If you’ve been following my site for a while, you’ll have noticed
the frequent mention of a company called Gamechuck. I had the chance to meet a
few of their team at EGX in October and have been consistently impressed with
the high-quality games and hardware that they produce on a regular basis. We’ve
talked about some of their older works such as Vape Escape before and recently I
got to look at a preview of their newest creation – Trip the Ark Fantastic.
I’m always excited to see something new from the Gamechuck crew, so when I spotted an email in my inbox last week from them, I was excited. Their letter of love to the era of arcade games, called Speed Limit, released its trailer and demo as of today! (March 12th). It’s a high-paced, run-and-gun, action filled arcade game demo, available on Steam for you all to enjoy – click here for that – https://store.steampowered.com/app/1058280/Speed_Limit/
Watch the trailer here!
I got a little sneak view at Speed Limit when at EGX. I was
terrible at it, but I enjoyed it immensely. For those of you who have no idea
what I’m talking about, let me explain:
“A daily train commute gone wrong: Speed Limit is a one
take, non-stop arcade experience that never slows down. An old-school shooter
boiled down to its core elements: Hard. Fast. Addictive.”
Have you ever been on the London Underground and been ambushed by dozens of soldiers dressed in full SWAT gear? Me neither. Though I probably wouldn’t be that surprised if it did happen. The Tube is known for it’s weird and whacky events after all – such as a goth and his surfboard, a satanic doll and people bringing various …adult art pieces onto the train. Seriously, I don’t know what it is about public transportation that inspires commuters to try weird and whacky things. Then again, the Internet wouldn’t be the same without it.
Check out the making of video here!
Simplistic, fast-paced and addictive gameplay is what makes
Speed Limit so intriguing to me. You will die, a lot. Not as often as Dark
Souls or Cuphead but Speed Limit is very much trial and error experience. You’ll
become a professional in the first few sections of a level, charging through train
carriages, shooting bad guys and dodging bullets like you’re in the matrix,
then suddenly faceplanting off the roof and being crushed the wheels of the
train. You know, just normal things.
Speed Limit isn’t about learning a mechanic and just charging through every level as quickly as possible. It’s about adapting to what is front of you. As soon as you get used to one level style, it’ll throw you into another – forcing you to start that learning curve all over again. It takes everything that was brilliant about arcade games and adds that modern zeal to it.
James Bond eat your heart out.
Every frame is hand-drawn by the phenomenally talented artists
at Gamechuck, with such detail that it boggles the mind. The one thing that it
doesn’t take from the arcade era, is the tendency to steal all your money. If
you die, you start the level over from the last checkpoint. You don’t have to
put in additional coins or run to find more tokens before the timer ticks down
and you lose all your progress.
I’m not going to reveal too much about the game itself as I believe that it is well-worth playing yourself, even if just for the banging soundtrack. It’s a hard balance to nail – creating a soundtrack that doesn’t frustrate you after listening to it on loop for ten minutes. They’re talented folks, what can I say.
Subtle agent reading newspaper is subtle.
If you’re curious about how Speed Limit was created, the
Gamechuck crew are releasing a three-part documentary series talking about the
whole process, so it’s worth looking at! Especially if you’re interested in
game design.
Anyways, apologies for the shorter piece this week – partly not
wanting to spoil the demo experience for anyone and partly because I’m running
a production this week, so I’m sat writing this whilst waiting for some set
pieces to dry!
Now that we are in the new decade, everyone is looking towards
the new console generations and new instalments to long running franchises.
Here at Mind Games, I am more focused on just trying to pass my degree. I don’t
tend to play the latest games or the big releases the moment that they come
out, partly because I’m usually busy working on a coursework and partly because
I like to wait for the price to drop before I buy (#Student Life).
So, when I’m looking for a new game to play, I tend to trawl the online stores looking for weird and whacky games that pique my curiosity. This is how I came across West of Loathing a few years back. As seen with the popularity of the Red Dead Redemption series, games set in the Wild West tend to draw a big audience. Ironically, the fascination with cowboys fizzles out quickly when you investigate their history and realise their lives were nowhere near the dramatic, high-stakes action that the media portray them as.
