I wanted to plug an Indie Developer's upcoming kickstarter, plus his whole series.

Evan Wolbach and Dead Drop Studios have been making the Outbreak series since 2017. These are indie games, pretty much developed just by Evan. If you like retro survival horror games, check out the series. Check out links to the whole series here:

https://www.deaddroppublishing.com/games.html

Evan & Team just released a playable teaser for their upcoming kickstarter, Outbreak: Shades of Horror. This teaser actually has a lot going on and is more than just a demo. There are 8 different endings you can get, and Evan has said you can spend several hours replaying the teaser to find new items and endings. His hard work definitely shows in this teaser.

Since I have never tried stadia before, I tried the free 60 minute version of Shades of Horror in my browser. I was amazed at how well it played and the visuals. Consider me impressed by stadia, and the work Dead Drop Studios put into the teaser for Shades of Horror.

The kickstarter launches at the end of the month, and Evan promises there will be lots of different tiers and rewards for those who support the kickstarter.

Get more info on Outbreak: Shades of Horror and follow his kickstarter here:

https://twitter.com/deaddropstudios/status/1554565544950497280?s=20&t=d0B5uLiFyHRcFB5UKLOGZA

To celebrate their 4th anniversary, Limited Run Games will be hosting a 24 hour Twitch Stream with proceeds/donations going towards The Video Game History Foundation. For those that aren't aware of this foundation, their goal is to preserve the history of video games, so all the hard work and lessons learned are not lost because of time.

The stream starts today (10/28) at 9 am PDT/12 pm EDT.

The stream can be watched here: https://www.twitch.tv/limitedrungames
The schedule is here: https://horaro.org/lrganniversary/schedule

The Video Game History Foundation is here: https://gamehistory.org/

Limited Run Games once again stole E3 (imho) with an excellent showcase. For their 2nd Annual E3 showcase they showed off around 50 games being released, physically, in the upcoming months. Personally I am excited for all the LucasArts Games (mostly released on their original platforms) and Blaster Master Zero. This is going to be an exciting year for LRG!

Here is a list of the games announced, stripped from their site (https://limitedrungames.com/blogs/news/lrg-e3-2019 ):

• Atari Flashback Classics (Vita)


• Atooi Collection (3DS)


• Bad North (Switch)


• Blaster Master Zero (Switch)


• Blazing Chrome (Switch, PS4)


• Corpse Killer (PS4)


• The Curse of Monkey Island™ (PC)


• Damascus Gear Operation Osaka (Vita)


• Damascus Gear Operation Tokyo (Vita)


• Dark Devotion (Switch, PS4)


• DEADBOLT (Vita)


• Double Switch (Switch)


• Freedom Planet (Switch, PS4)


• Guacamelee! (Vita)


• Hover (PS4)


• Mercenary Kings (PS4)


• Metal Slug 3 (Vita)


• Monkey Island™ 2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge (PC)


• Night in the Woods (Switch, PS4)


• Papers Please (Vita)


• Pix the Cat (Vita)


• Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid (Switch, PS4)


• realMyst (Switch)


• Red Faction (PS4)


• Revenant Dogma (Vita)


• Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken (Vita)


• Rocketbirds 2: Evolution (Vita)


• Rogue Legacy (Switch)


• The Secret of Monkey Island™ (PC)


• The Secret of Monkey Island™: Special Edition (PC)


• Shenmue III Collector’s Edition (PC, PS4)


• Star Wars™ (NES, Game Boy)


• Star Wars™: Bounty Hunter (PS4)


• Star Wars™: Dark Forces (PC)


• Star Wars™ Episode I: Racer (PC, N64)


• Star Wars™: The Empire Strikes Back (NES, Game Boy)


• Star Wars™: Jedi Knight (PC)


• Star Wars™ Jedi Knight II - Jedi Outcast (PC)


• Star Wars™ Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (PC)


• Star Wars™: Racer Revenge (PS4)


• Star Wars™: Rebel Assault (PC)


• Star Wars™: Shadows of the Empire (PC, N64)


• Star Wars™: TIE Fighter (PC)


• Star Wars™: X-Wing (PC)


• Super Meat Boy (Switch, PS4, Vita)


• Super Mutant Alien Assault (Vita)


• Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack (Vita)


• Transistor (Switch, PS4)


• Turok (Switch)


• Turok 2: Seeds of Evil (Switch)

I recently decided to jump back into the Kingdom Hearts world with Re:Chain of Memories. This was originally released as Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories for the Gameboy Advance (GBA) in 2004. The GBA version was a 2D role-playing game and card game mixed into one. Re:Chain of Memories is a 3D version that was created for the Playstation 2 in 2007. It contains the same core gameplay, but rather than being in a 2D world, you are playing it in a 3D world, using much of the same assets from the original Kingdom Hearts. The version I played was an updated Playstation 2 version that was made for the Playstation 4.

