Tag: multiplayer

Animal Crossing New Horizons – Being Outside Whilst Staying Inside:

Posted on by in Gaming, Real Life

Much like every person on the planet with a Nintendo Switch, I have been playing a lot of Animal Crossing New Horizons over the last month and a half. As it’s release date was scheduled for after my show season was over (for those who don’t know, I was production manager for a play for my university’s drama society), I’d pre-ordered it as a treat, to play as a wind down from the rewarding but incredibly stressful, show weeks. Thankfully, my show went without a hitch but the other play I was doing lighting for, had to stop due to the lockdown measures. So, New Horizons became my isolation game.

WHAT A HECKIN GOOD BOI

I have talked about Animal Crossing before on the site, with it being the second ever article posted on Mind Games (mind blowing, I know). So, if I repeat myself at all, I apologise! However, in traditional Mind Games fashion – there is more I would like to say. Specifically, about how New Horizons has kept me (moderately) sane during these trying times. If you will indulge me dear reader, by enjoying what is probably the thousandth article you have seen posted about the game. I may be no Eurogamer but hopefully something I say will strike a chord with you.

More than anything, what New Horizons provides for me is a sense of normality. Even if we were not in the middle of a world-wide pandemic, my world is at a turning point. I am graduating from university, starting a new job, and moving to a new place. Everything in my life is changing and that is a terrifying thought. So, having a game with a set routine, simple mechanics, and plenty of opportunities to make the island my own, is a great source of comfort.

This guy has been my nemesis since Wild World and I swear to Isabelle, I’ll sink his ship.

When I get up each day, I get my cereal and a fresh mug of coffee. I will watch whatever YouTube videos tickle my fancy, be that livestreams that I missed or compilations from my favourite shows. Then, I boot up Animal Crossing. I will grab the four fossils, hunt down the money rock and freshly grown money tree (who knew that there was a magic money tree), check for any visitors (or invaders like Redd) and water my flower fields. If I am missing any bugs or fish then I will go for a wander, tool in hand. Afterwards, I go about the rest of my day – maybe returning to my island in the evening once my work is done.

It becomes a constant. Others see it as tedious and repetitive, a game with no real end goal or objective – not worth the time investment. To me, it is a life ring that I cling to in a storm. In the words of the Lutece twins from Bioshock Infinite, it is all a matter of perspective. What I see will always be different to what you see. It is when you accept these different viewpoints, that you see the truth value of games like Animal Crossing in trying times like this.

Who needs to wait till Halloween for true horror, when Zipper is here.

Obviously, I am not the most social individual. At university, it means that I tend to avoid the traditional activities, such as club nights, pub crawls and various raves. I would rather meet a friend for coffee and go our separate ways afterwards. A couple of my closest friends have mastered the art of co-existing with me. We could be in the same room for hours, doing our own thing and neither of us will feel the need to fill the silence with awkward chatter.

The multiplayer aspect of Animal Crossing leans into the concept of co-existing. Often, I will visit a friend’s island and we will do our own thing. Be that fishing, harvesting fruit or wandering around getting to know all their villagers (and making them love you more in two minutes than the person who has known them for WEEKS). You get to talk to and enjoy the company of those friends that maybe you are in a different country from or those you cannot see due to the ongoing lockdown. It is not as good as the real thing, but people are finding creative ways to spend time with their loved ones using the capitalist raccoon’s island paradises.

WAKE UP BLATHERS I’VE GOT ANOTHER FOSSIL FOR YOU

The terraforming aspect of the game is remarkably therapeutic. Getting to mould and change your island into something that you feel genuinely proud of, is an incredibly satisfying feeling. Plus, you get to fix those weird cliff edges and oddly shaped ponds that your island starts out with. For those who cannot leave the house for the foreseeable future and those who live in an area without much greenery to enjoy in those brief daily walks for exercise purposes, getting to mould an ideal outside world, brings a little bit of joy that may be missing in their days.

Anyways, those are just a few thoughts I have had about New Horizons. I am keeping this piece short as I have a lot of university work to finish off and I do not want to repeat myself too much! I will post some pictures of my island once I finish the grand rebuilding process (scheduled for AFTER my dissertation is finished) on my Twitter so go follow me – @OurMindGames / @CaitlinRC

See you all soon,

CaitlinRC.

Betrayal at The House on The Hill – Build-A-Bear but Less Terrifying:

Posted on by in Gaming, tabletop

When you finish secondary school, one of the main fears you have is that you won’t be able to cope with the drastic changes it forces upon you. In the UK, you are required by law to remain in some form of education or training until the age of 18. After that, you are deemed an adult by society and mostly left to your own devices, except when bill payments and the tax man come around. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a young person, especially considering you’ve been asking them to make decisions that could impact the rest of their lives, with little to no life experience to back up those choices.

The other big fear is that you will lose all the friends that you made. For many, they were what kept you going in tough times, provided a shoulder to lean on and a place of safety when everyone else seemed out to get you. They want you to succeed and you want only the best for them. Which often means, you must let them chase their dreams, even if you don’t get to see them for a long time. In the case of my friends from school, I only really see them about twice a year. So, the little time I do spend with them, is very important to us all. How do we spend that time? Simple. We spend an afternoon at a board game café, messing around, catching up and claiming to be the princess when in fact we are an evil cat (it makes sense in context, I swear).