Check the bookshelf several times. Trust me.
I’m not going to spoil any of the plot as despite it being a
slapstick comedy game, the storyline is quite intriguing, especially when you
start to branch off and explore the side-quests that open as the game
progresses. Plus, it’s always more fun to experience the jokes first-hand.
An RPG, set in a Wild West world, featuring turn-based combat and a series of odd side quests alongside the main story? Sounds like most RPG’s, so what makes this one different? Well, first things first, the art style is simplistic – so much so that it’s a series of stickmen, wearing goofy hats and hurling snakes at their enemies. I love it. It’s a satirical look at most RPG’s, from choosing classes, to levelling up skills and solving puzzles with non-sensical items.
Always practise safe TNT storage kids.
The moment you open the game, it grips you with its sense of
humour. Most of the hours that I have sunk into this game, I have spent with a
massive grin on my face. Instead of choosing from the traditional “Fighter, Magic
User or Rogue” class archetypes, you have the choice of “Cow Puncher, Bean
Slinger or Snake Oiler”. Which serve essentially the same functions but are a
hundred times more hilarious to play as. Why wouldn’t you want to carry around
a briefcase full of snakes and throw them into people’s faces?
Skills and traits are upgraded using experience points, but you can also discover new abilities by reading books (like the nerd you are) or meeting certain criteria. Want to increase your defence? Walk into cacti until your skin is mostly scabs. Want better resistance to heat, stench and cold damage? Stick your hand into various disgusting spittoons scattered around the west to permanently taint your hand with the remnants of other people’s spit. Delightful.
Hmm. Nothing seems abnormal here.
From busting ghosts and getting spooked by the ever present “Boo’s”
in the DLC, to facing down the demon clowns leader and trying not to wet
yourself when he throws knives at you in the main game, West of Loathing has so
much content that it’s impossible to find everything on just one playthrough.
Your choice of class, partner and even a few plot crucial decisions will set
you down unique paths filled with hilarity, unique encounters and EVEN MORE
SPITOONS. Word of warning though, the game will heavily judge you for digging
around the insides of these metal cesspools.
The writing in this game is excellent. Every line of dialogue, every action and every item description has had careful thought put into it. The passion the developers at Asymmetric Publications have for their game is clear to see and is a joy to experience first-hand. They are keenly aware of some of the pitfalls that games can fall into as well as common tropes and clichés that many developers put into their works and manage to tackle these with a sense of humour. Any references to other game series or media franchises, are done with care and subtlety, rather than beating you over the head with them (or a cow bone).
I relate to the guy on the left.
More than anything, I love this game because it makes me laugh. A genuine, full body laugh that hurts your chest after a while. Mental health issues and stressful times means that I don’t get to laugh like that as much as I should. Depression especially tends to sap the humour and joy out of things that would normally elicit laughter from us, replacing it with numbness and general lethargy. It’s something that I have combatted for many years, yet this is the first game that I’ve come across that can consistently bring a genuine smile to my face. Not a fake smile to avoid worrying others or a half-hearted smile to try and fit in, a genuine grin. It’s a refreshing sensation after so many years of monotony when it comes to humour.
That sign can’t stop me cause I can’t read.
Anyways, I’ve got a final-year project to work on and a production to prepare for so I’m going to end this week’s article here and I’ll be back soon! I’ve sent in an application for a press pass at EGX Rezzed in late March, so hopefully we get it and I’ll be able to provide more awesome content for you all at my favourite convention!
If you’ve been following me on Twitter (which you should all
do, just saying @OurMindGames), then you’ll understand I’ve recently fallen
back in love with Lego. Growing up, I was the opposite of my older sister – who
preferred the more stereotypically feminine stuff. Nothing wrong with that, it
just wasn’t me.
My love of video games and creating things, be it through Lego or carpentry, has had a major influence on the young adult I have become. I loved to create motorised vehicles out of Lego, so much so that I genuinely considered becoming a mechanical engineer for a good few years (before I realised that I didn’t like studying physics). So, to come back to it after all these years has a somewhat bittersweet feel to it.
