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Box Boy: completed!

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I only had a few levels left indeed, and in the end they weren’t that tricky – the most difficult part of the game was timing jumps when making platforms disappear.

As I mentioned before, there are various challenge levels to complete, and I will probably give those a go in the near future, but the game’s length was pretty perfect for a handheld title; the way that new concepts were introduced and then virtually discarded after that set of levels led to my interest staying high throughout. It could have been good for the last level to be an extended one with all types of challenge included, but maybe that’s to come in the additional worlds.

Look, grey!

There are three more games in the series: two on the 3DS and one on the Switch. I’ll play them all. One day.

Box Boy: constant adaptation

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Box Boy is a simple platform puzzle game, with a simple visual style, and simple sound design. Yet despite its appearances, at times it’s anything but simple to complete.

You play as a square. You can make a certain number of other squares come out of you, chained in any direction (although the first one can’t go straight down), and you can use these to hook onto other platforms, push yourself across gaps, or press remote buttons. You can detach yourself from the blocks you create, though if you then try to create more the prior ones disappear. If any block is resting on a surface, you can transport to that other block along the chain you have built.

It is all relatively simple for the first few levels, and indeed I was getting to the point where I couldn’t really imagine any more puzzles with this basic setup. Each level is relatively short and defined how many boxes you can grow, and there are one or two crowns to collect as you progress through the level which disappear if you create too many boxes before getting to them. I was able to collect all crowns, if not on the first time through the level, then on the second.

It isn’t a riot of colour.

But then the game starts introducing new concepts – one in each new world – and you have to learn the game all over. Switches to open doors, spikes, enemies (who helpfully activate things and disappear if you guide them to the right place), conveyor belts, and rows of blocks which disappear if you fill the gaps. Variety was very much appreciated.

I only have a few more levels to go, though I can see there are some added challenges to complete, plus lots of outfits to unlock somehow. I have a feeling the sequels may be more of a pull.

Pokémon Blue: wild ZUBAT appeared!

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The start of Pokémon Blue1 is pretty slow. After the first couple of set-pieces, where you choose a starter and fetch the pokédex, you are left to go forth into the world, with only the route numbers to guide you. The paths are winding and specifically designed to make you walk through long grass, meaning that you will encounter many wild pokémon along the way. Unfortunately for the first hour or so they are all of one of three or four types, and it gets a little dull when the fifteenth caterpie is dispatched with a single hit from Charmander. Trainers along the way offer some variety but they all have similar pokémon, again, and give very little reward. By the time you get to Pewter City, you’re desperate for just a bit of challenge.

Having chosen Charmander at the start, I got it. Brock’s gym is of ground and rock types, and Charmander’s attacks did little. Luckily I had already caught Spearow and Nidoran♀ so I had some variety, but my first attempt at Brock’s underling saw all my team of six (which also included Pidgey, Metapod and another Caterpie) being defeated. Before trying again, I went to the South of the city and wandered around in a patch of grass for around 150 hours, battling hundreds of level 3 and 4 pidgeys, caterpies, and rattatas. The time was not spent in vain, however, as Metapod evolved into Butterfree, with the confusion move, and Spearow and Charmander all jumped up several levels. Of course, this being a Generation 1 pokémon game, there was no EXP Share, so all this levelling had to be done by having Metapod in the first slot of my team and manually changing away from it as the first move.

I also caught a Pikachu, who quickly replaced Caterpie in the party, and I spent some time with him levelling up as well. Pikachu is nowhere near as cute in this first game as he later came to be; he is a little chubby.

I’m playing using the black and white option rather than grey and green, because sometimes authenticity can go too far.

With a team of level 15 pokémon, I went to Brock and beat him with health to spare; Butterfree performed admirably. And then I departed Pewter City to travel along Route 3, and on to Mt Moon. In the caves on the way to Cerulean City, I encountered approximately 32,649 zubats, with them appearing every few steps along the way. Each and every one was defeated with Pikachu’s thundershock move, as demonstrated in the header image of this post; occasionally they would get an attack in first which drained a point or two of Pikachu’s health. By the time I made it through the mountain, picking up a fossil and defeating Team Rocket on the way, Pikachu was at level 18 and other members of the party were trailing behind.

I may need to do some more grinding before I go to meet Misty.

  1. Before the 3DS store closed I bought a number of games, which I am only just getting around to playing. I have both Blue and Silver lined up, to hopefully complete for the first time. I played Yellow back when that was first released (or close to then) and I believe I got as far as the Elite Four before giving up. ↩︎

Pocket Card Jockey: varied results

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In Pocket Card Jockey, you play as a jockey who controls his horse through the medium of games of solitaire – specifically, a variant of golf solitaire – while managing stamina, steering through the pack, and deciding when to use a boost on the final stretch. It is a wonderfully eclectic collection of game types, and it can feel as if nothing is going right as you run out of draw cards, collide with other horses, and miss out on the blue fire boosts on the course – or, conversely, as your horse hits 100% enthusiasm coming onto the final straight with only two horses ahead, you can feel on top of the world. It’s pretty stressful.