Board game cafes are my life blood when it comes to socialising.

It was at our usual place that I came across what is one of my favourite board games now, Betrayal at The House on The Hill. To start, the players choose a character from the selection – such as a demonic little girl, a headstrong jock or a mad scientist. As a team, you explore the house – building it from a pile of tiles and discovering the secrets that lie within. From sinister whispers to a literal madman, each room you uncover leads you closer and closer to the main event. Some tiles have an omen symbol on them. Whenever an omen is triggered, you must roll to see if the “Haunt” begins.

Up until the Haunt, you are all on the same side. Exploring the house, helping one another, discovering the truth as chaos unfolds around you. However, when the Haunt begins, there’s no real way to tell what is going to happen next. With 50 scenarios in the standard game and dozens more in the expansions, no one playthrough of the game is the same. The type of Haunt you experience depends on what room you are in and what omen last occurred, so there are a ridiculous number of combinations to choose from.

Because who doesn’t want to play as a girl that would be better suited to a horror movie?

The Haunt is where the “betrayal” part of the game’s title comes into play. Depending on the scenario, one of you has turned to the dark side. That player must take the traitor’s tome and read the scenario’s instructions, in private, such that the remaining players are kept in the dark. The rest of the group reads their copy of the scenario, which explains what they need to do in order to survive and escape the house alive. This ranges from performing a séance to put a spirit’s weary soul to rest, to taking down a seemingly immortal axe murderer that is trying to axe them a few too many questions.

It’s a fascinating dynamic, as the game actively encourages you to work together. So, when the traitor reveals themselves and the ghouls of the house start to wreak havoc, it’s jarring and unnerving. I’ve known my group of friends from secondary school for nearly a decade now, so to say we know one another quite well is a bit of an understatement. Yet, when we play Betrayal, we often see a darker side of our normally kind-hearted friends.

It is great fun to just pick up the traitor tome and walk away, leaving your friends to wonder what you’re going to do in order to win.

I’ll give you an example. In one round, we played in teams of two, pairing the experienced players with the newcomers. As there were only three new players and five experienced ones, it meant that my close friend and I ended up on the same team – such that the two gamers weren’t given any advantages! However, when the Haunt was triggered, we became the traitor. Our character had discovered an ancient sarcophagus in the house and had to reunite him with his loved one – reincarnated in the body of a little girl we had rescued from another room in the house. When reunited with one another, they’d become so powerful that the leaders of the world would bow before them instantly. The world would burn and be remade in their image. The others wanted to stop it.

However, the problem with one of your own team turning on you, is that you are intimately aware of one another’s strengths and weaknesses. There’s a sense of familiarity and trust that is shattered when the players who protected you earlier in the game, are now the one’s holding the knife at the end of an unlit hallway. One of the other pairs had the most intelligent character and had the highest chance of thwarting our plan. So, we chased them down and killed them. It was a ruthless act, but it ended up winning us the game (that and the fact the others kept failing the elevator roll and taking damage from it).

No-one is safe. Not in this house.

More than anything, I think the reason that betrayal appeals to me so strongly, is that it hints at the darkness in humanity. Sure, zombies and vampires can be terrifying but, in our minds, we know that they aren’t real. The true horror of psychopaths and traitors is that they could be us. For all we know, they could have been stood where we are standing only a few months ago. Human psychology is as fascinating as it is terrifying. We often surprise ourselves with what we are truly capable of, and not always in a good way. So many crime dramas have the least suspicious person turn out to be the killer.

As a core principle, I believe that everyone is inherently good. I do not see the point in anger or cruelty or hate. To me, it feels like needless aggression that takes a toll on all involved parties – be they active participants or merely observers. The sad thing is that these good people can be swayed, manipulated and led astray – to believe in twisted causes and harmful world views, to betray those they care about. Which is why games that have you think from the villain’s mindset, are always intriguing.

Anyways, that’s my two cents on a very fun board game. There are expansion packs and a D&D inspired version of the game so if you’re interested, go find it! I highly recommend it, especially as a late-night bonding experience for a small group.

Till next week,

CaitlinRC (Happy new year 😊)

The Blackout Club – What Is It You Think You See:

Posted on by in Gaming

We have always feared the dark. Even now, as adults, we still flinch at the shadows. It’s not the fear of the darkness or the blackness, it’s what lurks within it. When we know what we are afraid of, when we can examine it from all sides and judge it accordingly, we can begin to combat that fear. We are afraid of the unknown. A lot of horror games focus on this concept, by having creatures lurk in the shadows or force you to fumble along a corridor towards a monster, that you can’t see until you’re pressed up against it. In our fear, we appreciate every second of light and visibility that we can get, clinging to the hope that our flashlight batteries will last just a few seconds longer. Not that our fervent praying impacts it, but we can believe that it does.

