HIGH Stomping the Dungeon boss as the Order.

LOW Basically every time I fought the frustrating Keep boss.

WTF Why is the river such a weak terrain?

Given the opportunity, a random number generator will screw a player over. Games that lean heavily on randomization, such as roguelikes, fundamentally must balance the inevitable frustration of busted runs with a compelling experience of play. Many games meet that standard, but unfortunately Drop Duchy falls just short.

Like most roguelikes, Drop Duchy is built around performing repeated runs — in this case through a lightly-randomized series of combat rounds and resource pickups, and three fixed bosses. The setup for combat will be instantly familiar to anyone who has played Tetris – tetrominoes appear at the top of a field of play and can be rotated before dropping them to the bottom to build complete rows.

The tiles consist of various kinds of terrain and the buildings that interact with them. For instance, a Farm transforms surrounding Plains tiles into Fields, giving a bonus to a Watchtower that gains more units from the latter terrain type. As enemy buildings drop too, arranging tetrominoes so that the terrain benefits the player and not the enemy is a key strategic goal.

In Drop Duchy, completing a row harvests the resources of the terrain (such as grain coming from Fields or Plains) rather than making it disappear. An empty tile prevents harvest, and there’s no way to “uncover” a mistake. Once the tiles reach the top of the play area, the round ends and the player can send military units from his buildings to take on those in enemy buildings (with a classic rock-paper-scissors vulnerability system). The reward for victory is a selection of new buildings or technologies that give passive boosts.

The individual rounds can vary greatly depending on the array of terrain available, but are generally unlikely to end a run and feel too relaxed. The bosses have unusually-shaped fields of play and mostly depend on penalizing the player for putting tiles in forbidden zones. I enjoyed two of the bosses, but I felt that the second boss was poorly tuned, with too much excluded space and penalties that were too stiff for violating it. Many of my runs ended there.

That nonetheless meant that most of my runs exceeded 30 minutes – almost as long as the longest game of Tetris ever played. It’s to its considerable advantage that most games of Tetris are considerably shorter than that: the low stakes make it easier to laugh off the brutal unfairness of the RNG. The time investment of a failed run of Drop Duchy makes it feel inordinately bad to receive, say, an unlucky run of S, Z, and O-shaped tetrominoes in a boss level.

The salve for a failed run is intended to be advancement along Drop Duchy’s progression tree, which is unlocked by fulfilling its many Challenges, which range from gathering certain amounts of a resource to performing particular tricks with certain buildings.

Unfortunately, unlocking new elements didn’t always feel like progress. Gaining the river terrain complicates the earlier parts of the run with few benefits. Most cards interacting with this terrain are not strong and are entirely ineffective if there are less than 15 contiguous river tiles, making them high-risk, mid-reward selections.

New mechanics like Faith have few benefits until the player puts large numbers of the associated buildings into his limited set of tiles. If they don’t turn up, the result is a busted run. Outside of runs with their associated faction, these tiles mostly feel like they’re taking up space.

Even the sheer number of new buildings and techs gets in the way, pushing the encounter frequency of the most useful buildings down significantly. As I got further and further along the progression tree, busted runs where I simply never got offered useful military buildings became too common. When I did get a strategy going, I often found myself in a trap where I couldn’t get the additional buildings I needed to strengthen it. This became another reason to dislike the river — after a while I simply stopped regularly pulling buildings that could make use of it at all.

The unlockable factions are a mixed bag as well. From the start, one can choose the Duchy faction, which relies on small, agrarian buildings that accrue resources easily and are easy to place in the boss fights. The late-unlocking Order synergizes neatly with the otherwise-troubled Faith system and also features a number of interesting upgrade and harvest abilities.

The Republic faction, on the other hand, relies heavily on large buildings and on transforming terrain into “town”, making it unusable for many other buildings. This faction was especially difficult to use against the second boss.