Chain of Memories is a very interesting game. It takes the Kingdom Hearts gameplay, restricts the game world size (more on that in a bit) and introduces a card game for the battles. The battles are really different. You still have the 3D movement along with jump and roll from the first Kingdom Hearts game, but to do actual attacks/most of the defense, you must play a card. You have different types of cards. There are magic cards, attack cards, item cards, character cards and monster cards. Each card has a number between zero and nine. Both the monsters and you play cards to attack each other. When a card is played there is a very small window for someone else to play a card. If the second player (you or the monster) plays a card that is a zero, equal to, or higher than the original card, the original card is thrown out. If a zero card is played first, it is the lowest card, but if it is played second it is the highest card. Zeros can break anything (this too will be explained in a bit). If the second player plays a card with equal value, the other player will be stunned. If they play a card higher than the first player, their card will also be acted upon.

On top of playing one card at a time, you can queue up three cards for a combined attack (their value is the total value of the cards). These three cards will do different things depending on what cards you play. If you play the right combination of cards you can act out a Sleight, which will do a special move. Only zero cards and a combination of three cards with an equal or higher value can beat a player playing three cards. This is where zero cards are really useful. They are quicker to cancel out three cards than building up an equal or higher amount of three cards to defeat what was played.

For creating decks, you have a certain amount of CP (I assume this means card points). Each card costs a certain amount of CP, so you have to try to maximize the usage of your CP to the best of your ability. When your character levels up, you have the chance to increase your CP by a certain amount. You can create up to three decks. Some deck builds work better than others for certain enemies. In the end I had to modify and create new decks on occasion to move past monsters/bosses.

Each character has a certain amount of hit points (including you). You end up winning battles when all the monsters have been defeated. You lose when all your hit points are gone. This is standard game mechanics here.

Overall the card game was hit and miss for me. On one-hand it was unique. On the other hand it moved too fast for me. It was hard to take in the battle field, where you are in your deck and what cards the monsters are playing. A lot of the time I felt I did not have enough time to respond to a monster’s play. For the most part, I would just put a decent deck together and spam the monsters with cards (and sometimes Sleights). Later in the game you really have to put more thought into what cards you play and the order you have them in your deck in order to get past some of the monsters and bosses.

In between battles you traverse rooms. These rooms are not all that big and get a little monotonous after a while. You do have control over what rooms you see though. As you exit each room, you are allowed to play a room card, which in turn determines the type of room you will see next. This was a cool gameplay mechanic that opens up replayability.

The story is the best part of this game. Chain of Memories picks up right at the end of the original Kingdom Hearts. Sora, Goofy, Donald and Jiminy run into a mysterious stranger. The follow this stranger into a castle and learn that their memories aren’t all that they are cracked up to be. The end result is a game that plays upon the character’s memories and really does a great job telling this story.

As for replayability, I feel this game has a lot of it. From the way you can define a room to the secret character that is unlocked at the end of this game, I could see myself revisiting it. The strong story helps too.

Overall I would recommend this game. It is a lot of fun to play. I am also curious to see the GBA version in action. I might end up tracking down a youtube video of the gameplay to see the differences. The Kingdom Hearts world definitely grew for the better with this game.

Micro Mages is a new NES platformer that supports up to 4 players at once. This game looks awesome! Morphcat Games (the developer) wanted to challenge themselves to fit this entire game into 40 kilobytes (the size of the original Super Mario Bros). They have a great video on how they compressed some of the art assets to get more out of the game with a limited amount of space. Their kickstarter says that they have the game completed, now they just need to make the physical assets. Their plan is to release the first batch of games in April and the second batch in May. You can pledge for just a digital copy of the ROM or for a physical release.

When I first heard about Telltale taking on the Batman mythos, I thought it was a weird match, but I was intrigued to see what would become of it. Over a year later, I would be giving it a go on the Nintendo Switch.

Batman: TTS is labeled an adventure game, but I would not call it that. I would end up calling it an interactive graphic novel. There are very little adventure game portions to this game. When you do run into a traditional adventure game area of the game, there is so much hand-holding, that not much thought is needed to figure out the puzzles.

What drives this game is quick time events (QTE). Batman: TTS uses these to a fault. Sometimes they can end up with you losing the game and other times they are used to change the narrative of the game.

Along with the QTEs, the game is also driven by the branching story. This is very much a Choose Your Own Adventure Batman. The decisions you make during the dialogue portions of the game will change the outcome of the story down the road.

So how is the story? The story is very good. This is a grounded Batman universe, not a cartoon one. Telltale takes some big chances with the Batman mythos here, and I feel they did a great job. That being said, I could see the changes they made with the mythos not gelling with some Batman fans.