LOOK UPON MY CREATION AND WEEP.
Alongside my university studies, I work as an ambassador in
local schools, delivering workshops, computing lessons and providing access to
new technologies that the kids may not have had access to before. My Saturday
mornings are spent helping younger kids build their own games, robots and
applications from all sorts of bits of tech. Honestly, most of the kids are
leaps and bounds ahead of where I was when I was their age, which is really
heartening to see.
One of the most popular bits of kit, is the Lego Mindstorms – programmable robot units given movement, control and purpose by adding Lego blocks! More often that not, I end up on the floor, digging through boxes of bricks looking for the specific piece that will complete the kid’s magnum opus.
Thankfully, the love of Lego did not die with my generation.
Side note, typing that sentence genuinely made me shudder
out of realisation that I’m technically part of a different generation. Age is
just a number, come at me world. If I want to build Lego, dance in the rain and
roll down grass hills, then I will. You cannot stop me! (Cue evil laughter)
Moving past the days of Lego stop motion movies, more often that not, we often see these building bits in game adaptations of our favourite franchises – such as Marvel, DC, Harry Potter and Lord of The Rings. Though that last one isn’t really an option anymore, unless you want a court case on your hands.
RIP the precious
A lot of kids first experiences with these cinematic universes,
is through Lego games. Obviously, not every parent is content with letting
their primary school age child play games with heavy themes or to see films with
adult ratings. For example, I used to only be able to play games that were
rated 15 or 18, if my dad was with me. So, I have played a lot of Lego games.
A large amount of gatekeeping in the gaming community is based on the argument of what constitutes an actual “game”. Some claim that only console/PC games fit the criteria, others argue that there should be some degree of difficulty in the gameplay for it to be called a “proper game”. Lego games, with their simple but enjoyable gameplay, basic puzzles and focus on fun, tend to be in the eye of the storm. Let’s chat through a few of the common complaints:
Avenge their bricky bodies
“They’re too easy”
What’s wrong with a game being easy? Considering the complex issues that we deal with in everyday life, sometimes it is nice to play a game that doesn’t go out of its way to challenge you. It’s about enjoyment, losing yourself in something other than your problems for a while and getting a small sense of achievement when you beat a boss or solve a puzzle. Depending on your mental state at the time, it might be your only win in a day filled with losses.
*WEEE WOOOO WEEEE WOOO* ITS THE LAW
“Nobody enjoys them or wants to play them.”
For those who struggle with reaction times or complex puzzles, having a game that is fully playable for them, is a welcome relief. Although the games industry is slowly improving, it is not the most accessible thing in the world. From providing subtitles, to having different colour schemes, to turning off quick time events entirely, there are lots of ways that games can broaden their audience and allow anyone and everyone to enjoy the experience. Plus, they’re good multiplayer games. Being able to play games with your loved ones, especially if you don’t normally get to, is a wonderful way to make memories. Just because you don’t enjoy something, doesn’t mean others won’t. Remember that.
IM BATMAN AND IM FINE.
“They’re boring.”
Considering the popularity of the Lego games, this couldn’t
be further from the truth. Whether it’s building the actual sets, punching
every breakable thing in sight to collect studs, or swinging around as a Lego
version of Spiderman, there is a childish delight in these experiences.
Personally, I find the process of building the Lego sets very therapeutic and relaxing. For someone whose mind is often filled with anxiety, fear, self-loathing and every possible catastrophic scenario that could befall me, Lego provides a peaceful respite. Don’t knock it till you try it.
Anyways, I’ve got sleep to catch up on and crops to harvest
on my virtual farm. Till next time,
As we have covered many times over
the last year, I am not a fan of horror games. Any enjoyment that could be
derived from being scared, is ruined by the paralysing anxiety that accompanies
it. I tend to avoid any and all horror like the plague – better than safe than
sorry. However, when it comes to psychological horror, I’m a bit more open
minded. Psychology has always fascinated me. People often like to joke that those
who like to study the inner workings of the human psyche, are either wanting to
understand the “unstable” or are “unstable” themselves. Obviously, it’s a whole
load of rubbish but there is a grain of truth in there.