Sometimes a roguelike can pull a player back in with aesthetic components, but Drop Duchy doesn’t really offer anything compelling. The terrain is largely dull, though at least the mountain tiles vary entertainingly. The buildings are nicely drawn but not especially memorable and they don’t do anything interesting like change based on faction or upgrade level. The music is fine, but there’s just not enough character in the graphical design to make that next run feel necessary, and no story to speak of.

Drop Duchy attempts to ease the hard feelings of a busted run with its progression-unlocking Challenges, but the proliferation of new features feels like it dilutes rather than strengthens subsequent runs. As a consequence, Drop Duchy falls too far into the frustrating regime of RNG-dominated games. There’s an interesting concept here, but Drop Duchy lacks the kind of snappy gameplay or compelling aesthetic that would sustain it through the unfairness of waiting in vain for that dang line piece that just won’t drop.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Buy Drop Duchy – PC

Disclosures: This game is developed by Sleepy Mill Studio and published by The Arcade Crew. It is currently available on PC via Steam. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on a home-built Windows 11 PC equipped with a Ryzen 7 processor, 64 GB RAM, and a single GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card (with various 576.x drivers). Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed (all factions and game modes were played and ~80% of the progression tree was unlocked). There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: As of press time this game has not been rated by the ESRB. Beyond simply acknowledging the existence of armed conflict and religious heresy, there’s nothing here to object to.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game has no dialogue nor are there any significant sound cues. Therefore, it is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

The post Drop Duchy Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH An incredible collection of titles with excellent presentation to match. 

LOW Nearly missing school and work deadlines thanks to my Tetris addiction.

WTF I would love to see a collection like this for games like Galaga or Tecmo Bowl. 

Digital Eclipse’s Tetris Forever opens with a quote by videogame designer Henk Rodgers, most famously known for securing the rights to distribute Tetris outside of Russia — “Tetris is the one game that’s still going to be around when all the other games are gone.”

It’s a profound statement that speaks to both Tetris’ impact in the still-relatively-young medium, and the overall quality of the original title itself. For over four decades, everyone from children to grandmothers has likely enjoyed some version of Tetris, and it’s safe to assume that people will still be trying to beat their best score decades from now.

Tetris Forever is a part of Digital Eclipse’s Gold Master Series, accompanied by other docu-games such as Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story and The Making Of Karateka. Part game compilation and part history lesson, it’s full of various Tetris-es released over the years, such as the 1989 port for the Nintendo Entertainment System, all the way up to spinoffs like Hatris.

There are too many to list in full here, but other gems included are Tetris Battle Gaiden, Super Tetris 2 + Bombliss, and a brand-new title called Tetris Time Warp. While some popular entries might not be represented (the most notable omission is the original GameBoy version) there’s still plenty here to make block-droppers happy, and it’s a blessing that there are finally accessible versions of the original Tetris on modern consoles. As much as I love some of the wilder stuff like Puyo Puyo Tetris 2, nothing beats a laid-back, simple and gimmick-free session with a damn-near-perfect game. 

Presentation in Tetris Forever is a knockout, with menus that are easy to navigate and a host of accessibility features for every title in the collection. Each version has a manual, a control scheme that can be customized, and a handy rewind feature. I also loved how everything was unlocked and readily available from the start, allowing players to jump into whatever they wanted at any time.

Tetris Forever also includes an extensive interactive documentary. Chronicling everything from the inception of Tetris to the cataloging of virtually every release, there is an impressive history in this package. Every chapter features interviews from both Henk Rogers and Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov, giving players the context behind each of the iterations in the collection. There’s also a great deal of larger context surrounding historical and political events at the time of each title’s release. As players read and watch different sections of the documentary, they can also easily play the corresponding game featured in that segment. 

Tetris Forever also does something that I appreciate and I don’t often see — it preserves and legitimizes games in a way that movie buffs have done for the film. Similar to how a Criterion Collection Blu-ray is packaged with essays and supplementary features to an important film, Tetris Forever provides amazing substance to a series that deserves every bit of praise. It’s a titan in an industry that does not often respect or remember its past, and one that will continue to be a key talking point in conversations regarding gaming as an art form. 

