than a fanzine (no shade!)

    I can’t find anything about Poltergeist in it, or anywhere else, so the game, outside of my direct experience of it, is a bit of a mystery. What I do know is the game is an early example (maybe the earliest) of the bread-and-butter of the movie tie-in: the “each level is a minigame that reflects something you know from the film” thing that most famously Ocean Software would run into the ground.

    On the first level, you’re running around what looks like a Mondrian but its actually a suburb, with the goal of collecting the things that will allow you to rescue Carol Anne (sorry, I didn’t go over the plot of Poltergeist: a wee lassie gets sucked into a telly and she needs to be rescued. There.) It would be over-selling this segment to call it a maze game–it’s no Pac-Man, not even Head On, as you run around the grid avoiding cars by ducking into driveways to grab items like towels that maybe have some importance in the film (can’t remember.) I suppose it’s the early 80s so there aren’t speedbumps and signs saying “Twenty’s Plenty” everywhere, because every car is going maximum speed and will kill you, which, I mean, I think I’d probably want to move out even if there weren’t ghosts. Especially with a madman running around stealing very ordinary items from people’s houses.

    Thankfully, if you just hold down the fire button when the level loads and keep holding it the cars never spawn–up to you if you want to abuse it, but it can be quite annoying to get killed by a car because you have to go near the edge of the screen.

    The second level is sort of a Frogger-a-like, where you (some disembodied footprints) have go up the stairs, avoiding, uh, holes, pretzels(?) and the poltergeist itself, which makes a direct line for you. You basically just have to roast it up the stairs, and be lucky–you can’t hang around waiting for the right opening.

    The third level is… confusing. Is it supposed to maybe represent, like, flying through the television? (It’s just described as an “energy field” in the manual.) Faces fly towards you that you have to shoot before they pass you using an annoying gunsight that fights you, and that you can’t shoot too early because one of them will be Carol Anne (represented by a wee stick figure) who you obviously can’t shoot. And that’s it.

    This is, obviously, rubbish. And barely representative of the thing it’s based on. I suppose we could be impressed by the last level, but it’s barely the level of Starship on the Atari 2600, and close to impossible (for the amount of effort I wanted to put in, anyway.) I find it really hard to believe this could have entertained anyone for very long at all–and if you do get good enough to finish the third level (something it looks like only one person on Youtube has ever managed) all you get is a bit of text saying the house is clean–which is at least a direct reference to the film, I suppose.

    Poltergeist feels like a film that if you were going to adapt it you’d rather do something like a text adventure in the era, but it does seem (from my little research) that games on the CoCo tended towards arcade experiences, which probably explains why this is what it is. I suspect, also, that each level is just whatever the programmer had lying around that they’d been noodling on with the explanation bolted on after. I can’t imagine Spielberg was too impressed–if he ever saw this–and to be fair, neither am I.

    Will I ever play it again? My promise to you: I’ll boot this up if I’m ever hanging out with Steven Spielberg.

    Final Thought: Weirdly the era was not just Spielberg adaptation heavy but Hooper-heavy, with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre showing up on Atari 2600 within months!

  • Pipistrello And The Cursed Yoyo (Pocket Trap, 2025)

    Pipistrello And The Cursed Yoyo (Pocket Trap, 2025)

    Developed/Published by: Pocket Trap / PM Studios
    Released: 28/05/2025
    Completed: 25/09/2025
    Completion: Finished it, though with a caveat that will be explained more or less immediately.

    Before we get into the article: you can pre-order a copy of exp. 2602, my brand new zine, right now. If you haven’t picked up any issues yet, there’s a discounted bundle of all three zines! Patreon members get an even bigger discount: subscriptions start at just $1!

    Don’t really have a good reason why I chose to play this above nearly everything in my to-play list recently other than, in a weird sort of bloody-minded way, I just wanted to play something that wasn’t Silksong, but you could conceivably pick up because you wanted something like that… without being like that. And hey, it says “cursed” in the title. That’s sort of spooky-adjacent, right? Fits the pre-halloween mood? Maybe?

    Pipistrello And The Cursed Yoyo was actually the perfect antidote for someone who was burned out on Silksong discourse without ever having touched it. Because feast your eyes on this:

    Image via https://gamersocialclub.ca/2025/06/23/pipistrello-and-the-cursed-yoyo-review/ because I was too lazy to take the screenshot myself. Sorry.

    Pipistrello And The Cursed Yoyo has the greatest difficulty settings I’ve ever seen. It’s genuinely amazing that it’s this granular. The game has a default difficulty and then you can just decide what parts are too much of a ballache for you. I know there’s been so much discourse over this–even before Silksong, John Walker has loved wading into it, god bless him–but here at exp. Towers we side with the idea that you should be allowed to play a game however you bloody well like. As much as I love thinking about and dissecting authorial intent in video games, as soon as the fucking thing is out the door you can treat it however you like. 

