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Wednesday, 22 December 2021

Pikmin Bloom

Pikmin Bloom is a mobile game from Niantic and Nintendo, the same companies that make Pokemon Go.


Walking

In Pikmin Bloom, the Pikmin walking with you find more Pikmin seedlings and Pikmin food (fruits). You can then put the seedlings in your backpack, and walk to grow them into more Pikmin to join your squad. The steps also contribute towards levelling your character up, and levels unlock things like more types of Pikmin, the ability to have more Pikmin actively walking with you, and the ability to send more Pikmin on expeditions. This article has a list of level requirements and rewards. I'm currently on level 29, so I'll keep track of the data for the next 30 levels. You can plant flowers as you walk, which makes the map pretty and makes your steps go further in growing your seedlings while you've actively walking and planting. There are big flowers around the world which bloom when enough little flowers (from everyone) are planted around them. I don't care much about these.



The game has encouraged me to walk more. For example, right now, I'm about 5000 steps from the next level, and I have a few Pikmin seedlings I want to grow. I'm considering going on a 20 minute walk (about 2000 steps) because 20 minutes really isn't very long but it'll hatch a few Pikmin and get me a good way towards that next level. This happens a lot, squeezing in little walks to just get to the next small goal.


Pikmin and Affection

There are seven types of Pikmin, all of which are unlocked by level 19. They are Red, Yellow, Blue, White, Purple, Rock, and Winged.


Your Pikmin gain affection from being fed nectar from fruit, and from being sent on expeditions. There might also be other ways I don't know about. Their affection level is represented by hearts. When they reach four hearts, which is the maximum, they gain a special expedition. That Pikmin will return to the place of their birth (hope you didn't get on a flight since then) and pick up a present. That present will be an accessory, also called 'décor'. The specific type of décor depends on the environment where the Pikmin was born (hatched? seeded?), which I'll discuss more below.


You're allowed to name your Pikmin, no one can stop you. I have nearly 200 and have now begun naming them random collections of syllables.


Squad


Your 'squad' are the Pikmin who are actively walking with you. They collect fruit and seedlings while you walk. I'm not sure if there are any other benefits. I've not noticed Pikmin gaining affection from walking with me, which is a little bit insulting. The number of Pikmin you can have walking with you increases as you level up.

The Squad



Your squad are the specific Pikmin you can feed with nectar. When you feed them, you can pluck flower petals from them and these are the petals that you can plant as flowers when walking.

Honestly, I'm not really sure what the game wants me to do with my squad. What I want to do with my squad is use it to keep tabs on specific Pikmin, those whose affection I'm focused on increasing. That's mostly either those whose décor I don't have yet (discussed below), or those which are close to 4 hearts but not yet at the maximum level. However, the game keeps putting random Pikmin in my squad so every time I want to feed them, I have to take everyone out of my squad and then put specific Pikmin back in. I can't even tell the game to empty my squad, I have to select all but one (because my squad can't be empty), remove them, and then select the ones I want. To get to the ones that are nearly at 4 hearts, I need to sort my Pikmin by affection levels and then scroll past all of the ones that are at 4 hearts. This is really annoying. The décor ones are a bit easier to find, because I can favourite them, but it's still annoying to have to keep putting them back in. What does the game think I want to favourite them for, if not to focus on increasing their affection?

When I say the game puts random Pikmin in my squad, I don't think it is random. I think, if you have any empty slots - like if you've sent some Pikmin out on an expedition, which I do often because I'm trying to raise their affection - then any Pikmin returning from expeditions or newly hatched Pikmin will automatically go into your squad. Since expeditions include challenges (below), which 4-heart Pikmin are best suited for, 4-heart Pikmin end up back in my squad a lot. I don't want them there. I don't want to give them more nectar when there are other Pikmin to feed who can benefit more from it. I assume the game designers had something in mind when they designed this, some idea about what they thought players would want to do. I cannot figure out what it is.


