Some Quick Game Reviews (A Short Hike, Wilmot's Warehouse, What the Golf, Untitled Goose Game)

[flamebyrd]

A Short Hike (2019) PC/Mac/Linux
This is a cute, short exploration game. You play Claire, an anthropomorphic bird, exploring the island where your aunt lives, chatting to the other people on the island, and completing the titular "short hike" to the top of the mountain in the centre of the island.

It's very sweet, there's plenty of things to find around the island and you can even just spend time fishing and completing your fish catalogue, if you're into that sort of thing. The flying/gliding mechanic was really fun and will occasionally just load up the game to fly around the island.

I found it impossible to play on keyboard and ended up buying an 8BitDo bluetooth controller, which I love. The default graphics were not good for my eyes, but I was able to adjust them to something a bit less highly-pixelated, which I grew to like. The music was lovely and I bought the soundtrack.

Spoilers: It's very light on plot, but I enjoyed that at the beginning it sets you up to think, oh, Claire is one of Those Millennials, Always Glued To Her Phone but at the end it becomes clear that she had a good reason to be waiting for a phone call. (Not that there's anything wrong with being glued to your phone, anyway.)

Wilmot's Warehouse (2019) Windows/Mac, Switch
A warehouse simulation game, where you're given an ever-growing selection of random objects that you need to store in your vast warehouse, and then retrieve on request to fulfil orders. I was concerned that I would find the retrieval process too stressful, and it definitely can be, but once I developed some strategy it became much easier, and b) it gives you as much time as you like to reorganise your warehouse at very regular intervals.

Would probably not suit somebody with bad short-term memory. You can play it with local co-op, which we enjoyed for a while! The graphics can definitely be eyestrain-inducing.

I absolutely loved the trailer for this game.

Edit: Spoilers: The ending was very abrupt, I was expecting to be able to play longer, fulfil some more orders and try out my warehouse's Final Form, maybe reorganise again, but that wasn't possible. It could do with an "infinite play" mode, in my opinion. But I did immediately go and create a new save file so I could play again.

What the Golf? (2019) PC, Apple Arcade, Switch
This is a physics-based golf game in the sense that your controls are aiming and releasing (with a few different power levels), but it's also a parody of golf games... and, in fact, many other types of games too. It's very silly, but it made me laugh repeatedly by surprising me.

Some of the levels have timing elements, so I wouldn't recommend it to be people who hate that.

Untitled Goose Game (2019) PC/Mac, Switch
"It’s a lovely morning in the village, and you are a horrible goose." Basically a stealth/puzzle game, where you are a goose causing trouble for the various residents of the village.

The controls can be frustrating (we were playing on PC with a controller), so it was good to play with another person so we could pass the controller back and forth when either of us got too annoyed.

I enjoyed it overall! Spoilers: The ending made me laugh out loud. I don't think I'll be going back to try the new set of tasks that unlocked after completing it though.

Comments

[cimorene]

This is just to say that my eye caught your first link line before the subject of the post and thought it was anthropomorphic and was like "Wow a threesome, in that old fandom, and I've never seen one with Linux as a character before!"

[flamebyrd]

Well, now I definitely want to read that! (I mean, surely.someome has done that ship before... Right?)

Maybe I should have used + as a separator instead, though.

[cimorene]

I really wanted a fic about Gnome and Ubuntu breaking up but then I never got around to requesting it and they got back together in reality, so there goes that pipe dream!

Who would you cast as Linux, I wonder...

[cimorene]

Oh, I just saw a thread yesterday from omgubuntu on Twitter about how apparently the laptop sleep functions on Linux laptops are really unreliable. It might crash and not wake up if you close it without warning, it might turn on but the keyboard doesn't work... this definitely sounds like a good basis for a commercial-length skit.

[flamebyrd]

I was trying to figure out how one would characterise Linux - nerdy? Finnish? - and somehow completely forgot to include "extremely flakey".

I remember having issues with the sleep function last time I tried to run Linux on a device, and that was a good 5 years ago now.

[cimorene]

We have put it on laptops a few times, albeit dual-boot ones, but mainly I think we maybe turned off the sleep function to prevent the screen turning off when we were watching tv? IDK, I don't remember ever noticing this problem.

But we are mostly desktop users.

[flamebyrd]

I think next time I'm in the market for a new laptop I will look at some of the ones that are built for Linux! That should take care of the hardware compatibility issue. But that probably won't be for another few years.

Since I've been doing all this gaming I'm probably stuck with Windows on the desktop for now.

[cimorene]

Well, dual-boot is probably easier to put on a desktop than a laptop, but if gaming is most of what you do, switching OSes would probably be inconvenient and unnecessary.

[flamebyrd]

Yeah, I used to have a dual-boot Windows/Linux desktop (Ubuntu, back in the era where they first decided to divorce Gnome, so a long time ago now), but when I realised I hadn't booted into Linux in months I decided it was time to let it go.

I've always had Mac laptops but it's becoming harder and harder to financially justify them.

[sqbr]

Ooh, I'd been wondering about a short hike.

I'm not sure I'll play What The Golf but the trailer was unexpectedly amusing :)

[cimorene]

There was an article about the high-end Ubuntu laptops - maybe Dell? - at OmgUbuntu a few months ago that compared them to macbooks actually. I think the most expensive ones are supposed to be comparable or something like that - I was more impressed that they had that slim look, which otherwise seems to be limited to Chromebooks and macbooks, because I don't know much about macs. The high end Dells are very expensive though - maybe as much as macs even?

[flamebyrd]

Some of the modern Windows touchscreen laptops are pretty stylish too! I'd definitely need to think hard about what I use my laptop for and how much processing power I actually need.

But hopefully my current Mac will trundle along for a few more years yet, so I'm filing this under "future me's problems".

[flamebyrd]

Haha yeah, What the Golf was mentioned in a Game of the Year podcast and I watched the trailer afterwards, laughed, and decided it could be a new thing for A and I to play together now that we're done with Goose Game.

It also has a demo campaign for people to show to their friends so next time we're in the same space I could start that up if you're interested!

[sqbr]

Ooh, that could be fun!

Cam and I have thus far been very bad at playing games together unless we get to gang up on other real people >.>