    If there’s one thing I’d possibly have wanted, it’s for the developers to include their own easy/medium/hard presets, but I actually think it works well enough that you can start the game, play for a bit and then realise what’s causing you unnecessary pain–and it doesn’t mean you’re breaking the game. It think it can be quite interesting to discuss, for example, when, where and how “runbacks” or other punishment mechanics can be a design choice that enhances, rather than detracts from a game, but I like that here they accepted that possibly you can just decide if it’s something you want to bother with or not, without fiddling with other levers if you don’t want to. I think you’re going to know pretty early if a mechanic like losing money on death feels fun or even legitimate to you or not–for me, I quickly turned it off because I was dying enough it was just going to lead to having to grind for cash, pointlessly bloating the playtime, and I’m, honestly, too old for that shit.

    (About half-way through the game I would also turn off fall damage, because the platforming challenges get extremely finicky, and the extra reload time was enough to annoy me. The game’s upgrade mechanics include upgrades specifically to reduce fall damage and cash loss, so this felt perfectly within the spirit of the design. Just a little extra edge.)

    Anyway, Pipistrello And The Cursed Yoyo is described by Pocket Trap as a “Yoyovania” but that’s not really what it is–it’s more clearly inspired by The Legend of Zelda in the Link To The Past milieu. You play Pippit (weirdly not Pipistrello, that’s their auntie?) the yoyo obsessed failchild of a family that holds a monopoly over all the energy in the city where the game takes place. Due to the monopoly squeezing every last penny from the city’s companies, the leaders of the four biggest companies decided to kill the matriarch, Madame Pipistrello, by sucking her soul into four big batteries which will provide limitless energy for their capitalist dreams (this makes sense, for reasons.) But Pippit intervenes, a fifth of Madame Pipistrello’s soul ends up in their yoyo! So off you go on a pretty clear quest: head to each company, beat up the owner, steal the battery, then once you have all four, put your auntie back together.

    This is all done via a charming, chunky top-down Zelda-a-like; designed almost exactly look like it’s being played on a Game Boy Advance (the game even opens with a 3D model of a GBA-look-a-like, and you can play the entire game on it if you want, with an LCD filter and everything.) When I started to play Pipistrello And The Cursed Yoyo, I was loving it. It’s bright, the controls are responsive, battles are fun, and there’s a great sense of progression as you explore the map collecting coins and finding new areas. But unfortunately, as the game loads on more mechanics, it starts to get… unwieldy. The bright and colourful graphics don’t have a lot of good clean “tells” on what you can do where, and while that might be because they want you to puzzle it out and experiment, it’s not so great when you’re in the middle of chaining traversal abilities to then have to work out what the next one you need to use is. And then actually executing traversal… well, it has the double whammy of the individual moves often being awkward to execute with the design expecting a high degree of competency. Every move has you pressing at least two buttons together, and moves only chain in certain ways, so when you reach the point–as you will–where you’re having to do something like six actions in one go or start again, it can get absolutely frustrating. (Again here, that the difficulty settings allow you to actually half the speed of the game is a life-saver. I won’t lie: I did it two or three times.) 

    The ultimate problem is that often you find yourself finishing a challenge and wondering–was that the way I was supposed to do that? Did I cheese it somehow? They can be so hard, or difficult to parse, that you never actually get to the point where you feel mastery, and that’s a problem. It’s even more of a problem in a game that feels like it should be open like its inspirations. Areas are obviously gated by traversal abilities, and it seems to limit you to two “dungeons” available at a time as a result, but each time it felt I went to the “wrong” one of two first and had to double back to the other one to actually progress. I really can’t tell if that is as designed, or if I just never understood traversal as well as I should have. 

    Battles are mostly fine–a good range of enemies, and intentionally designed encounters–but I think it’s here that the designers make arguably the strangest decision of all. The upgrade system is fairly normal–badges that give abilities or passives that you can equip, and permanent upgrades that you unlock–but the permanent upgrades require you to engage with a “debt” mechanic where you “pay off” the upgrade while suffering a hindrance. So, for example, you might have less life, or enemies won’t drop health.

    At best this is just annoying. While I get the idea, the implementation just means that you spend the entire game weaker than you actually are (and you can enter certain situations completely screwed–nothing like facing a boss with one health and not being able to do anything about it unless you want to return the upgrade and get less money back than you’ve paid in.) If the permanent upgrades had designed hindrances, like “you must use this loadout” or “yoyo can’t be separated from string in battle” (just off the top of my head–not specific recommendations) it could be interesting, forcing you to play in different ways than you have, but it’s usually just “the game is harder” which should make you want to just go to the difficulty menu and make the game… not harder. Again, it’s just holding you back from any rewarding feeling of mastery.