Expeditions

To view expeditions, you can click on the banner at the top of the main screen. Alternatively, click on the big square showing your step count and you'll open a menu containing your Lifelog, Pikmin, Seedlings, Expeditions, and Postcards on different tabs.


There are two types of expeditions. The first kind are giant mushrooms, which you can send teams of Pikmins to attack. It's these expeditions which you can send more and more Pikmin to as you level up, and it's these expeditions on which you can earn stars. Each Pikmin you send adds to the damage you do, which, in turn, speeds up how long it takes them to destroy the mushroom. This then contributes to your star rating, which is out of three. The damage Pikmin can do is increased by their affection level, whether they have an accessory or not, and their colour. Red Pikmin do more damage against red mushrooms, blue against blue, and so on. Purple are stronger than other Pikmin, so they're generally good if you don't have more specific Pikmin. There may well be other factors that I haven't figured out yet.




I live in a small village, and while I can see there is at least one other player - because there were already flowers on some streets around here before I started planting them - I don't think they're very active. This means that, even though up to 5 people can join any challenge, I've only ever played them by myself. Even so, this is still rewarding. On the very smallest mushrooms, I've been able to get 3 stars, once my levels were in the high 20s and I had multiple high affection Pikmin to send. You can't actually fail these challenges, they'll just take longer the weaker you are.




The other type of expedition is when your Pikmin spot a seedling or piece of fruit nearby, while you're out walking. You can send some of them out to fetch it later. This is a benefit over Pokémon Go, because you don't have to get your phone out while you're walking, you can sort it out when you get home. How long the expedition takes depends on which/how many Pikmin you send and how far away it is. One beta tester has reported getting on a flight and having his faithful Pikmin take 40 days to walk back from their expedition. Most expeditions won't take that long. Pikmin walk faster than you, and they'll be heading to places you've walked past.


There's a scanner you can use once per day (main page, click on the map icon at the bottom and then it's at the top of the four options on the right) to find nearby expeditions.


Décor & Environments



Décor are accessories your Pikmin wear. They'll gain them immediately, if grown from a giant seedling, or they'll gain one once they reach the maximum affection level. The type of décor a Pikmin will gain depends on where you originally found their seedling, that is, what kind of environment. The potential environments a Pikmin can be found in are as follows;


  • Restaurant
  • Café
  • Sweetshop
  • Movie Theatre
  • Pharmacy
  • Zoo
  • Forest
  • Waterside
  • Post-Office
  • Art Gallery
  • Airport
  • Station
  • Beach
  • Hamburger Shop
  • Mini-Mart
  • Supermarket
  • Bakery
  • Hair Salon
  • Clothing Store
  • Park
  • Roadside

As far as I can tell, every part of the world is assigned to one of these environments. The default seems to be roadside, and then the other kinds are assigned based on what is nearby. The map does seem to play a little fast and loose with this. Forests, for example, seem to be any kind of farmland, or greenspaces which aren't parks. That's handy - how many of us actually live near a forest? On the other hand, the area right outside my local railway station seems to only sometimes identify as a station. Maybe it's just GPS wobbles.

You can view your décor collection by going to your character page from the main screen and then clicking on your décor badge at the bottom. This lists all of the potential décor, showing you the symbols used for each environment.  You'll get this as soon as you get a piece of decor, which will be when you first grow a Pikmin from a giant seedling or when you first raise a Pikmin to 4 hearts and send them to fetch their present, whichever comes first.

The relevant symbol will also appear on your Pikmin or seedling, and it appears on your scanner, so you know what kind of environment you're in. That means you can look at which décor you're missing and then go and try to hunt down that specific kind of Pikmin, either by walking around that environment a lot, or by going to one area you know of that counts and using your scanner.




There are at least seven types of décor for each category, one for each type of Pikmin. The forest and supermarket categories have fourteen types, two for each type of Pikmin. I don't know if you get a random one of the two, or if you have to find two different types of forest and supermarket in order to get all the décor.