What a lot of horror games don’t do, is force you to cut off one of those senses. During a tense moment, we are on alert, our senses working overtime to take in every minute bit of information that they can, no matter how pointless or odd it may seem. So, when The Blackout Club instructed me to close my eyes, my first thought was “There is no way on this planet that I am going to do that.” Obviously, curiosity got the better of me and I did as I was told, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this article! The point of closing your eyes is so you can see “The Shape”. Invisible to the naked eye, it prowls its way around the levels, seeking out the player characters to force them to do it’s bidding.

The Blackout Club is a multiplayer horror game that follows a group of teenagers living in the town of Redacre, who have banded together to investigate the strange events occurring in their hometown. The kids have been experiencing blackouts, where they wake up in strange locations that they don’t remember going to (like students who drink too much). The various adults in the town have started to sleepwalk and during the game’s prologue, one of the club’s members, Bells, is kidnapped. This spurs the club to start collecting evidence and build an understanding of what on earth is happening beneath their feet.

The Maze is not for the fainthearted.

Ignoring the frustrating amount of grinding you need to do in order to level up, I honestly love this game. It can keep you on edge throughout the missions you complete, using the sins system. During a mission, a kid may break into a house or knock out an enemy. Although necessary, if discovered, these sins will be reported. If your group of teens is too sinful, then The Shape comes into play. It targets the most sinful player and is relentless in its pursuit. Every time you close your eyes to see where it is, it’s that much closer to you. If caught by the Shape, you lose control of your mind. Powerless to do anything, you are forced to watch as your character wanders around the map, hoping that one of your friends can manage to save you. If you get caught too many times, the Shape no longer wants you to be one of them. Instead of controlling you, you are slaughtered.

Taking a lead from the Outlast games, you don’t get a gun or the ability to kill your pursuers. Sure, you have a few non-lethal weapons that you can use to distract or temporarily take an enemy out of the equation, but you cannot kill. These people wandering around and trying to get you? They’re your neighbours, your community, even your parents or your best friends. These people, although not in control of their own minds, aren’t entirely innocent either. Beneath the town is a labyrinth of rooms and corridors, called “The Maze”. It seems endless, growing and adding new locations as you explore it. Entering this place is not something a player should do lightly as you are not alone in there. During the game’s prologue, you get a glimpse of the cult like activities happening beneath your town and how outnumbered your group of teens truly is.

One optional element of the game that really intrigues me is the addition of Stalkers. The Stalker is a former member of The Blackout Club, who has betrayed the cause and is now working for the Voices – the god like entities that whisper to the residents of the town during their blackouts. The Voices promised that the Stalker’s family would be safe if they assisted with reporting the Blackout Club’s sins to the Shape. As a regular player, you are not told whether there is a Stalker amongst you. Unless you directly encounter them or they record you committing sins, you may never know exactly where they are. Traitors in game’s storylines can be a bit… dramatic in their motivations but in this case, I get it. Sure, maybe reading this you question what kind of person would betray their friends to an entity that is clearly causing harm to their town? However, I ask you this – how far would you go to protect those you love? I know for a fact; I’d go damn far.

You can’t run forever.

There is something about the Blackout Club that I want to highlight from a mental health perspective. It’s called the Enhanced Horror system. If you’d like to experience this for yourself, then go try it out and then come back to read this bit, as I’m going to go into detail about it.

Everyone ready? Let’s chat.

The Enhanced Horror system is an opt-in feature within the game that allows the game to listen to and record the player’s voices as they play. If you are lucky, or unlucky depending on how you look at things, someone will be listening. The Voices will respond to you. A voice that is not your friends will respond to your questions, give cryptic statements and encourage you to do their bidding – anything from being selfless, to taunting enemies. These Voices may reward you with story information or gameplay items in return for your services, with the interaction being shared with the greater community – so you can all try to decipher exactly what is going on within the town of Redacre. Whether this voice is actually real or just a creation of your mind, who can tell? Those with psychosis can attest to this, it seems real. That’s the problem.

How you choose to engage with this is up to you, but I think the more curious amongst you will be keen to collect as much information as possible. After all, how often do you get to talk to a deity like creature and have it respond? Anyways, I think The Blackout Club is a game that people should check out, especially if you aren’t great with solo horror! Why not terrify your friends at the same time, so you can all suffer together!

Don’t look back. If we look back we are lost.

So, I am at EGX this week (Wednesday to Sunday) meeting with various lovely developers about their games, so there will be a lot of content coming out over the next few weeks. If you’d like to keep up to date with all I’m doing at EGX, then go follow my Twitter – https://twitter.com/OurMindGames . I’ll be posting updates and pictures from the show as much as I can! Remember to follow, like and comment on the site.

Also, I just wanted to say this on here as well. As of a few days ago, we hit over 1,000 views on the site. We also hit our six-month anniversary. I am beyond humbled and amazed at the kindness of all of you, my marvellous readers. Your comments, suggestions and feedback on everything I do is why I keep writing and exploring these sometimes-heavy topics with you. Here’s to even more milestones.

Thanks,

CaitlinRC.