Welcome back to the Monthly Digest series entry for May in 2024.

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Monthly Bounty

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Cozy Games! Well, at least I know that this kind of game is not really up my allay. One month down, one more to go.

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Station to Station

PC/Windows - Steam
Unfinished
Time at writing: 4h 1m
(temporarily) Rating: 2 out of 10

Oww geeze, oh boy, oh geeze. Where should I start?

Okay, I like trains, a LOT. Last month I really got the urge to play something with trains. Due to low funds I decided to buy Station to Station after watching a trailer on steam. The trailer showed how cute the voxel graphics are and how fun it is to ride next to your trains, yes even making photos for screenshots. Economy, trading and many more tags on the storefront convinced me and sealed the deal, so I hopped over to Humble and bought it with a discount.

Well, except the voxel graphics nothing is there: No economy, no trading and always the same train. Instead, the game is a hollow husk when it comes to gameplay. Sure the graphics and menus are nice but it is, in its core, a boring "connect-the-points" puzzle game. Main gameplay loop of the game is to connect different resources in a way to maximize points. Thats it. It doesn´t matter that you use trains, it could have been cars, camels or bikes as well. With economy they meant that, when connecting the right stations the game awards you money, building stations or tracks cost money. When the money runs out you need to restart. Really intricate and strategy. (Irony off)

All that could have been forgiven if the actual puzzles would be fun. Spoiler alert, they are not. After introducing the core gameplay of building stations and connect the tracks you are introduced to the card system. Here you gain cards by progressing the level, the cards allow for things like cutting building costs or gain extra money from a connection. They feel pretty tacked on and don´t really do much in terms of deepening the gameplay. And yes, you heard right, all levels have progression. That means not all points on the map are available from the start but appear while gaining points. That way, you are assured to at least play the same mission twice to gain the challenge star. Nearly all of the levels have this "Haha, here is a curve ball you couldn´t anticipate!" moment where you realize that your plan isn´t perfect anymore and doesn´t gain enough points for the star. Which is unbelievable infuriating. Another thing I hate is the overlay, why do you always need to toogle the extended view on? You need this because it shows the player what the stations needs and where resources are. Such decisions show me that the developers have been more occupied to make the game look pretty, instead of thinking about playability.

So, the only good things are the graphics and amount of levels (there are a LOT), otherwise it is just boring and infuriating to me. So, maybe I give it another try in the future, but for now I am done with it.

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Harvest Moon 64

PC/Windows - Steam
Unfinished
Time at writing: 1h 16m
(temporarily) Rating: 4 out of 10

Not much to say here. Harvest Moon 64 is like a bad version of Harvest Moon: Back to Nature, which I played a lot in the past. At first I was super confused, all the characters from Back to Nature are also present in this game ... but somehow completely different? Like, the sprites are the same but they have other personalities, families and relationships to each other. After a quick google search I found out that Back to Nature came hot on the heels of this games release, so it uses the same assets but got more time to develop.

You can see this at every corner, literally. When going near the edge of the map there is ... nothing ... just a black void. I don't know exactly why, but it kills off any cozy or happy feeling, which is not a good thing for a farming game per se. Not helping is the fact that farming doesn´t feel great either, after watering like 15 crops the avatar is exhausted and the day done. But why is the game giving me so much space to farm then? I couldn´t find any quest to lead you through the game at all, you just don´t have anything to do. Like in Back to Nature there are mines to gather resources, which are still closed of for me after one season gone by. Fishing doesn´t work or is insanely hard.

In the end I could´t find anything truly fun but also no major technical flaws. It would be a neutral 5 but due to the bad-vibe-giving void on the edges it stands on a slightly bad 4.

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Challenges

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At the moment, I challenge myself to play all games ever released by Namco or Bandai or Namco Bandai or Bandai Namco for the Xbox platforms.
Here the Games List.

Sitting at 5 finished out of 132.

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Digimon Survive

PC/Windows - Steam
Ongoing
Time at writing: 49h 58m
(temporarily) Rating: 9 out of 10

There are only two kind of people in this world: Digimon Fanboys and Pokemon Fanboys. I firmly belong to the Digimon camp, not that I dislike Pokemon or anything, but Digimon is just cooler and offers more variety with the media they put out. Digimon Survive is one such amazing piece of media.

Digimon has its second summer right now, the anime extended the original Digimon Adventure franchise with multiple movies which are aimed at the fans who are now grown up adults.(Unthinkable for Pokemon) In Digimon Survive you experience the story of a group of young teenagers, who just happened to get transporter in a strange world filled with dangerous creatures called the Kemonogami. For some reason some of them even help our characters and defend them if necessary. As you can see the story is pretty much basic Digimon stuff but here are two twists:

First off, the game is a visual novel! Yes, your eyes do not deceive you, Digimon Survive is a true to genre visual novel with a decent enough, light turrnbased FF-Tactics-esque RPG, combat portion. Second best thing is, your characters can totally die horrible, gruesome deaths... No joke. Your decisions are sometimes really tough and you can feel the tone shifting when shit hits the fan. This game is not intended for children, the characters are literally trying to survive. badum-tss

At the time of writing I have sunk around 50h into this game and I have no idea how far I am towards the end. Okay, I may have grinded my Digimon on the side a bit and try to win 10% rolls to befriend new Digimon to play with but still, the story is vast and I don´t think I am over the midpoint yet (comparatively to the playtime of other Digimon games)

I am excited to play this game a lot more, right now I would rate it 9/10 stars for Digimon fans and probably 7/10 for normal people.