As of December 21st, there's a special type of décor to collect. Roadside Pikmin collected between then and January 11th (23:59 JST, so, in practical terms, the 10th) will have special Christmas stickers, instead of their normal roadside stickers. I won't be surprised if the game does this kind of event for every major holiday.

Honestly, I think collecting the various kinds of décor will be what gives the game long-term appeal for me. I literally went out this morning and did a little explore around my area to see if there were waterside and forest environments within reach. It turns out that there are, along a nice little walk down the river which I hadn't discovered before. 

Diary

Every evening, the Pikmin will ask how your day went and they'll pick out a photo you've taken that day that you might want to save. They only pick one, and I don't think there's a way to choose an alternative, you just accept or reject that one. I think I'd like it better if 3 or so Pikmin chose a photo, and I got to pick out of the 3. Maybe the Pikmin whose choice I approve could even gain a little bit of affection, that would be nice.

The diary feature is cute, but not essential for me. It annoys me that it goes off automatically at 9pm, because sometimes I open the app because I'm planning to go for a walk around then and I just want to start planting flowers before I set off. But instead of doing that, I have to quickly click through the diary thing and rush through all the options. If there is an option to change the time it automatically triggers and/or to let me trigger it manually, I can't find it. I would like to.

Monday, 20 December 2021

Black Home - Spoiler-Free Full Walkthrough and Achievement Guide with Maps

Intro


Black Home is a little RPG made by Warfare Games and published by Aldorlea games. It takes between 5-10 hours to play.

Using this Guide
  • In the guide below, I assume you're collecting all the treasure you have access to at any given time, so I'm not specifically telling you to do that.
  • Kill everything. Enemies don't respawn, which means there are very limited opportunities for level grinding. If you kill everything, you'll stay at a comfortable level and backtracking will be much easier. Also, killing everything makes it impossible to miss the achievements linked to collecting money.
  • The maps below are not a literal representation of the maps in the game. That is, their size and shape is more about the size they needed to be to show all the info.
  • If rooms are physically touching or linked by a line, that means there is a route between them.
  • Some routes don't open until certain points in the game. I've written the conditions under which those maps open in italics.
  • If squares are linked by arrows, that means that route is one-way.
  • On the maps, 'C' means chests, 'W' means wall. Throughout the game, you'll see patches of wall with a different texture, as in the image on the right. Once you've got the sledgehammer, start clicking on them. Some have items, others leads to hidden rooms.
  • If a square is teal, it means there's Holy Water on that map. Holy Water heals your party.
  • If a square is yellow, it means you can access another map from there.
  • As you play through the game, missions will appear in your mission log. Mission titles are in bold and surrounded by square brackets. If you're just stuck at a specific part, use that information to figure out where you are.
  • At various points, the text in the game refers to a broom. I think this item must have been dummied out at a late stage, because it doesn't seem to appear in the game. Without it, there's an area in the Attic you can't reach, but there doesn't seem to be anything very itneresting in there anyway.

Achievements
Following this guide should get you all but three achievements. I'd expect you to be missing Safety Foremost (save 50 times), 10 Hours Played, and Sweet Home. It's pretty easy to save 50 times - just keep clicking. After that, if you leave the game running until the in-game clock is over 10 hours, you should unlock both of the remaining achievements. In practice, the game didn't immediately unlock Sweet Home after 10 Hours Played for me. I had to close and reopen it to make it pop up.

Guide

Map 1A


  • [The Monastery] Collect the Caretaker's Key from the Nave.
  • [Vertical Steps] Collect the Meat Hook from the Caretaker's Loft.
  • Click on the silver glimmer on the left side of the Solarium.
  • Click on the silver glimmer on the right side of the Solarium, near the Holy Water.
  • [A Smashing Good Time] Examine the wall in the Closet Room.
  • [A Dose of Medicine] Speak to the person in the Library.
  • Read the books in the Alchemy lab/Water Closet.
  • [Rapunzel's Folly] Check the plants in the Alchemy lab/Water Closet.
  • Check the two silver glimmers in the south of the Alchemy lab/Water Closet.
  • Examine the 3 new silver glimmers in the Vermillion Monastery map.
  • Fetch the spade from the Caretaker's Room.
  • Examine the remaining silver glimmer in the Vermillion Monastery.
  • Return to the Alchemy Lab and examine the new silver glimmer in the upper right.
  • Speak to the person in the Library, then leave.

