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The Mr Rabbit Magic Show (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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I do like Rusty Lake’s weird little point and click adventure games. What I hadn’t realised, is that I had this game, unplayed, in my library. Or that it even existed. I saw an article about it and looked it up on Steam and lo – I already had it. It’s also free, just in case you haven’t.

It’s actually a meta game, being set in the Rusty Lake offices as they prepare for a company birthday celebration (which, cyclically, this game was released to celebrate), but it starts as you playing the Mr Rabbit game within the game, where you help said bunny perform various magic tricks, mostly by clicking on things in the right order or spotting patterns. These tricks do get a bit… weird.

After a while you “break out” of the game and have some tasks to perform in the studio offices, and this bit plays out like, and references many of, the other Rusty Lake games. Unhinged dark macabre humour included. Those wacky Dutch, eh? Must be something in the water. Or the brownies.

It’s short, has a few clever bits and is well worth playing, especially if you’ve played others by the studio.

This Ain’t Even Poker, Ya Joker! (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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What if Balatro was a cookie clicker card battler? Well, this, it seems.

Like Balatro, you have a deck of cards that – over time – you can modify to add or remove cards, and have special cards that add extra points or multipliers to hands you play. Unlike Balatro, hands played are automatic – you just click the deck and a hand is dealt. Quickly, you get the ability to autodeal hands on a timer, just like in cookie clicker games.

As you score points based on poker hands played, you spend those points on upgrades, like more decks, cards, multipliers for different hand types, and so on. Eventually you get loads of decks running at the same time, with seven cards in a dealt, and extra poker hands like five of a kind or a 7 card straight. Numbers go up, you get bonuses for “resetting” the game and permanent upgrades that persist (and can only be obtained by) resets. Just like any number of “modern” incremental clicker type games.

Only, there’s more. Because the plot is that Jester, the clown on the artwork, has actually trapped you and you have to make money to pay for your release. Naturally, he reneges this deal and you have to actually fight him. It’s here the card battling, albeit automated, comes into play.

It’s a surprisingly deep, and short (which works in its favour), game of the genre. It’s a bit fiddly to play on the Steam Deck because some of the text is impossible to read even when zoomed in, but luckily there’s nothing that important you miss. If the devs could just scale everything up a bit for the Deck, it would be amazing.

Hollow Knight: Greenpath

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Although I have a number of games on my wishlist, Justine knows that when it comes to birthday presents I am averse to treating it like an opportunity to just order things that I could buy myself. As a result, she spent some time researching things that I may like, searched through my collections, and bought off list.

She did very well. Of the two games she bought, both are titles which are well considered and which I wanted to play. I may not immediately start Echoes of Wisdom, the Zelda game where you play as Zelda, since I have recently restarted Oracles of Ages on the 3DS Virtual Console, and we all know what happens when I try to play two Zeldas at once. But I did immediately start Hollow Knight.

I am sure I have played this before, in that I remember the start of the game, but I have no record of playing it on any platform and I certainly don’t own it. Maybe I watched someone else? That wouldn’t explain the muscle memory I have, or the recognition of how the slight pause when you strike an enemy conveys such impact. This is another stylish game, making me feel good about my abilities, even when I keep dying due to a lack of them.

It’s also a bit too dark. I know it’s set underground, but even so a few more lanterns wouldn’t go amiss.

The main character is a little nondescript, but maybe that’s intentional

I have explored a lot now. I’ve been through the first, blue, area, and found a (pinkish) mine which I couldn’t progress through. I’ve collected lots of money but not enough for all the charms I want. I defeated some big nasty bug thing pretending to be a knight, and a big mummy flying firefly thing. I went through a pretty green area, Greenpath, where lots of plants were growing even though they get no sunlight. I have opened the stag stations, and found some sort of underground railway but haven’t found the tokens for that yet. I fought a red-cloaked enemy who I understand to be the protagonist of Silksong. I have a cloak that allows me to dash through the air, and have now ventured into an area where lots of enemies want to poison me.

That’s not very kind.

Once Upon A Katamari (Switch): COMPLETED!

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It seems like forever since there was a new Katamari game. Aside from that incredibly hard iOS one that was free on Apple Arcade, of course, but that doesn’t count.

Running out of ideas for new things to roll up and places to do said rolling up, Namco Bandai Namco (Bandai) BandaiNamco have decided to use time travel in this iteration, with the King of All Cosmos taking The Prince across various stereotypical time periods and locations as Cave Man Times, Ancient Greece, and The Wild West, so you can roll up guys in togas and dinosaurs and pirate ships and stuff. Does it make a difference? Not really. It’s just an envelope for the levels to live in.

The rest of the game is exactly as you’d expect, and, I’d wager, want. It’s certainly what I’d want anyway. Loads of things to roll up so you get progressively bigger, with levels where you have to roll to an exact size, or avoid rolling up specific things (like the reprise of Cow or Bear from an earlier title), or roll things up while you constantly move forwards. Or roll up a person into food items to make them fat. Or become a sponge and spread water across a desert. You know, standard stuff.

And it’s as good as it ever was. I’m slightly disappointed there’s no Switch 2 update for it, ideally to get rid of the (to be fair, mercifully short) mid-level loading pauses, but it’s fine. I coped with the PSP game so I can cope here.

Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope (Switch): COMPLETED!

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What seems like a very, very long time ago, I played the original Mario + Rabbids (apparently it’s “Mario Plus Rabbids” not “Mario And Rabbids”, which sounds clumsy) on the Switch and it was great and I was well up for the sequel when it arrived. But, like many other things, it got forgotten and I never got round to buying it. Until it was so cheap on the eShop recently that it was basically free. And I mean this in a “it was about £5 instead of £50” way of being “nearly free”, rather than Kotaku’s thinly veiled adverts for “nearly free” Macbooks that are $899 instead of $999 or something. Yes, those adverts annoy me so much I’ve deleted Kotaku from my RSS reader. Yes, I still use an RSS reader.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Sparks of Hope. In most ways, it’s more of the same not-quite XCom of the original, only this time it blends Rabbids with Mario Galaxy’s characters, mashing Rabbids with Lumas to make Sparks, which essentially give you extra abilities you can use in battles.

I’m also pretty sure the game no longer uses a proper grid-based movement system. I mean, it is still effectively grid-based but feels like it isn’t, with movement ranges being shown as circular areas and freedom to move whereever in that you like. You do, however, “snap” to a sort of grid, and cover like rocks and crates are still noticeably square, so it’s a bit fake. Outside of the battles, the overworld feels much less grid-like though, except many puzzles there involve moving things in rectangular areas.

Other than those changes, and some new characters and tweaks to moves and rules, it’s more of the same. Battles seem a bit quicker, although some of that could be the quicker load times on the Switch 2, and the game seemed a lot easier. So much easier that I don’t actually recall losing a single fight. Doesn’t really matter though, because it’s fun – especially when you manage to chain attacks like tackles, movement sensor reactions, and making baddies bounce into the air so they move and get shot all in one turn, obliterating even difficult foes.

Also, Rabbid Peach channelling Mean Girls is great.