Humanity, as a species, strives to
understand what we often deem impossible to comprehend. We quantify and label,
document and test everything and anything we can get our grubby little hands
on. There’s so much we know about the world around us yet so little we
understand about how our own minds work. With words alone, we can change a
crowd into a mob, start a rebellion, incite cruelty and bring joy to those who
seek it. I’ve never been good at understanding emotions, particularly my own.
Anger, hatred and cruelty are all foreign concepts to me.
So, when a game claims to be a psychological horror, I am curious as to what hidden truths it will strive to extract from the gold mine that is the human mind.
Stories Untold, is one such game. Presented
as a four-part episodic experience in the style of old school text adventure
games, it weaves such an intricate web that when the finale arrives, it knocks you
flat on your back and holds you there – controlling every rise and fall of your
chest. Even when you know what is coming, repeat playthroughs allow you to
notice every subtle link and minute detail that builds such a vivid picture in
your mind, it’s as if you are standing there, watching it all unfold in front of
your eyes but are powerless to do anything to stop it. I love it.
Now, if you haven’t played it and want to do so without any spoilers – stop reading now, go play it and then come back with the experience fresh in my mind. Do come back though, I’ll be lonely otherwise. For those of you who are still reading, lets talk spoilers. The first three chapters each seem to have their own standalone story, meanwhile the final chapter links all of them together. I’m going to talk about each chapter in turn. The four chapters are titled – The House Abandon, The Lab Conduct, The Station Process and The Last Session.
Don’t pick up the phone. You never know who is on the other end.
The first episode, The House
Abandon, follows the more traditional style of text adventures. You, the player,
drive up to your family’s holiday home. After starting up the generator and
unlocking the front door, you’re given the chance to explore the building –
reminiscing about your childhood and the fond memories that the old walls hold.
Eventually, you find your way to your bedroom and find your old computer – that
your father dug out of the attic, along with a copy of a very familiar game, the
House Abandon. Upon booting up the game, the power goes out. When everything
flickers back to life, it’s all changed. The welcoming house becomes filled
with stains, broken windows, dead carcasses and ominous writing on the walls. Instead
of a kind note from your father, the note in your hand spits cruel, terrifying
and hateful messages – to the point where it seems to burn into the palm of
your hand.
A phone rings, breaking the uneasy silence that you have fallen into. You hear breathing down the phone and soon you realise that you are not alone anymore. Creaking floorboards, flickering lights and blaring alarms all echo around you, as if the house you are sat in, playing the game, is the same one as in the game itself… You struggle to distinguish between the actions of your player exploring the house and those of the individual sat controlling those movements. Negative emotions and memories pour out of the protagonist like a tidal wave, culminating in the door behind you creaking open. The computer accuses you of an unknown crime, demanding that you admit that it was all your fault. It barrages you with insults, hurling abuse until you at last type the words “It was all my fault”. It’s response? “Finally.”
Not an ominous setup at all.
In The Lab Conduct, you play as Mr
Aition – a volunteer who has agreed to take part in a series of experiments
conducted by Dr Daniel Alexander. These experiments are performed upon an
object called “artefact 23”, which was recovered from a crash site for further
study. Locked in the isolated laboratory, you use various machines such as an
X-Ray, sound wave generators and high-powered lasers on the object. At first
glance, the artefact appears to be an animal heart of some kind, whose
heartbeat we restart. However, upon exposure to extreme frequency sound waves,
it explodes and reveals a metallic sphere.
As a child, you’re always told not to stare at the sun, or it’ll hurt your eyes. Well, in Stories Untold, don’t stare at the hovering metallic sphere or it’ll knock you over, draw some blood and “connect” you to its inner core. You know, just normal things. Once connected, you walk through the spheres memories – reliving the crash, reaching out to a silhouette for help and waking up in a hospital bed, covered in wires and recovering from a torture session. When you pull out the wires, an alarm goes off. You, Mr Aition, hear that alarm as well. Yet again, the events seem to be occurring at the same time. Once you instruct the creature to leave their room, Dr Alexander recognises that you are causing this and begs for you to stop. Yet, you do not stop. You release all the spheres. They converge on you and as the world fades from around you, the last words of Dr Alexander ring in your ears – “Someday Mr Aition, this will haunt you.”