I am not going to spoil any of the story here, but if you are a Batman fan, I would recommend checking this out. If you are not a fan of Batman, I would tell you to skip this game.

This game is getting a Rad, because I am a Batman fan. If I were not, it would be a Meh.

Oceanhorn is very much inspired (some reviewers argue to a fault) by the Zelda series. There are a lot of similarities here: swords, bombs, action-adventure game, magic, etc. Personally, I don't mind how much Cornfox & Bros (the developers) have borrowed, or been inspired by, from the Zelda series, this is a fun game.

The story starts out with the hero's father going to fight the monster Oceanhorn. Soon after the beginning cinematic of the father's fight, you take over as the hero to search out three emblems and defeat Oceanhorn.

The world you traverse in, is very much inspired by Wind Waker. As the hero, you travel to various islands (levels) via the sea using a boat. While you are traveling on the boat you can shoot down monsters, mines, crates and barrels and collect experience and money.

The game plays out using an isometric camera angle. The visuals are really good. Cornfox & Bros definitely put a lot of time into the art. The controls are very similar to the controls of a Zelda game, so people should have no time picking this up.

I have been enjoying this game so far. That being said, I have run into a few bugs and have a nitpick with the character's voices in the game.

The first bug I ran into was: one cinematic did not run to completion. It started up and then all of a sudden ended and cut to the next interactive part of the game. This is not a huge problem as you can replay the cinematic from the pause menu, but it did take me out of the game for a second.

The second bug I ran into was the game crashing. I have only run into this once, but the game crashed out to the switch menu. This was disappointing, but luckily the last save that happened was pretty close to the crash, so I could continue on with my adventure without too much backtracking.

My nitpick with the character's voices is that they seem disconnected from the characters of the game. They come across more as voice over than characters speaking. To me this doesn't kill the game, but it is something I wish the devs spent more time on.

Overall, despite the few issues I have had with the game, I am quite enjoying it. To me this game reminds me of a indie take on the Zelda series (which it is). The game itself is very laid back and fun to explore. I look forward to finishing the game.

Metal Jesus posted a review of the RetroTINK 2x today on his youtube channel. This little device will take Composite/Component/SVideo input along with audio and convert it to 480p and output it over HDMI. All for $100. Compared to the framemeister and OSSC, this seems like it is a good affordable solution to get your old consoles up and running on modern TVs. To me it also seems easier to use, which is a bonus. I ended up pre-ordering one of these after watching Metal Jesus's review of it. What do you all think?

I just discovered this great kickstarter for the Nintendo Switch:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fangamer/flip-grip/

With Ikaruga recently hitting the switch and several other games out there that use a vertical display mode, this seems like an awesome accessory to have.

At $15 (base pledge + shipping) and with Fangamer behind it, this seems like a no-brainer.

Now everyone put your money in so this gets funded! Me want!

The team at Powerhoof was kind enough to send Cheerful Ghost a download key for Crawl for the Nintendo Switch. After watching the trailer, I was ready to download it and give it a go.

Crawl puts you in control of a person trying to escape a dungeon, slay a beast and, in the end, freeing yourself. Sounds pretty simple, right? Well it is not. On you journey to free yourself, you are surrounded by three ghosts, who also want to make it out. Their goal is to kill you, regain human form and then try to free themselves. There can only be one human alive at one time, so not only are you battling the beasts of the dungeon, but you are battling the ghosts. Did I mention that each ghost/person can be controlled by another player (or AI)? Well it can. Welcome to Crawl!

Crawl is a hard game to explain, you must see it in action. It is a dungeon crawler/gauntlet-type game.

As a human, your goal is to defeat monsters, level up, get gold, upgrade your weapons, and make your way to the final boss.

As a ghost, your job is to beat up on the human, which you can do in multiple ways. One way to beat up on the human is to summon a monster from a summoning site. This is where you can do the most damage. Another way to kick some human ass is to possess some object, which causes a little damage. The final way make the human's day suck is to send slimes after them. You can accumulate slime like creatures by obtaining orbs throughout the game.

While your human levels up during the course of the game, your ghost can level up its monsters in between levels based on points you earn from humans leveling up. It is kind of confusing, but works once you play the game.

I love playing Crawl in spurts. It has a fun pixelated art style and a lot of character. On the Switch screen the gameplay can be quite chaotic, and sometimes you can lose track of where you character is. I have yet to play it on the TV, but it could help alleviate that problem. Even though it is chaotic on the Switch screen, it is quite enjoyable.

I could see this game being a great party game. If you have three other players going at it, there would be a lot of fun to be had. I originally thought the game had online support, so I could try multiplayer out, but it does not. This game is purely local multiplayer.

Overall, it is an enjoyable game, that can easily kill some downtime. I plan to keep playing this from time to time.

Crawl is available on pretty much every platform, so if you want to give it a go, you should have a computer/console ready to play it.