    These aspects–that the traversal is tuned towards extreme competence, and that the upgrade system means you never feel powerful–mean that Pipistrello And the Cursed Yoyo starts to outstay its welcome before you’re done with it. You can be done with the main path in something like 12 hours, and I really didn’t want to give it any more–which is sad, because when I started it I really had it in mind that I’d be searching out all the badges and unlocks, but the main path is so seemingly linear you don’t have much reason to go back on yourself with new abilities, and I just ended up wanting to push through to get it all done. It’s really only thanks to those difficulty settings that I could, honestly (if I had been stuck grinding for cash for the upgrades, I’d probably still be playing it.)

    Was it worth getting to the end? For me, yes, because I had to see where the narrative went. Not because I was loving it, particularly, but because it’s so… odd. The game has you as heir to what is basically a capitalist crime family that’s led by an awful person bleeding people dry, and then the other companies are even worse? I mean it’s not exactly Bioshock Infinite’s “If a cow ever got the chance, he’d eat you and everyone you care about” but let me just say they hardly plant any seeds for the face turn that you’re expecting will show up. I’m not sure quite what they were going for–I suppose it’s supposed to be some sort of commentary on capitalism, but it’s muddled.

    Anyway, here we have one of those classic examples of a game where finishing it kind of just put me off it, because the flaws just became more and more apparent. If it was half as long, or if I was the kind of person who was fine only playing half of something, I’d probably be raving about this. Oops!

    Will I ever play it again? There’s a new game+, which probably gives you a reason to go through the early areas again with all the abilities, but… to what end?

    Final Thought: I feel like I’ve been harsh on this one, so one thing I do want to say is that even if I did think it outstayed its welcome, it’s not for want of the designers trying. They go to extreme effort to make sure every area you visit has a new concept for you to deal with. Fans, lasers, switches, moving platforms, dark areas… each time they take an idea they leave no stone unturned, and so you’re always engaged. If you gel with this game–particularly when it comes to traversal–you really get your money’s worth here, and it’s even possible that if you’re just a little more aggressive with easing the difficulty settings than I was, you’ll hit a sweet spot either way. And for what it’s worth: I can see the counter argument that the team should have worked harder to tune the game to “avoid” having to include all these difficulty options, but the game’s issues are not ones that could be fixed by that.

    If you like the look of this, I’d still consider giving it a shot. Just… don’t try to be a hero and stick to the defaults. I don’t think it’s worth the pain.

  • Castlevania (Konami, 1986)

    Castlevania (Konami, 1986)

    Developed/Published by: Konami
    Released: 26/09/1986
    Completed: 09/09/2025
    Completion: Finished it. I did do a save state before Dracula though, to avoid repeating an exploit.

    Before we get into the article: you can pre-order a copy of exp. 2602, my brand new zine, right now. If you haven’t picked up any issues yet, there’s a discounted bundle of all three zines! Patreon members get an even bigger discount: subscriptions start at just $1!

    I’ve been in the trenches of 1986 for such a long time by this point that I feel like, sometimes, I lose a bit of perspective, so as I reach Castlevania, released within two months of Metroid (and also on the Famicom Disk System) it’s good to take a minute to reflect again on the strength of the release calendar for the Famicom. It’s not just Nintendo’s groundbreaking output, for example, it’s also incredible arcade hits such as Gradius and Ghosts n’ Goblins coming home in solid ports.

    And with the influence of The Legend of Zelda and especially Metroid going to take more time to disseminate, I think it’s important to consider Castlevania within the post-Super Mario Bros. milieu where the arcade still reigns supreme as the state of the art. You went to the arcade and wanted to play games that good at home, and developers wanted to sell people on their “arcade quality” experiences, even if there was no arcade title attached.

    I’m assuming you can see where I’m going with this, but the interesting thing about Castlevania is as much as it is tied to the Metroidvania genre–and would begin dipping its toes into that within a month–the first game is no more attempting to create an expansive, “home” experience than Konami’s earlier port of Gradius is. If you’re being generous, you could claim that Castlevania is Konami’s attempt to make the style that’s already worked so well for them in the scrolling shooter for the arcade–short, hard games with impactful, unique levels and standout bosses–translate to the side-scrolling action game/platformer for the home. If you’re not being so generous, you could say this is Konami’s rip-off of Ghosts n’ Goblins.

    That one probably works better.

    I don’t think it’s unfair, really! Ghosts n’ Goblins is a good port, but it looks weedy. It’s hard not to imagine Konami, given the extra power of the Famicom Disk System, thinking that they could simply do something better, and the hallmarks are all there. A spooky setting. A stiff, inflexible hero who struggles with platforming. Limited power increases and different weapons to collect, which all have important situational uses. When you look at the original Japanese titles it looks even more sus. Ghosts n’ Goblins is “Demon World Village” Castlevania is “Demon Castle Dracula” (to not get too into the weeds on this, Demon isn’t spelled exactly the same, but they do both use the kanji 魔.) And if you don’t consider that case closed? Well, there’s also the difficulty.