Overall, Tetris Forever is both for fans of Tetris and also those who deeply care about videogame history. Not only is it collecting an amazing set of entries in a franchise that is both prolific and excellent, but it’s also a much-needed encapsulation that preserves its important legacy. 

 Rating: 9 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is published and developed by Digital Eclipse. It is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, XBO and XBX/S. This copy was obtained via publisher for review and was reviewed on Switch. Approximately 10 hours were spent in single-player modes and the game was not completed. 

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E for Alcoholic Reference and Mild Language. The games themselves don’t feature any violence or objectionable material, and the documentary portions don’t either. 

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are not present in the options menu.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing Gamers: Players can choose to turn on subtitles for the documentary segments and even resize them. (See example above.) Audio is not necessary during play. This collection is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The controls can be remapped.

The post Tetris Forever Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Addictive puzzle combat with lots of variant play.

LOW The writing and character art are… not great.

WTF Why isn’t turn-based mode the default?

Like many games birthed through Kickstarter, Flowstone Saga spent a long, long time in development after its successful crowdfunding run. And like many of its Kickstarter siblings, it’s overfull, ambitious, kind of shonky, and undeniably uneven — but it’s also generous, ambitious, and engrossing.

Elevator pitches are kind of gross, but using one here is the easiest avenue with which to approach the core of Flowstone — it’s an indie 16-bit style JRPG, with all the narrative and aesthetic trappings of the genre (or it at least attempts at them) but instead of traditional turn-based, menu-select combat, every battle in Flowstone saga resolves with a game of non-copyright-infringing Tetris.

During battle, main character Mirai stands at the right side of the screen, and any enemies on the left. Between them lies the empty play field into which the tetromino-ish shapes are dropped, one by one. Any time an entire row of blocks is made, those blocks are removed and Mirai does damage to the targeted enemy. Clearing multiple lines at once increases the amount of damage done.

This is the basic premise onto which Flowstone layers its many, many systems, festooning the puzzle battler core like it’s the last Christmas tree at the end of the world. The first one introduced is Heat, in which certain blocks that fall have golden inlays on their faces. Align three of these faces and Mirai’s Heat meter rises, which makes attacks more powerful.

Mirai has a combo meter too, which works as expected, and the ability to charge up a 5×1 “Super Block” which is great for doing mondo well clears, or covering a lot of horizontal space at once. Then there’s the flask, which is kind of strange. It can be, um, stuffed with food? This food can be deployed into the well as blocks with various special effects.

And then there are the enemies to consider. Enemies do not play their own, separate falling block game as they do in Puyo Puyo Tetris. Instead, they have counters beneath their health bar that tick up, and once these counters are full, they’ll either do a standard attack or start preparing for a special attack which usually throws something unpleasant into Mirai’s play field in addition to doing damage. For instance, just one instance is when a horned beetle’s special plops down shield-emblazoned blocks, and as long as these blocks remain, they give the beetle a defense boost.

[Deep breath]

…And then there’s gear. Like many an amnesiac JRPG protag, Mirai can equip weapons, armor, accessories, and rings. In addition to boosting her stats, these often have a special trait that activates under specific combat conditions. E.g, the Blizzard Wand does extra damage to enemies as long as their attack counter is at least 50% full.

There’s also a job system in Flowstone! And a light town-building system, and resource-gathering, and block puzzles that task you with building specific shapes…

Yes, Flowstone follows in the great tradition of “mechanics lasagna” JRPGs — games that groan and swaying under masses of intricate systems and maelstroms of minutiae. One could argue that this many systems is unnecessary, but then that’s missing the point. Developer Impact Gameworks laid out this buffet not because players need every last stat and system to beat the campaign, but because having all of this stuff widens the canvas, allowing for greater flexibility and player expression.