The individual races are part of a wider game was well, with you training up a horse (owned by a variety of odd entrepreneurs) through the racing season for two years, during the ages of 2 and 3, before moving that horse to a more stable game mode where stakes are higher but there are fewer powerups. Once that horse has lost a few races in a row, it’s retired to the farm – where you can pair it with another of the opposite sex to try and get a junior who builds on the speed and stamina the two parents were trained with. At any time you can start a new training regime for a new horse.

I realise that most of these screenshots won’t mean anything to someone who hasn’t played the game.

You can buy upgrades which last for a race, but these can be horrendously expensive. At the start of the race you have an initial game where you have to uncover the largest number of start dots as quickly as possible. At the end of the race you steer the horse up and down to avoid getting blocked in, and use up the stamina cards you have left at the right times. There’s a huge amount in the game, and yet it still feels quite simple.

Pokémon X: completed!

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The little diversion saw me travelling through fields of flowers and encountering a large number of new pokémon, meaning that I depleted my stocks of all types of pokéballs while travelling through the flora. I also met a couple of trainers with a massive unit of a pokémon. I finally found Wulfric, the eighth gym leader, frolicking in the meadow, and convinced him to return to his responsibilities in the ice world. Was it finally time to battle for the final badge?

Yes, it was. Now, I have mentioned before that I felt I might have spent a little too long on side quests, and as a result my pokémon were feeling a little overpowered as I took down gym leaders with one hit. Since that point my core team has changed little, with the main exception being Xerneus replacing Pikachu. This meant that I no longer had any electric pokémon – or even any electric moves – which is very much unprecedented in the way I’ve played pokémon games before. Electric moves are often quite powerful and have potential to cause paralysis, which has been beneficial many times in the past. They are also strong against water pokémon – and when the first opponent in the Snowbelle City gym sent out Cloyster I was starting to regret the change.

I needn’t have. Every other pokémon in the gym was an ice type, meaning that Delphox could generally dispatch them immediately, and as the availability of fire moves waned then Lucario’s fighting moves substituted. All gym trainers, plus Wulfric, were defeated very quickly.

And with that, I was invited to go to the Pokémon League. Getting there was possibly the most difficult part of the game, with a very long trek up victory road against high-level trainers and powerful pokémon. I had to travel back to Snowbelle City twice to revive and heal all my pokémon, before finally reaching the next pokécentre. This was conveniently located outside the Pokémon League building, and so refreshed and revived I went in.

In other pokémon games I have struggled a lot at this point. In Leaf Green I got to the Elite Four and managed to beat three of them before losing, more than once – and in the end I moved on to other games. In Sapphire I was so discouraged by my Leaf Green experiences that when I got to the Pokémon League my team felt far too underpowered to even attempt battles, and I ended up wandering off to do other things instead, never returning. In Pearl I managed to beat the Elite Four, only to get beaten by the champion afterwards. This has always been the climax of the game, and I have never got past it.

The entrance to the League, and the settings for the Elite Four battles was certainly impressive, with the Four themselves having a great deal of personality. I was told that they had their own specialisms – water, fire, dragon and steel, and I prepared for which of my pokémon should be first out in each case. By now most of my team was up to the high seventies, with the exceptions of Lucario and Xerneus who were a few levels lower. I reviewed my moves; I shifted around my pokémon, and then, with trepidation, I entered.

I needn’t have been so worried. Sure, most of the opposing pokémon posed some threat, with few instant defeats, but I beat all four at the first time of asking. Xerneus’s dragon-type move was invaluable against the dragons, but even other pokémon took off large amounts of health. Blastoise was a monster in the fire battles. The most difficult was the water champion, since I no longer had Pikachu – but I managed to adapt.

Then heal up, check the order, and it’s off to see the champion.

This wasn’t an easy battle. The champion, Diantha, had a large variety of pokémon, some of which I hadn’t seen before and so I was unaware the best way to face them. Luckily I had Edward looking over my shoulder, who told me, for example, that Gourgeist is a ghost/grass type and so I should use fire moves against it, and Tyrantrum is rock-type so would be dispatched with ease by Blastoise’s hydro pump. After defeating five of her pokémon, I had four still standing, and I threw out Lucario to use the mega evolution as a finale. That worked very well indeed.

Yes, I forgot to turn the 3D off when taking that screenshot.

There’s still a lot to do, of course. I recall seeing someone blocking me from a cave in the winding woods, saying it was only for champions. There are many waterfalls to go up. There are many black entries in the pokédex. But I’ve seen the credits roll, and so I can finally say I’ve completed the story in a pokémon game.