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Subsurface (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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For clarity, the specific game called “Subsurface” that I’m talking about is the cute little Metroidvania for the Pico-8 fantasy console. It’s a fun, short, platformer/shooter with a few upgrades (like being able to swim, or glide) that allow you to access previously inaccessible areas. Er, like any other Metroidvania.

This one, being on the Pico-8, has tiny pixel graphics but the main character is clearly a miniature Samus Aran clone with that colour scheme!

Not a difficult game by any means, but a really well coded wee thing.

Cats Hidden in Paris (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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There seems to be a lot of “find the cats hidden in these pictures” games. I’ve played a few recently, but this one is by a different developer, and is one huge picture rather than a series of connected ones (like A Castle Full of Cats). The idea is the same, though.

Not much more to say, really, aside from as well as finding 100 cats, you can also get an achievement for finding 5 gulls. Which I did. It’s free on Steam if you want to play yourself.

Paw Patrol on a Roll (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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No, I’m serious. I really did play and complete Paw Patrol on a Roll. For Science?

You see, one of the ugvm people bought a charity bundle of games and one of those was Paw Patrol on a Roll. As they were clearly above playing it (or even claiming the code) themselves, it was offered up and naturally I took it. Beholden to play it, I did.

It’s a bad game. I don’t think anyone was expecting anything else, what with the source material, the fact it’s a licenced game, and it’s aimed at four year olds. It’s solid, it looks OK, and if you’re a four year old fan of Dogs Pretending To Be Emergency Services I expect this is great, but otherwise? No.

The main issues revolve around the repetitive nature of the levels and – worse – the soundbites. Every five seconds, some kid with an annoying voice exclaims that “You got the pup treats!” or “I detect a gold paw print!” or other stuff you only need to hear once – if at all. Every level is basically the same: Some really, really simple platforming, with the occasional need to call a different dog to come and clear a path. How these dogs manage to drive their truck or fly their helicopter to the point they’re needed when the only way to reach them is on foot (otherwise why wouldn’t you just drive/fly there?) isn’t made clear. In fact, almost every level could be easily completed with just the pink dog and her helicopter flying directly to the point you need to reach, and all that rubbish platforming could be avoided and the game would be over much more quickly.

Am I sad it’s now all over? No. Was it worth the Zero Pence I paid for it? No. Would I recommend this game to anyone? No.

I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!1 (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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Once upon a time, in a different era, this game was a viral hit on the Xbox Live Arcade Indie Games service. It was that platform within a platform that let pretty much anyone publish games for the Xbox 360 and sell them for peanuts.

Well, I recently discovered it still exists – for free on Steam! And here we are, after I’ve completed it.

In some way, IMAGWZII is a precursor to the modern phenomenon of “survivors” games. It has a lot in common with twin-stick shooters like Geometry Wars or Smash TV, but it feels “primitive” in the same way Vampire Survivors et al do, what with the graphic style and rough edges. And, of course, it has the REALLY LOUD and VERY BAD theme tune that sings over the top of all the shooting, which is the main reason the game went viral in the first place, I’m sure.

Fear for your eyes when this bit gets going.

Completing it was a surprise, as I don’t think I ever did on the Xbox and, actually, I thought it was the sort of game that just went on forever, but apparently not!

A Tiny Sticker Tale (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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And the first completed game of 2024 is… A Tiny Sticker Tale! Which you already knew because that’s the title of this post. Free on Amazon or Epic or something (it’s hard to track these days), A Tiny Sticker Tale was on my Switch eShop wishlist following John Walker’s enthusing on his blog. But since it was free elsewhere, and Steam Deck-able, I moved there instead.

It’s not often I have to rush to complete a game. With this one, I started playing it and my daughter’s ears pricked up and she came over and started to play it vicariously so I had to send her away and tell her to wait her turn while I ran through it as there’s only one save game slot. OK, so it wasn’t exactly a rush, as the game is only a few hours long anyway, but I don’t think I touched on everything.

The ‘hing with A Tiny Sticker Tale is that you pick up items, objects and characters as stickers, put them in your scrapbook, then take them out and use them elsewhere. For example, there’s a river on one of the screens which you can’t cross, but there’s a bridge on another. Unstick the bridge, take it to the river, and plonk it down. Most of the puzzles work in similar ways, a ladder to climb cliffs, or places you have to take the animal characters to.

There’s a fun bit of inventory management (no, really) as you’ve only limited space in your scrapbook and some of the stickers are huge, so you have to move them all around. I realised you can, if you’re careful, make them overhang the pages somewhat, increasing what you can “carry”, but even then, you sometimes have to swap out things. Especially if you’re carrying trees.

None of the puzzles are especially difficult, and I expect some people will find the game excruciatingly twee, but I enjoyed the laid-backness of it, the art style, and the silly characters you meet.