When life took a few unexpected swerves during the summer, people were there to steady me. Games media trends toward the internet, especially if you don’t have the money or resources to regularly attend large industry events. But after a few weeks away from my Manygame Collection draft, I felt a huge difference.
There wasn’t the constant coverage churn of what to cover, which outlets were posting, what community members were saying. I was in an unfamiliar city for the first time, talking face-to-face about games writing with people who don’t work in it. I felt like a small drop in a huge pond. Still, I could see the tension melting from my shoulders. I love games, but I needed the reminder that the products don’t matter as much as the people do.
How can coverage of a simultaneously passionate and deeply exploitative industry feel less like voluntarily touching a hot stove? Maybe focusing less on strict product review is a good place to start. Manygame Collection should be more of a seasonal snapshot. What happens when press coverage collides at top speed with my real life? What speed bumps rattle me out of it? Let’s find out over my last three months in games.
Previously on Manygame Collection: They’re Calling It Seven Game Summer
Frayed on the Edges
At a certain level of stress and fatigue, I can only muster the juice for certain games. Story-rich epics? Nope. Oodles of interlocking systems? Forget about it. But a few strike the balance between ease and attention. I’ve thrown myself back into learning riichi mahjong through Nintendo’s Clubhouse Games. Where card games like craps or bridge leave me frazzled, this variant of Mahjong narrow the variables just enough to string together a few decent hands.
When even that is too much, I fire up Oxytone on the Switch 2. Rotate tiles, connect lines, avoid burning out. In the game, if not yet in real life. But these next two titles genuinely caught me by surprise. Even at the end of a long day, I can manage put in a few runs. Don’t mistake their approachability for simplicity, though.
CloverPit
CloverPit’s slots-based roguelike locks you in a room with a trapdoor, a toilet, and a slot machine. Do what the loudspeaker says, or drop to your death. Match symbols on the slot machine, pay off the round’s debt with coins, and spend tickets on trinkets to continue your winning streak. But there’s no dignity in pulling the lever. Even the slot machine’s barks and chirps are distorted.
The grimy, pixel-heavy ambience only adds to the tension as each round’s goal climbs higher. Every pull and phone call tells you this is a bad decision, but yet you keep trying your luck. CloverPit feels like a more pointed exploration of excess than senseless spinning, one corroded lucky charm at a time.
1000 Deaths
1000 Deaths puts an existential spin on early 3D platformer surrealism by branching the timeline. Some PlayStation-era revivals only commit to the looks and collectible doodads, but 1000 Deaths takes things further. Levels twist around corners as characters swap gravity and dodge projectiles.Lovingly scrungly 3D creatures separate, bicker, and reunite over bizarre dialogue. Collectibles hide in unexpected corners from the very first screen.
1000 Deaths plays like my misplaced childhood fondness for Croc: Legend of the Gobbos, and unfurls like an extraterrestrial-directed sitcom.
Points of Reference
Nurture a lifelong fascination with game shows, and you’ll really start to notice patterns. One strand of TV competition DNA splinters out across space and time to make weirder offshoots. Black-and-white panel guessing on “What’s My Line?” flows into Nickelodeon’s slime-green “Figure It Out” decades later. Long-running British staple Taskmaster hops across multiple countries, each with their own tweaks to the format. Despite the same root idea, every branch has its own identity. The next three games bend existing characters, genres, and tropes into their own distinct creations.
Marisa of Liartop Mountain
Marisa of Liartop Mountain melds adventure game puzzling with tabletop dice rolls, complete with five Touhou characters adding color commentary and influencing what happens. I know next to nothing about Touhou, incredible Bad Apple renditions aside, but the fourth-wall bending and dice rolling hooked me.
Unfortunately, even great banter can’t circumvent Liartop Mountain’s puzzles. Even after opening up shortcuts, I backtracked through a level far more often than a good tabletop session merits. Marisa of Liartop Mountain is still a great entry point into a now-sprawling series, flubbed dice rolls and all.
Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 1 Re-Raptored
What do you call a prequel to a fictional game entry made by an entirely different studio? (In AAA spaces, probably just “Assassin’s Creed.”) Strange Scaffold, the indie developer behind the singular Clickolding, launched what they call “Project Share,” giving Pedalboard Games free reign (and resources) in the Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion universe.
The foundation of gem-matching combat stays consistent, even when the narrative mostly sticks to the signposts. It’s refreshing for another set of hands to play in the Creepy Redneck Dinosaur sandbox. The runtime may feel a bit short, but Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 1 Re-Raptored remains the B-Movie Bejeweled standard.