    The bloody difficulty.

    Unlike Ghosts n’ Goblins, Castlevania absolutely lulled me into a false sense of security at the start. There’s no Red Arremer here as a harsh wakeup call, and the first boss, a bat (which does have a bit of the Red Arremer about them) is easily dealt with if you have the axe subweapon, which is literally in a candle right before them.

    Once you’re in the second level, however, all bets are off, as you’re suddenly facing the dreaded medusa heads paired with the fact that you lose a life if you fall into a pit (easy to do as you get stunned and knocked back on getting hit) and it only gets worse from there. There are some absolutely hair pulling moments.

    Really, Castlevania feels like a game that shouldn’t work, because hero Simon Belmont is so slow and it’s such a challenge to react to anything. But the game has a weird sort of pleasure in its heavy, exacting feel. Simon slowly moves forward and really feels like he’s absolutely thumping the enemies in front of him, and a bit like a shooter it’s all about finding your racing line through the game, collecting the right subweapon at the right time and learning where the meat Dracula has stuffed in his walls are for safety (good poll if they ever add polls to Bluesky: would you eat Dracula’s wall meat? Yes / No / If I was really hungry, I guess). 

    There’s also an intriguingly vestigial sort of hidden, sort of experience system–if you use subweapons a lot enemies eventually drop upgrades that let you have up to three on screen–but it’s foiled by the fact you want to switch subweapons a lot and you lose the upgrades when you do (why!!!) but if you can master it you can absolutely cheese some of the bosses–I mean, it’s how I saw the end of this…

    I even like that Dracula’s Castle sort of makes sense as a layout. I mean, it doesn’t really, but I like that they made the drop that happens after you fight the mummies sort of the correct length, and then you might be surprised that the “clock tower” section of this game is so short, but it’s tall and thin… like a clock tower!

    The brutal difficulty of Castlevania makes some sense on the Famicom Disk System because you could save at any stage(!) and when the game was re-released on cartridge in Japan it got an easy mode–although it removes knockback on hit, which just seems weird (if you’re interested, it’s included in the Rumbleminz SNES port, the method by which I played this.)

    Ultimately, if Konami set out to best Ghosts n’ Goblins… well… they did!

    Will I ever play it again? I will play its many, many remakes and… side-makes?

    Final Thought: Yeah, so, the weird thing about Castlevania is that it came out on Famicom Disk System just a month before it came out on MSX2 (a version generally known as Vampire Killer, as it was titled that in Europe.) Although Vampire Killer shares graphics, enemies, and is still a trudge through Dracula’s castle, individual level design differs completely, as levels are non-linear and you’re expected to search them for a wider range of items, upgrades and keys to unlock doors to the next level!

    Annoyingly, I can’t find good information on why the games are so different, outside of pretty generic speculation (“now, PC games drive like this [mimes driving like a huge nerd] and Famicom games drive like this…”) so it’s really hard to say what concept “came first.” if the MSX version was the original idea, then my Ghosts n’ Goblins hypothesis–my Ghosts n’ Goblothesis–is incorrect. 

    I do feel like it would be a bit unusual if both games weren’t directed by the same man, elusive series creator Hitoshi Akamatsu, and Castlevania II would go on to be much more of an adventure, which would be a mark against my goblothesis, but weirdly according to an amazing shmuplations translation, Akamatsu was inspired by The Maze of Galious, which is itself a post-Vampire Killer design, so who knows. I guess I can get closer to finding out if I play it, so let’s see how long I can avoid that for.

    Update 2025/10/01: Actual game historian Kate Willaert got in touch over on Bluesky with some critical context:

    “My understanding, from delving into this era of Konami, is that the two versions of Castlevania were developed in parallel, with the teams possibly sharing ideas with each other, and so neither game is “first” nor the “real” one. See also MSX vs. FC Goonies, which laid the groundwork for this game … While it’s possible that Ghosts N Goblins inspired some surface elements, my personal theory is that the foundation of Castlevania can be found in the computer game Aztec, which was fairly popular among a particular generation of Japanese game devs.”

  • The exp. Dispatch #10

    The exp. Dispatch #10

    Well, very funny to say in the last dispatch that I’d go to biweekly and then not actually send out another one for three weeks. Well, I’ve got a good excuse.

    Hey, do you hate in-line advertising? We do too! We’re only ever going to do it here at the start of our newsletter posts because we want you to get these missives in your inbox a day early. Sorry!

    Cheeky ad-blocker? Sign up here!

    Recently On exp.

    Announcing exp. 2602 For Pre-order Today!