Don’t go out in the snow alone. People don’t come back.
The Station Process is a chapter
that leans into the love of puzzle-solving that echoes in the hearts of most
gamers. Using a microfilm reader with a guide on it, you, only known as “James”,
must decrypt a series of signals and submit the correct code in order to pass
on the relevant messages. The puzzles involve decrypting Morse Code, observing
patterns and adjusting frequencies. Nerd that I am, I adore them. After all,
what’s the point of studying Computer Science if you can’t show off your
understanding everything occasionally? As you complete the puzzles, your fellow
communication tower operators talk about something coming, attacking supply
teams and ripping entire cabins out of the earth.
One of the signals you intercept is a distress signal that details how the rest of the world has been collapsed by the creatures that now stalk the mountain range that your cabins are situated on. They beg you to lock your doors and stay inside, but fate has other plans for you. When the main transmitter is knocked out of place, it’s your job to go fix it. When you’ve done so, you hear the voice of Station 2, a kind female voice, seemingly going into shock – unable to feel her legs and just wanting to rest. You can’t help her; you can’t help anyone. When you finally get back to the cabin, it’s not the one you left. It’s the bedroom from The House Abandon.
One of these things is not like the other, one of these things does not belong.
Clearly, there’s an overarching
plot between these episodes. These lingering threads are all pulled together in
The Last Session. As the opening credits play, they pause and pull back to
reveal that you’ve been watching a TV show. Your character, James Aition, is
wheeled by Dr Alexander into an empty room with a cassette recorder and
prompted to try and recover the memories of what happened before he arrived in
hospital. It is revealed that you were involved in a nasty car accident and had
been in a coma for two weeks prior to the events of the game. Your last three
attempts at recalling the accident had ended in panic, with the truth being
mixed in with fantasy such that you couldn’t tell which was which.
The game proceeds to take you through the previous chapters. You return to the communication tower and examine the microfilm – which now displays a police report about the traffic accident you were in. Your sister, Jennifer, was trapped and critically injured and the other driver was found dead, with an empty bottle of whisky in his hand and stinking of alcohol. However, upon solving a puzzle, you hear a testimony of a friend of said driver, claiming that the guy had never spoken about alcohol before and would never imbibe like that – especially considering he was a former police officer. He accuses James of foul play.
Never been a fan of hospitals. Don’t think I ever will be.
We burst into the emergency room,
to James’s heart stopping on the gurney and a haemorrhage threatening to destroy
any chances of resuscitating him. Upon the doctor’s orders, you restart your
own heart and drill into your skull – saving your life. As the drill
approaches, you startle awake in the computer desk from The House Abandon. It
details a leaving party being hosted by your family, to celebrate James going
travelling with his friends abroad for several months in the new year. After
having a few drinks and being gifted a nice bottle of whisky from his dad,
Jennifer asks James whether he can give her a lift home. Unfortunately, you can’t
say no to this choice (trust me, I tried).
As you stagger to the car, forget to take the handbrake off the car and drive faster than is safe, even when sober – Jennifer slowly realises that James is drunk. She begs him to slow down, to pull over, to just stop, but he does not listen. He goes faster, eventually crashing directly into oncoming traffic. When he awakens, he drags himself out of the car – leaving his sister in the burning wreckage. Terrified of going to jail and wrecking his reputation, James decides to frame the other driver by pouring alcohol on him, removing his fingerprints from the bottle and planting it in the dead driver’s car. When the police arrive, James collapses from his injuries and wakes up in the hospital room with Dr Alexander. The doctor takes James back to the TV room, stating that he will report what James said to the police.
Sometimes telling the truth, is the hardest thing to do.
More than anything, Stories Untold
is about consequences. You must live with the consequences of your actions.