One thing to note — I highly, highly recommend playing Flowstone in its optional turn-based mode. By default, the action moves in real time, so players have to juggle all of the above concerns while the enemies charge up their attacks. Setting it so that everything goes in rounds — Mirai drops a block, the enemy counters go up, full counters fire off attacks — feels so much more manageable, so much more tactical, and so much more unique.

I’ve spent most of this review steeped in the mechanics because that’s where Flowstone shines. However, when it comes to narrative and aesthetics it falls down and bears no comparison with the classics it obviously aims to be like.

The pixel art is competent, but the character designs are… not good. This is an issue I notice often in Western developers’ attempts at JRPG-styled games. They’re so intently trying to rise to the level of their inspirations, but in their adherence to surface-level similarities they never find their own soul, or a distinguishing spark that makes the atmospheres of the best JRPGs so ineffable. At best, Flowstone’s characters lack the stylization of Persona or the baroque melancholy of Final Fantasy. At worst they look like they were sketched out after reading a “How to Draw Japanese Manga!” guides that used to haunt middle school book fairs.

The writing, is earnest but bad, suffering from a terminal case of “Creative Writing 101” syndrome. No character has an individual voice, and they all speak the same flavorless English Major-ese. Sometimes there are awkward attempts at delineation, usually in the form of a verbal tic. I particularly disliked Sihd, the mayor of Mirai’s village, who drops “big words” into his conversation in what is clearly meant to be a running gag.

That said, huge plaudits go to Andrew Luers, Flowstone’s primary composer. The lush, immense, melodic OST successful captures the 16- and 32-bit magic, and the “trope tracks” — battle themes, cozy town music — can be intuitively slipped into like a favorite sweater while still remaining distinctive and memorable.

So what we have with Flowstone is a big, shaggy, messy game — it’s something that stumbles from time to time, but is also crafted with obvious joy that succeeds in its suite of core mechanics, and that’s where it matters most. It’s one of the more uneven titles I’ve played this year and this is not an unqualified recommendation, but it’s memorable, charming, and worth supporting.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

— Ben Schwartz

Disclosures: This game is developed by Impact Gameworks and published by Doyoyo Games. It is available on PC, Mac, and Linux. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher. Approximately 12 hours of play were devoted to the game, and the game was not completed. No time was spent in the two-player assist mode.

Parents: This game is not yet rated by the ESRB, although it will get one when the planned Switch port releases. All combat animations involve bits of colorful magic flying back and forth with no blood, wounds, or other displays of violence. There is no foul language in the text and the monsters are often cute rather than frightening or imposing.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes present.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered or resized. There are no significant audio cues. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

The post Flowstone Saga Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH It’s an addicting puzzler that’s eating up my free time.

LOW How the hell am I this bad at Tetris? 

WTF I gotta stop playing at work! 

The old saying goes, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and it applies to few games more than it does to Tetris — the famous puzzler created by Alexey Pajitnov hasn’t changed much since it launched in the ’80s. 

Sure, there have been countless iterations but the goal remains the same — drop blocks, create lines and keep the playing field clear. The same can be said of Sega’s puzzle series Puyo Puyo, but instead of creating lines, players must match four colored orbs and pop them. 

Like the combination of chocolate and peanut butter, Sega has combined these two distinct puzzlers into one delicious package with Puyo Puyo Tetris 2. A sequel to 2014’s Puyo Puyo Tetris, players are tasked with tackling each style of puzzle with varying conditions. Both kinds of puzzles are equally represented and PPT2 does a great job easing the player into the mechanics of each. 

All of that puzzle gameplay is wrapped in an odd (but endearing) story involving aliens, robots, and anthropomorphic dog scientists. Taking notes from JRPGs, players navigate an overworld and take on battles in PPT2‘s Adventure Mode.