    Said excuse! I suppose I did send this out to all subscribers at the start of the week. exp. 2602 has been in the works for a while, but it was put on hold when I rebuilt expzine.com, and then actually launching it got delayed even longer because I was so dissatisfied with ecommerce options like bigcartel and ko-fi (ko-fi in particular badly screwed me recently) that I decided to self-host—after all, I already have the website. I somewhat understand why people just pay to have someone else handle it all by now… but at least so far it seems to be working. Also—please consider pre-ordering! This is the last weekend before I absolutely have to get it to the printers, and your orders make sure I know how many to print!

    Subscriber Post: Elechead (Namatakahashi, 2021)

    This week’s subscriber post showed up a little late because of the announcement, so I hope people don’t overlook it. Namatakahashi is doing something really special in indie games right now.

    Unlocked Posts: Gravity Bone (Blendo Games, 2008) / Metroid (Nintendo, 1986) / Many Nights A Whisper (Deconstructeam/Selkie Harbour, 2025)

    Man, when you see the games listed out like this I really grasp how some people find it hard to hook into what I’m doing here. But my tastes are too catholic for me to limit myself to being, like, only an RPG or retro blogger or something. If you only want to read one of these, please read about Many Nights A Whisper—there’s only a few short months to find out if it stays at the top of my games of 2025 list. But uh… obviously read them all.

    From the exp. Archive: Cart Life (Hofmeier, 2010) / Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny (Project Soul, 2009) / Star Wars Pinball (Zen Studios, 2013)

    A couple of really throw-away articles here but I still think what I wrote about Cart Life hits. A “compelling and thoughtful critique” according to Eggplant‘s Rob Dubbin, so that’s nice. Surprisingly on Twitter, the website where linked articles go to die, I got some feedback on Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny too. @Yoshicookie, apparently a Kilik main, let me know it’s “actually the better version of [Soulcalibur IV], if it had proper multiplayer.” Good to know.

    exp. Capsule Review

    Blobun Mini (Cyansorcery, 2025)

    Didn’t really pay attention when downloading this because it looked so cute when it showed up in my feed–I guess I assumed it was a Crush Roller-a-like, or something. However, it turned out, concerningly, to be more of a “hard” puzzler, where you’re trying to fill in every square in a map with your cute little slimy bunny and you lose if you need to backtrack to do it. It’s not Sokoban, exactly, but it (maybe unfairly) raised memories of every game I’ve ever played where you do a complex chain of things but have fucked it up at one point in the last 100 moves and have to try and make sense of it.

    As a result I was initially considering putting this down completely, but I decided to stick with it for a bit as it’s a free PICO-8 game, so I was able to pick it up on my Trimui Brick whenever I had a spare moment (don’t leave me with my thoughts! I need to be doing something, please don’t leave me with my thoughts!) and Blobun Mini won me over for several very good reasons. 

    Firstly: every part of it glows with polish, from the charming UI through the responsive movement. Secondly, the game has an unbelievably smooth difficulty curve. It introduces new concepts carefully–and it has many for a game with just sixty levels–and every map is short enough that you never have too much to fix if you screw up. And thirdly, the game is unbelievably forgiving, with a complete rewind and even hints to start you off on each level.

    Much like Dino Sort, if you’re looking for a charming puzzler that you can pick up and put down and eventually finish you can’t really go wrong with this (I mean, it’s bloody free) and if you like it so much you can go ahead and play the “full” version of Blobun, which does look like it’s too much for me, but that’s fine.

    The only problem I have with this, actually, is that I finished every level but the last level didn’t “tick off” so it looks like I haven’t. A bug, maybe? But it’s a minor quibble.

    exp. Du Cinéma

    Superman (2025) / Evil Puddle (2025)

    Something something, catholic tastes. This is the second time a Motern Media production has shown up in this newsletter, so I assume you’re all complete converts already.

    Also reviewed: Eddington (2025), The Devil At Your Heels (1981) and Mountainhead (2025).

    Zine News

    Middle-Aged Teenage Angst Issue 1

    “Middle-Aged Teenage Angst: The Zine is now available to buy in print or as a PDF. 52 pages of new writing by me on forgotten TV, old mags, radio, wrestling, growing up, badges and, of course, music.”

    Retro Game SuperHyper Fanzine Issue #5

    “YES!! Over three years late, but I kept my promise, and the fifth issue of RGSH fanzine is finally finished and ready for you!!”

    This came out a fair few months ago now, but only came to my attention (as zines often do) thanks to Forgotten Worlds.

    ASTRO Gaming Lifestyle Magazine

    “This is a magazine that explores gaming as a lifestyle (think Nintendo Power meets curated fashion and lifestyle magazine). The book features 60 pages of my artwork alongside photography and featured community projects.”

    This is absolutely beautiful but I’m sad to note that it’s also fifty-nine dollars. I think it’s neat that there are higher-end zines and journals out there—think the amusingly similarly titled ON and [lock-on]—but I have to admit that I don’t have the funds to keep up. Maybe they’ll be up for a zine trade?

    zeenster.com

    Moheeb Zara’s free zine making app now works on mobile! Make your own zine and then charge sixty dollars for it. That’ll show ’em.