Map 2



  • [The Hooded Figure] Collect the Rusty Key from the Water Closet.
  • Collect the Ruby Amulet from the Dining Hall
  • Place the amulet on the statue in the 2nd Floor Hallway
  • Open the chest in the Collapsed Room, then examine the silver glimmer.
  • [The Way Up] Go to Tower - 2nd Floor, then go back to the corridor when you can't continue further.
  • Get the silver eye from the Dust Room and put it in the Statue in the Garden Fountain Area.

Mines


  • Take the wooden plank from the chest in Mineshaft 3.
  • Examine the silver glimmer in the central part of Mineshaft 9.
  • Pull the 2 switches in Mineshaft 8.
  • Examine the silver glimmer in the top right of Mineshaft 5 after a scripted battle.

Map 2
  • Now you have the pickaxe, go and find out what's down the stairs from the Second Floor Hallway (marked "????"). Then come back and tell me because I forgot to do that.
  • Make sure you've collected all the treasure from this map.
  • [Hammertime] Work your way to the top of the Bell Tower.
  • [Bad Religion] After the scene, go to the Crypt via the Ruined Room

Crypts




  • Crypts 1, 2, and 3 have a modular structure. The detailed maps show which modules contain treasure (C) and stairs (^). Notice that Crypt 3 has an extra room in the middle.
  • [The Dead] After picking up the torch, light every candle you come across. Don't forget to backtrack for the two right at the start.
  • Examine the silver glimmer in the centre of the third floor crypt.
  • When you've lit all of the candlesticks (you lose your torch), go through the door in the north of the third floor crypt and press all three switches.
  • After you've found all the treasure, talk to the person at the far end of the cave, near the locked door.
  • [Ray of Hope] Head to the Saferoom. Pull the switch before you go up the ladder.




Map 1B


  • [Ear to the Ground] Head through the Nave (Map 1A) to the Secret Room and examine the silver glimmer.
  • Head towards the Sun Room. If you leave the Corridor without defeating the enemies and then re-enter, they'll still be there, but they'll be invisible.
  • Examine the statue in the Sun Room and choose 'yes' to unlock the Secret Room.
  • Do not step on the cracked tile in the Greenhouse (right). It's an instant Game Over.
  • Work your way around to the centre of the Greenhouse. Read the book, then examine the candle on the table nearby. You'll need to be standing on the uppermost tile to interact with it.
  • With the candle extinguished, examine the Sunflower (a bit up and left) and choose 'yes.'
  • Examine the two silver glimmers in the Hall, and the two in the Store Room.
  • Head to the Kitchen, then the Store Room.
  • Examine the silver glimmer at the top of the Dining Hall.

Map 3 and Aquaduct




  • [The Dank Path] Make your way through the Aquaduct and onto Map 1A. The Aquaduct is a maze, hence the extra map.
  • Examine the silver glimmer in the Rookery.
  • Examine the two silver glimmers in the Library.
  • [Bombs Away] Collect the last few chess pieces from this map and place them on the chessboard in the treasury (images below).
  • In the Hall of Portraits/Oil Room, take the torch from the wall near the entrance to the Guard House. It isn't marked.
  • Examine the silver glimmer in the lower part of the Hall of Portraits/Oil room.





Crypt
  • Go through the cave and look through the window again.
  • SAVE HERE
Good Ending
  • Do not take the Spawn Egg in the Nest.
  • Defeat the enemy in the Paddock.
  • Defeat the enemies in the Temple.
  • Speak to the person on the stage.
Bad Ending
  • Take the Spawn Egg in the Nest.
  • Go to the Temple via the Underchamber and Paddock, and talk to the person on the stage.