Every battle has a player either doing a round of Tetris or Puyo while their opponent does the same. As  they create a line in Tetris or successfully match four in Puyo, their opponents’ boards fill with garbage. Certain boss battles allow players to assemble a party of characters that add defensive or offensive buffs. The most useful one in my opinion is O, a little creature in a cloud who was able to give me 40 HP in battles. 

I loved what I played of the story mode, thanks to how charming it was. The tale is told via still images of the characters and is fully-voiced. It’s full of anime and JRPG cliches, of course, but that only added to how delightful everything was for me. 

Even without the surprisingly enjoyable story mode, I still sunk way more time into Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 than I thought I would. I’m not normally a puzzle guy but I was immediately hooked and dropped over a dozen hours into trying to beat my own Puyo Puyo scores. I still suck at Tetris, but PPT2 has slowly made me more comfortable with that style of play.

In a year full of massive, story-driven and crunch-produced experiences, it’s refreshing to spend time with something so straightforward. Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 does something simple but does it right, and when I’m dropping blocks or matching puyos, I just can’t seem to put my Switch down.

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Sega It is currently available on XBO, XBX/S, PS4, PS5, Switch and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Switch. Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed (still playing). There are multiplayer modes but none were played for this review.

Parents: According to the ESRB this game is rated E10+ and contains Mild Suggestive Themes. The official ESRB description reads as follows: This is a puzzle game in which players battle opponents by lining up blocks and matching small creatures called Puyos. Players earn points and progress through battles by clearing their areas of blocks/lines/Puyos. The game includes some suggestive material and innuendo in the dialogue (e.g., “I’ll be on top of this soon enough! I’ll even be on top of you, too”; “You and I are bound and gagged together!…Of course I meant, ‘You and I are bound by rivalry and gagged by strife’”; “Do you appear out of thin air when people say the word ‘creeper?’”).

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers:  All of the dialogue is in speech bubbles that cannot be resized. Everything is clearly labeled onscreen and no audio cues are needed to play the game, and everything is purely visual. The game is fully accessible. (See examples of text above.)

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

The post Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

This is a different matter entirely.

The Ohio State University pays tribute to beloved classic video games (and Halo) during the half-time show at the Ohio State University vs Nebraska game. Games honored at the show were Tetris, Pokémon, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, Halo, The Legend of Zelda and Pac-Man. Try not to jump out of your seat and cheer when Epona makes an appearance.

Sources: Joystiq, YouTube

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Source: Dorkly

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As a video game collector who's constantly on the lookout for the best deals, sometimes I'll come across some cool video game related novelties and paraphernalia. On a recent trip to Kohl's, I found a board game based on Tetris, Tetris Link that I couldn't pass up.

Several years ago, I saw a similar Tetris board game, Tetris Tower, at Barnes & Nobles. I always regretted not picking it up at the time as I could never find it again. Even if I never played the actual game itself, I always thought it would be neat to display a sculpture of Tetris on my office desk.

So not only was I ecstatic to finally be able to pickup a physical Tetris game, but I was also blown away by the price. Tetris Link is priced roughly $30 on Amazon, but Kohl's had it on sale for $19.99. Coupled with a $10 giftcard (sign up for Kohl's rewards program to regularly receive giftcards for free) and additional 20% off at register, I paid only $6 and change after sales tax.

The rules of Tetris Link are quite interesting as well. Rather than clear lines, the objective is to connect 3 or more Tetriminos pieces on the tower. For every Tetriminos connected, a player is awarded 1 point. For every, empty space a player creates when dropping a Tetriminos, 1 point is deducted. Once there isn't any space left on the tower, the player with the highest point total is the winner. I have yet to play an actual game, but the rules seem like an elegant and a clever adaptation of Tetris. Overall, I'm impressed with the quality of the product.

For anyone interested in playing a traditional Tetris video game, Tetris Axis, which has a snazzy augmented-reality mode, is the latest and greatest version out today. If you have yet to take the plunge on the 3DS, Target has got you covered with this terrific deal: as part of their Pre-Black Friday 4-day Sale , they dropped an additional $24.99 off the recently lowered retail price to only $145.00.