    And Finally…

    This is a fun one. I’d put off watching this until I finished Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, as I’d heard the book this talk (from two years ago!) was about heavily inspired it. When you watch this you’ll be absolutely shocked as to how much of a, well, complete rip-off Clair Obscur is, and of a book that was apparently a huge success in France! I’d be fascinated to read what French fans thought of the game—if they were just completely nonplussed by the things international audiences found fresh and exciting. Maybe that’s why the game makes such, er, big swings at the end? To differentiate it?

    Anyway, I’m absolutely gasping to read La Horde du Contrevent now. Considering I moved to Canada anyway, I should have really bothered to give a shit about French in high school. I guess if I can sell more copies of exp. 2602 I can be taken seriously as a publisher and try and get the rights? There’s an English translation sitting there waiting!

    Next week on exp.: Well, I did the Metroid, so…

  • Elechead (Namatakahashi, 2021)

    Elechead (Namatakahashi, 2021)

    Developed/Published by: Namatakahashi, Tsuyomi / Namatakahashi
    Released: 14/10/2021
    Completed: 31/08/2025
    Completion: Hard to say if the game has a “good” and a “bad” ending, so let’s just say I saw one of the endings.

    Before we get into the article: you can pre-order a copy of exp. 2602, my brand new zine, right now. If you haven’t picked up any issues yet, there’s a discounted bundle of all three zines! Patreon members get an even bigger discount: subscriptions start at just $1!

    Saw people talking about Öoo, the latest Namatakahashi game, so of course I had to look up what they’ve made before that, saw that they’d made a game called Elechead, and played that instead.

    And I’m glad I did!

    I talked a lot about process in my recent essay on Many Nights A Whisper, and I think Elechead represents a more expected way of centering a low number of game mechanics (or especially, single game mechanic) in a video game: not focused on the player’s process toward a singular mastery, but on playing with the player’s believed mastery, taking the mechanics and bending them, requiring lateral thinking and moments of inspiration to progress.

    In Elechead, it’s something so simple and clever that I’m surprised I haven’t seen it before. It’s actually described wordlessly in game and even on the Steam page (perhaps, originally, to avoid localisation issues–even the settings menu relies on pictograms). You’re a wee robot with an electric charge. Anything you stand on is powered. So, for example, if you stand on a platform that moves, it moves. If you stand on a platform with some bulbs attached, those bulbs light (in game, creating a dangerous barrier.)  As soon as you jump, everything turns off; when you land again, everything turns back on. Instantly.

    The game plays like that for a bit longer than I expected it would, before it introduces its main twist: your head is what holds the charge, and you can fling it off and run around as a headless body for ten seconds. So where previously you might face a barrier and just have to jump to break the connection to get through it, now you might have to throw your head across to make a connection somewhere else–and then get there in time.

    The thing that stands out about Elechead is that it sucks the bones of its concept, and that it does so with a thoughtful difficulty curve (well, to an extent). There’s always a new way at looking at your abilities or how they interact with the world, and what you will be able to do can be surprising. It’s generally deeply satisfying when you work out what you need to do, but if there’s an issue, it’s that the game relies on a couple of (in my opinion) bad mannered “tricks” to stymie you: hidden paths with no “tell” (in walls, or off screen) and a final upgrade that’s completely hidden behind one of them (my understanding is that you can beat the game without it, but I struggled even with it…)

    It’s a bit of a shame, because the game leads to a climax that I really loved. If you’ll allow mild spoilers, the game is a linear trip through a series of puzzles (outside of some side paths to collectibles) and when you reach the end, you simply get a few hints to where you were actually supposed to go. But heading backwards requires you revisit puzzles you’ve already seen and solve them in entirely different ways as you reach what appear to be the game’s tutorialising “one way” valves!

    So I don’t love that this game stretches the player slightly beyond what’s fair, but that does mean it fits into the milieu of Japanese video games inspired by Xevious and Tower of Druaga.

    What, you thought I was going to get through an article without mentioning them?

    Will I ever play it again? Probably not, but I enjoyed this so much I’m having to pace myself to not just start Öoo immediately. 

    Final Thought: Weirdly, after I beat this, I looked up some playthroughs on YouTube, and everyone skips showing the trip backwards, my favourite bit! They do the collectibles ending and take an unrewarding shortcut to the other ending. You’ll only have yourself to blame if you do this. Just remember that things can be hidden in walls and off screen and you’ll be fine.

  • Gravity Bone (Blendo Games, 2008)

    Gravity Bone (Blendo Games, 2008)

    Developed/Published by: Blendo Games
    Released: 28/08/08
    Completed: 05/07/25
    Completion: Completed it.

