Fat Bear Week (2020)

[tozka]

Fat Bear Week (2020) is an action game where you play as a cute round bear rolling around trying to eat things. The more you eat, the chonkier the bear gets! After a few levels you can start unlocking other bears and areas, but you start with Holly the brown bear. Round friend!!

Unfortunately, this game sucked up all my processing power and made my laptop start overheating, so had to quit after two rounds. I also couldn't get a handle on the WASD controls (I'm right handed and find arrows easier) but there's no options to switch. Also, the camera movements made me motion sick.

Cute idea, though!

Price: Free (?)

Available for Windows and Mac. I played the MAC OS version.

Jam and the Mystery of the Mysteriously Spooky Mansion (2019) ♥

[tozka]

Jam and the Mystery of the Mysteriously Spooky Mansion (2019) is a point & click reverse whodunnit set in a haunted house. You play as Jam, a tween detective with ambitions higher than her mystery-solving capabilities. At the start of the game, you've already captured the villain and now you need evidence to prove what villainy he was doing.

Explore through different rooms clicking on things to find "clues," solve easy puzzles and put together "solutions" to solve the "crime." These involve picking up both clues and interactive elements, and figuring out which element interacts where (it's not always obvious). It's a short game and not hard to play-- the fun comes through the dialogue, the spooky atmosphere, and Jam and Alexandre (the villain) interacting.

There are 16 different endings, 15 through presenting evidence and 1 secret ending that I stumbled on accidentally. Once you present one solution, you can go back to that exact moment and present the other 14 combinations, no need to backtrack. All the endings lead to very funny dialogue, usually with a wham shot because of the demon.

Cool things: the default font is in the style of a 1980s computer game, but you can adjust it to something easier on the eyes (like I did). Also comes with a spoiler-free walkthrough/hints, including an endings checklist to make sure you get all the clue pairings.

Took me almost an hour to go through everything, and I really enjoyed it. I'd love to play a sequel game!

Price: $2.00

Available for Windows, Mac and Linux. I played the Mac OS version.

A Nightmare's Trip (2019)

[tozka]

A Nightmare's Trip (2019) is a visual novel where you play as Adrien, a nightmare brought to life. And then you take a trip to pseudo-Tokyo!

I liked the art in this game. The backgrounds are photos which have been run through an "illustration" filter (or something) and the characters are 2D illustrations. It's a neat style.

So, straight up, I didn't finish this game. I played about an hour, which I think was almost halfway through the game (it's short, under 3 hours). It's a visual novel but there's very little interaction from the player besides a few dialogue choices, which the game dev says lead to "subtle" plot changes e.g. nothing major. You get clues for the mystery of Adrien's creator but you don't DO anything with them. The people you meet talk for a bit, then leave and never contact you again (as of 1 hour into the game, anyway). Eh.

It's cute, but not enough story or character development to keep me interested.

I do prefer games where choices matter and deciding on a particular "style" of dialogue means sometimes wildly different plot developments, so A Nightmare's Trip wasn't exactly a match. However, if you're really interested in a casual, relaxing game about a furry nightmare creature traveling to an alternate-dimension Japan, then go for it!

Price: $8.00

Available for Windows, Mac and Linux. I played the Mac OS version.