The Edge of Allegoria
The Edge of Allegoria adopts the aesthetics of the original Game Boy, but fails to deliver on its tongue-in-cheek, amoral promise. So many details lovingly rendered—the mazes of shrubbery, infuriating pixel art letter heights, transitioning from one screen to the next. Turn-based combat fuses base attacks with a fascinating gear leveling system: every piece of equipment has permanent effects to your character once you master it.
But it’s impossible to overlook Edge of Allegoria’s regressive tendencies. a narrative that attempts edgy subversion but leaves me mostly bored. Entire towns mired in booze and pills, side quests that lead to questionable ends, a one-dimensional view of sex work. It tries so hard to get a reaction, yet has no bite.
Mental Mapping
Lately, I’ve had to slowly rewire my brain. I’m going back to school in January to pursue a completely different field. Back-to-class nerves have heightened the oddest details. My brain will latch onto a random aside, a snatch of city texture. The next three games feature protagonists also feeling things out, taking those tentative, exhilarating steps into the unknown.
Artis Impact
Artis Impact is a solo-developed 2D action-RPG with incredible cuts, framing, and pixel art. It places just as much emphasis on the life sim bits as the sci-fi mission itself. I have never been this delighted to watch a character flop into bed or make themselves a meal. Every pixel moves in a way that heightens the action instead of abstracting it.
Akane and her robot buddy bicker, slash, and heckle their way both through the mundane and the mysterious. While the writing veers off-the-rails in a mostly endearing way, and turn-based combat stays simple and unobtrusive. Artis Impact is a fascinating, messy labor of love.
Sensei! I Like You So Much
Sensei! I Like You So Much distills the expansiveness of modern fanworks into a gameplay formula. While it celebrates fandom, even the ship customization options feel oddly hemmed in. There’s limited room for height and body type disparities. But then again, I’m not the target for the subheading “Fangirl Simulator.”
Arranging fan shrines, creating fanfic, and undertaking other commissions gave me the urge to go out and make something. Does that mean the game was passionate enough to be a success? Or did it just make me miss the real thing? I honestly couldn’t say.
Varlet
Varlet, the first self-published game from FuRyu (AQURIA is credited with development) reminds me of their past work, for better and for worse. It’s somewhere between Caligula Effect 2’s techno-identity crisis and Monark’s Rorschach-test protagonist. You’re a student in unfortunate circumstances, sent to live with your cousin and attend their augmented reality (AR) high school. When a student goes missing during an outbreak of strange AR rifts, you rush in. It’s a compelling hook, but sluggish pacing dampers the mood for the first few chapters.
Battles unfurl at a slow, steady turn-based regimen. Target enemy weaknesses to stagger them, do party-spanning combos, and eventually interrupt turns altogether. Once you gain new combat abilities and bickering party members, Varlet opens up just a bit more. Just like Monark, personality quizzes influence your dialogue options and your combat abilities. Dungeons are basic layouts, club activities are busywork, but watching school idol Aruka and goofy hothead Sota trade barbs never got old.
What I should’ve told you.
Sometimes a distant loss hits you unexpectedly. I’ve spent almost a month and a half trying to untangle this knot of feelings, pushing a self-imposed deadline further out. My inbox is cluttered beyond recognition, my markerboard littered with events long past. But I couldn’t look at this draft until I figured out what to say.
I didn’t know the late Andrew Dice, but I can still hear him. He and his partner at Carpe Fulgur– translator Robin Light-Williams– were instrumental in the teeth-rattling, soul-draining effort (Content warning for a truly harrowing article) to localize Trails in the Sky Second Chapter. Through their hard work with colleagues at XSEED, the sheer effort shone through in every text box.
The games industry’s tides have shifted since 2014. Now the Trails in the Sky First Chapter remake is out through a different publisher entirely, and Carpe Fulgur is shuttering. For every localizer I can name, there are countless others in the credits (or not mentioned at all). The Trails series anchors itself in people, even when this business doesn’t.
Tell games workers how they’ve changed you for the better while they’re still here. I’ll say now what I should have said then: Trails in the Sky First and Second Chapter helped me connect with my now-husband when our relationship was still new. And through Estelle, an optimistic, naive, hot-tempered bracer, he saw a little bit of potential in me, too.
That’s all for this season’s Manygame Collection. For more indie coverage, stay tuned to Press SPACE to Jump!