Your choices affect more than just your life. They ripple, like pebbles on a
lake’s surface, spreading further and further out until they form tidal waves that
threaten to consume the lives of so many. In this case, James’s actions caused
the death of his sister, the grief of his family, as well as the death and
attempted framing of an innocent man. His panic at reliving what he had done,
his refusal to accept the horrifying reality of his memories – all these lead
us on this journey through the shattered remains of a young man’s mind.
Anyways, I hope you’ll all think a
little about the stories that you tell and whether they are stories that you’d
want people to hear about or not. If not, make positive changes. I believe in
you. Like, comment and follow the site – both here and on Twitter @OurMindGames
for future articles.
When people think of the festive scene, the image that tends
to come to mind is more of a wholesome, peaceful and family-oriented time, with
the exchange of gifts and well-wishes being at the forefront. However, retail employee’s
probably compare the shopping rush of Christmas with the stampede scene in the
Lion King. Hopefully if you’re reading this when I publish it on Christmas Eve
2019, you aren’t still out hunting for presents for relatives that you forgot
existed until the very last minute. If you are, then I send my deepest sympathies.
As someone who stresses excessively over upcoming deadlines, I tend to do my shopping early on. The concept of running around an extremely crowded shopping centre, struggling to find what I am looking for, is my definition of a nightmare. Social situations are hard enough but the anxiety of Black Friday and the big Christmas rush, is probably what my version of hell will look like when I finally end up there. All that carnage looks very much like the gameplay of the Christmas Shopper Simulator games released as a joke by the British gaming retailer – Game (Imaginative, I know).
Nothing strange going on here.
Personally, I’m not sure what was going through the
developer’s minds when they were making these games, but I’m very glad they followed
through. In a similar vein to the Goat Simulator games, it is an insane, buggy
sandbox experience that frequently defies the laws of physics. Honestly, if it
had been released for April Fools, nobody would’ve blinked an eye. Ridiculous,
hilarious and just plain odd, it’s an experience to say the least. It’s just
the right dose of insanity that we as gamers look for, despite it being a free
marketing ploy from a retailer.
After all, who wouldn’t want a character selection screen where one of the stats you have is “Years Left to Live”. Plus, every good video game needs a bouncy castle in the starting area, that acts like a shuttle rocket into space than a children’s birthday party activity. You can buy items, try to steal them, get tackled by security or angry grandmothers and punch Santa in his bowl full of jelly, much to the horror of the local children. From kicking, to taking selfies, to attaching balloons to unsuspecting civilians and changing the elevator’s speed, it’s essentially a poltergeist’s definition of a great time.
Star Wars eat your heart out.
There is a set of missions and objectives to follow in order
to “complete” the game but personally I just ignore them. This kind of game is
very much what you make of it and if you aren’t willing to try and fling
yourself across the ice rink like your one true love is on the other side, then
this probably isn’t the game for you. Experimentation is the order of the day. You
unlock new abilities and activities if you complete the main plot, but that’s
the only real incentive it gives you. The games are something you play for a
laugh for an hour or so, then never again. But that’s ok, that’s the point!
The game is filled with niche references to British culture and the insanity of the Christmas shopping rush, especially the chaos that people call “Black Friday”. So, if you aren’t British, you might miss out on some of the laughs generated by goofy shop names. Yet, I think the slapstick nature of the game is worth a try, even if it’s just for a quick laugh before you switch it off and boot up whatever goodies you found under the Christmas Tree.
When in doubt, throw foam at people.
Before I sign off though, I’d like to wish you all a
wonderful holiday season. Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, the Solstice
or nothing at all, I hope you all have a wonderful time. Your support, feedback
and suggestions have made this site what it is. I started the site as an idea,
a concept that I felt hadn’t been covered in gaming journalism thus far. I didn’t
expect it to do as well as it has.
Mental health is such an important issue. It touches every part of our lives, from the friendships we form, to the clothes we choose to wear. MindGames has touched lives, including mine and that alone is worth all the effort I put into it. So, thank you. For more than I can ever put into words.
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