With Black Friday only a few days away, keep an eye out for a Black Friday edition of Video Game Collector Deals later in the week.

The post Video Game Collector Deals: Tetris Link appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

Source: Joystiq

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Researchers from Trent University and the Division of Rehabilitation and Ageing at Nottingham University have found that some kinds of video games may help people with intellectual disabilities improve their ability to make decisions. According to scientists P.J. Standen F. Rees and D.J. Brown, at least one study has

"suggested that people with intellectual disabilities frequently fail to use a systematic decision-making process that requires them to search for all the relevant information and evaluate alternatives before making a decision. Instead they often simply draw upon a narrow range of solutions from past experiences and apply them to new situations."

One reason for this difficulty making decisions is simply that people with intellectual disabilities often don't have enough practice, "due to poor resources, assumptions of incompetence and carers having time constraints or concerns about risks." Standen et. al wonder if video games opportunities to practice these skills.

The small study in the Journal of Assistive Technologies (earlier version as a full PDF here) involved 12 participants; those in the "Intervention Group" played a Tetris-like game called Cheese Factory for ten sessions, while the control group spent their ten sessions playing Running Man. (Players have to keep a running character from crashing into rocks and other obstacles). Both games are written in Flash and designed specifically for people with intellectual disabilities. For instance, difficulty levels in both games are highly tweakable.

Abilities related to making decisions were measured with the Picture Guess Test and the Picture Completion Test. Participants taking the Picture Guess Test have to guess which one of four pictures is displayed on another picture laid face down: the face-down picture is cut into 12 pieces, and participants flip pieces over–as many as they need–before making a guess. In the Picture Completion Test, participants complete a 3×3 grid by identifying a missing segment. Since there are only six segments to choose from (at least in this study), there is a limit of four guesses. Sessions were also videotaped to make sure that higher scores were not due to increased help from the researcher. To prevent scientist bias, tapes were scrambled so the researcher could not tell if the tapes were from earlier sessions or later ones.

Although both the intervention and control tasks were video games, those who played Cheese Factory showed more improvement in test scores than those who'd played Running Man:

"For the Intervention Group there was a significant increase in scores achieved between the first and the tenth sessions (t = 3.01, df = 5, p<0.03) in spite of a steady increase in the level of difficulty at which they were playing the game (see Figure 1.) This was not due to the amount of help they received from the researcher as this decreased over repeated sessions with a significant (t = 22.02, df = 5, p< 0.0001) decrease in the percentage of time in which help was given between sessions one and ten. "

During the Picutre Guess Test, Cheese Factory players turned over more pieces before making a correct guess (i.e. they made guesses less impulsively). Even so, the time they needed to guess correctly decreased.

Although the control group's test scores did not improve as significantly, they too had "a significant reduction" in the amount of help they needed from the researchers in later sessions compared to earlier ones. Like the intervention group, it took them took less time to make a correct guess during the Picture Guess Test.

The study has several weaknesses, and the researchers recognize most of them: with only 12 people, the sample size is very small, and all the participants are Caucasian. The Picture Guess Test and the Picture Completion Test are not standardized and need repeat reliability testing, but they "were developed with the advice of several clinical psychologists who work in intellectual disability," as the authors say.

But this study, small and imperfect though it is, does demonstrate that video games can be helpful for people with intellectual disabilities. It also adds to a body of research showing that playing certain types of games improve certain kinds of skills. Here, the players of the Tetris clone improved most in the skills being measured; in an earlier study measuring the "ability to process fast-changing visual information," the Tetris players' performance did not improve, while the "visual skills" of those who played action games like Spider-Man and Grand Theft Auto III did. Studies like these show how little we know about video games' effect on real-life skills, and how much we need to learn.

The post Study: Certain video games may help improve decision-making skills of people with intellectual disabilities appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

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