    Before we get into the article: you can pre-order a copy of exp. 2602, my brand new zine, right now. If you haven’t picked up any issues yet, there’s a discounted bundle of all three zines! Patreon members get an even bigger discount: subscriptions start at just $1!

    Blendo Games’ Skin Deep was released this year, and as is often the case, a new game makes me go “oh yeah, I haven’t really played much or anything by that developer” and I therefore feel like I have to start from the beginning. In this case, I’d previously played this and Blendo Games’ Flotilla (which I believe I still have on Xbox Live Indie Games?) but Gravity Bone only takes twenty minutes so I thought I’d run through it again (I don’t think I’m going to get the Xbox out for Flotilla, though it’s also still on Steam.)

    Anyway, Gravity Bone is still well worth running through in 2025 (you can too if you like, and then come back.) It worked fairly well for something made in 2008 even if it did crash consistently if I went into the menu and I was never able to get the graphics looking right in full screen (I wouldn’t even bother trying to get it working on a Steam Deck. But, again, it’s twenty minutes long.)

    What strikes me about Gravity Bone now is actually similar to what Kieron Gillen said about it way back in 2009–the confidence it has. A tiny spy thriller with blocky characters, designed with intentionality. The janky nature of playing it now could be detrimental, but the work shines through–like pulling up a scratchy digital transfer of an old short movie that was never matched.

    To get into spoiler territory (again, for a game that’s twenty minutes long) I love that the game breaks the “rule of three”. You complete your first easy mission. Your second mission is a little more complex, featuring tools to use and in a very “2000s FPS” way, some tricky jumping. And then, before you can move on… you get shot.

    Suddenly everything you expect from a game is broken. You can’t just follow what you’re being told to do. You’ve got to get up and chase your assailant, surely you’ll catch them. But then… you die.

    But as you die, you “remember” everything that brought you there. Suddenly you are no longer just  in control of an avatar doing as you were told–you understand you were playing a person, as you see their life flash before their eyes. It’s… surprising. And then? Truly? It’s actually quite moving.

    You are taken from a pure video game experience to an emotional one, something that few games have managed in experiences that number in the tens of hours. I don’t want to oversell it too much, but while they say brevity is the soul of wit, Gravity Bone has wit and soul in its brief run time. 

    Will I ever play it again? If you haven’t heard, it’s only twenty minutes. But even at that…

    Final Thought: Spoilers: in the time between starting to write this article and finishing it I did in fact decide I just had to play Flotilla after all. What am I like.

  • Metroid (Nintendo, 1986)

    Metroid (Nintendo, 1986)

    Developed/Published by: Nintendo R&D1, Intelligent Systems / Nintendo
    Released: 06/08/1986
    Completed: 28/08/2025
    Completion: Killed Mother Brain in less than three hours.

    I hope it was obvious from the conclusion of my article on The Legend of Zelda that the game I was referring to was this, Metroid, but I suppose the real heads might have been like “well, The Mysterious Murasame Castle is pretty good, I guess…”

    Metroid is a game I was absolutely certain I was never going to beat. After all, I’ve beaten Metroid: Zero Mission, isn’t that good enough?

    But the original is a game I’ve picked up and put down a few times out of my urge to really understand the Metroidvania genre’s beginnings, and the reason I’ve put it down is probably the reason most people do: the obvious lack of any sort of map (never mind an automap.) That would be bad though, but when you combine that with the game’s reliance on completely hidden paths for progression, and an early difficulty that is, I think, worse than The Legend of Zelda… Metroid just isn’t very enjoyable. It doesn’t seem worth the effort.

    Sadly, unlike The Legend of Zelda, there isn’t a wee hack in pulling up the manual, because it doesn’t offer the kind of help you actually need. While it does offer lots of useful hints on what Samus and enemies can do, the included map is very vague. With the graphics in each area quite samey (look, you tell one corridor or shaft apart from the other) you really need to therefore either have a map already to hand or be mapping the game out as you go, and I think my resistance to the original Metroid has always been that while in a game like Wizardry or The Bard’s Tale you can take your time to draw out maps, here you’re stopping during an action game, which apart from just being sort of annoying, is an active flow breaker.

    Thankfully, it’s 2025, and I again have to thank two people–romhacker Infidelity and Hand Drawn Game Guides artist Phil Summers–for making Metroid manageable. Infidelity has ported Metroid to SNES creating what is easily the ultimate version of the game, with the Famicom Disk System saving, the addition of a mini-map(!) and even the ability to combine the wave beam and ice beam like later games. And Phil Summers’ Hand Drawn Game Guide for Metroid might be the perfect thing to hand for a player who doesn’t want to just follow a walkthrough beat-by-beat: it offers a route through the game, but the maps and tips leave a lot of the exploration and discovery up to the player.