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Girlfriend Games

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And point & clicks are coming, and they don´t stop coming and they don´t stop coming and they don´t stop coming ...

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The Procession to Calvary

PC/Windows - Steam
Finished
Time: 4h 54m
Rating: 10 out of 10

This game ... is a pure masterpiece. Like its predecessor Four Last Things the game is a blast to play. With its funny graphics, collages from all kinds of medieval paintings, the dialogues and the overarching story are so amazingly put together that we couldn´t help but to laugh and being glued to the screen from start to finish. Not many games manage to hit the spot quiet like this one and even fewer manage to get my girlfriends and my approval at the same time.

I strongly recommend playing Four Last Things before playing this one. Many jokes reference the first game quite heavy and the start wouldn´t make sense otherwise. You start as a female crusader who is very upset about the ongoing crusade coming to an end, while the leader even forbids killing now! That doesn´t sit right with our protagonist and she goes to see their leader about that, because she pretty much likes killing and would like continue to do that. Sadly the leader proclaims that he despises violence, fortunately the rumor of the crusade ending due to the death of the other party leader is wrong information. So you convince your leader to give you a new mission: Kill the holy person leading the other party (from exile though), because that could be an advantage later on, maybe. ( He just wants you out of the room) From there you start this weird journey you can´t experience anywhere else.

The Procession to Calvary is one of the few games I can reward with a 10/10, I can´t imagine even one thing I would change, it is pinnacle point & click adventure, artstyle, story and gameplay wise.

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Misc Games

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Derail Valley

PC/Windows - Steam
Ongoing
Time at writing: 16h 5m
(temporarily) Rating: 8 out of 10

After the big disappointment called Station to Station I needed some real conductor action. Derail Valley wasn´t cheap but I don´t regret not even one cent!

All these weird train simulation games have one big problem: They are not dynamic enough and lack any meaningful gameplayloops. In this game, that problem has finally been solved. It´s pretty easy, go to stationhall and search through all available jobs on the table (you actually look at them in first person). After deciding, which one it should be, verify the job at the job machine (take the paper in your hand and insert it inside the machine) and take the now detailed job instructions out of the tray. Find a matching locomotive you are allowed to drive (have the license) and is strong enough for the job. After that, follow the instructions and get paid at the stationhall at your destination. With the money you need to repair/service your train and acquire new permits to drive more, heavier, special and more petite cargo.

Now with the above in mind, where is the juicy kicker that ascends this game above the other train themed games? When choosing the difficulty settings, you can opt for realism, which means only having first person view. Also, you need to push all the buttons and levers manually and the physics are realistic. To be honest, I have never experienced such a strong atmosphere in any other train based game. Your mishaps matter, blowing holes in your wallet if you are not careful enough. Learning to drive new locomotives takes time. But the best part is: You don´t have a mini or overworld map, the only map you get is a static one which you can deposit somewhere in your cabin or hold in your hands. It straight up feels like navigating to your destination by car, using only these horrible maps you bought a while back on some random gas station. Simply amazing. Oh and I should not forget to mention that you need to manually find out at which station you are, so you can scroll through your ingame inworld manual to look at some schematics, figuring out which fricking way you need to go and find your destined siding (is that the right word?). With more licenses the complexity increases, challenging you over and over again.

I really enjoy this game.

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Yu-Gi-Oh!: Dark Duel Stories

Gameboy Color
Ongoing
Time at writing: 17h 18m
(temporarily) Rating: 7 out of 10

Everyday I need to wait for my train to arrive to get to work and back. Every time my train gets canceled due to government mismanagement it is there to make the wait a little more bearable. Can I take a moment and say what an amazing handheld console the Gameboy is? So robust and the batteries keeps going for ages, truly a console from the good old times. :D

Now, Yu-Gi-Oh!: Dark Duel Stories is actually the second game to a Japanese only release, sporting over 700 different cards and a impressive cast of opponents to duel against. The rules of the game is a weird mix of the real world TCG with sacrificing rules and the totally bonkers fusion system of Yu-Gi-Oh!: Forbidden Memories. Many cards have lost their real world effects and /or gained new fantasy ones due to the limitation of the console.

Nevertheless, the game is actually pretty challenging for a Yu-Gi-Oh title and the grind for better cards can be soul crushing long. That said, I really enjoy playing this game on my breaks at work or aforementioned waiting times to get a couple of duels in and trying to collect all cards.

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Community Content

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Sadly not much happened on the site since my last digest, so not much to say this time.

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End Word

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Well, I took my sweet time with this one but I did wrote the Steam Next fest blog entry so I think it is okay. The next one shouldn´t take too long, my day-job keeps gobbling up my time left and right so I don´t get to play that much at the moment.

But, until then, keep completionating. :)