    It’s a shame, to be honest, that even with all of that, I still just don’t like Metroid all that much. In fact, I’d argue that the Metroidvania “vision” here is still so far off that this is very much a fish with limbs flopping about gasping for air compared to an actual amphibian. Er… Metroidphibian.

    When you start playing Metroid, there is some familiarity outside of the franchise signifiers–the opening area gives you some rope, but works to funnel you towards the necessary early pickups before the game opens up. But quickly you realise Metroid is far less interested in the now de rigueur “I can’t go there / unlock ability / now I can go there” loop than just killing you as much as possible and getting you lost. The upgrades which are required for progression act generally as just “keys” to new areas and don’t provide you the means to solve puzzles or allow you to interact with them in interesting ways (even the morph ball goes strangely underused) so you mostly find yourself shooting/bombing walls or hoping lava pits have a false bottom when stuck after you’ve got them all. And like other games of the era, Metroid makes sure to often punish you for doing that, giving you plenty of pointless dead ends that just sap you of health as you try to survive.

    In fact, I’m struck by how the game poorly rewards exploration beyond getting the necessary upgrades, and then how short the game actually is once you have them outside of forced backtracking–kill two minibosses and then head to the final section to kill Mother Brain, a section which is completely linear.

    As a result of all of this, you realise familiarity with modern Metroidvanias is really a hindrance when playing Metroid. For example, beam upgrades (ice or wave) don’t seem to actually increase your power much if at all, so unlike later games, Metroid seems tuned around using your missiles on regular enemies. You’d think therefore that missile upgrades would make exploration worth it, but you end up getting bogged down just to have five more missiles in your quota, where if you beeline to the bosses, each one gives you an almost absurd 75!

    And you’ll want to do this because the drop rate on health and missiles is so miserable that every trip down a dead end (or worse, a corridor you’ve forgotten you’ve seen already) requires what feels like never-ending grinding of the game’s infinite spawners. When you first see them, you think “that’ll save me sometime” but after your first ten, twenty minutes waiting for enough health to fill one tank, you realise you’re far better  just running through the levels trying to rely on screw attack jumps to avoid combat (which does, generally, work.)

    That even goes for the last section of the game which should be tense and exciting as you finally face off against the Metroids, but no, you’re better off… freezing them and running past. To add insult to injury, Mother Brain is just a complete pain in the arse. It’s an endurance test–have enough health that you can survive being shot the whole time while you pound her with missiles.

    I suppose that the escape is a fairly-exacting platforming challenge is kind of funny, though.

    Much like The Legend of Zelda, though, Metroid feels like a product that makes more sense in its original context of players with bags of time and nothing much else to play. Bar one very annoying thing–that you have no way of shooting things shorter than Samus, which really makes the opening of the game frustrating and much harder than it should be–Metroid controls well, and I assume the players willing to map got a lot out of it, and those who didn’t probably just eventually got Samus powered up and to the end by sheer effort (the zone between “I have the morph ball and missiles” and “I have enough energy tanks and the screw attack to survive to explore” is so miserable, however, I do find it hard to imagine.)

    Even if I find that hard to imagine, I don’t find it hard to see how Metroid captured people’s imaginations. I’m not sure it has quite the same completeness of vision as The Legend of Zelda (or The Mysterious Muramase Castle, for that matter) but the visuals and especially the sound really give the game a uniquely lonely feel; a solo decent into a deadly and foreign cave system (I do love that the name of this game is a portmanteau of “metro” and “android”–I can almost imagine one of the designers, lost in one of Tokyo’s many confusing train stations, thinking “there’s probably a game in this.”)

    And maybe it’s just the fact that it’s a side-on 2D platformer, but even more so than with The Legend of Zelda/Sabre Wulf, Rare has a case that Metroid is heavily inspired by Underwurlde, if not an outright rip off. Not just the shafts with platforming challenge (which would be enough) but that areas of the map are locked off without using a particular weapon. 

    Separated at birth??? Alright, this one doesn’t look as damning as the Sabre Wulf one but trust me.

    If I was being really harsh, I’d point out there were plenty of platfomers of the era with big maps to explore, things to collect and keys to use, from the obscure to the very well known. Impossible Mission. Saboteur. Citadel. Journey To The Centre Of The Earth. And many of these games play well, too!

    So I after playing it all the way through, I do feel like I still have some questions if Metroid really does deserve the crown as originator, but then I also suppose we also live in a world where we don’t play Beneath Apple Manor-likes.

    Will I ever play it again? Well, there’s no Satellaview version of this, so I really have played the “best” version of it I could. I’ll play Zero Mission again, though, which I remember as being the peak of the franchise, and I can’t remember if that’s controversial or not.

    Final Thought: Of course, there’s also the other side of the Metroidvania… the vania. And the first game in that franchise doesn’t even attempt to be a Metroidvania. It’s even got a new SNES port too…