Tuesday, 14 December 2021

Shadows and Lies - Quest Guide

Quest Title Unlocked Completed
Wayward Daughters Plot Related, Automatic. Plot Related, Automatic. Spoiler: [You will not see this quest completed because its end is the end of the game.]
#1 Dathan's Class Plot Related, Automatic. Plot Related, Automatic.
#2 A Family Vanishes Stop by the Portran's Farm after meeting Eva and Kris. It's just south of secret room #5 on the world map. You cannot complete this until the final dungeon. Speak to Portran in Divide 1. He's invisible until you're right in front of him. If you walk around the rooms hugging the walls, you can't miss him.
#3 A Farm Girl's Letter Fellip's Farm, just west of secret room #5. Speak to Gerda. Deliver the letter to Tomma in Peatfall. Note that you will be thrown into an enemy-filled area after doing so. You can cast egress to immediately get back to town if you need to, but you'll only be able to access a limited section until you complete Quest #5.
#4 Get out of Jail Automatic, after completing Quest #3. Plot Related, Automatic.
#5 Earn a Reward Automatic, after completing Quest #4. Defeat the Bandit King in the house in Eastern Hills.
#6 Another Wayward Daughter Speak to the owner of the pub in Peatfall. It's in the harbour. Same resolution as Q #9.
#7 The Darkened Lighthouse As you speak to people in Clifton. I think it may be impossible to miss this one. Complete the lighthouse dungeon then return to the pub.
#8 The Defrauded Armorer Speak to the Armourer in Dorgate. Complete the Falmount Manor dungeon then return to the armourer.
#9 Missing in Action Accept the job when Granny Norwood offers it. Find Granny's servant in Landow. You're looking for a trapdoor.
#10 Lost Statue Automatically with Q #9. After finding Granny's servant, check the cell next door for a hidden room.
Find all the Secret Rooms Automatic There are 27 on normal mode. I cannot write a guide better than this one, so I won't try. When you first enter, you'll see 1 of 30, but that seems to be a mistake. There are 30 secret rooms in other games by Aldorlea, so perhaps they just copied a bit of code over and forgot to edit this part.

Thursday, 2 December 2021

Friday, 8 October 2021

Cozy Grove - Major Autumn Update, October 2021, Camera, Can't Take Photo

 The latest big Cozy Grove update just got pushed out to Steam and, I believe, other platforms.  It comes with a camera that lets you take photos of the island and some new non-storyline quests which involve taking photos of specific things.


You buy the camera from Mr Kit.  The camera description says you need to buy film from Mr Kit then use Jeremy Gruffle's craft bench to put the film in the camera.  The camera comes with film in it, so you don't need to do that right away.  


To take a photo, put the camera in your hand (go to your backpack, highlight the camera, and press A).  It's the next step that took me a while and is the reason for making this post.  To take a photo, hit the shoulder buttons.  I think it's the lower left one.  You'll see the shape of the photo appear on screen, and then you can move it around and press 'A' when you're ready to take a shot.  It then lets you decide whether to keep it or not.  I can't find anywhere in the game that tells you what you actually need to press to take a photo, so I spend ages pressing different buttons and trying things around Jeremy Gruffle to see if a lack of film was the problem.

Tuesday, 3 August 2021

Zero Time Dilemma - Thoughts and Theories

 This post is basically just a ramble on about my fan-theories for Zero Time Dilemma and the Zero Escape series.  I am making no effort to avoid spoilers for any of the games in the trilogy.


So, firstly...I don't believe that Delta is Brother.  One thing that makes me think that was that Left was clearly an afterthought for Delta, which would not be the case for Brother.  Conversely, there are no stories about Brother having a twin or a beloved friend like Sean.  Delta also indicates that Sean is not Left, which would have tied those stories together neatly.


So...why would Delta tell them he was Brother?  The first thing that occurs to me is that he wants them to shoot him.  That's what he offers them the chance to do immediately afterwards, after all.  And why?  Well, he's lived a long, lonely life without his family and he's just put his parents and sister through hell.  Maybe he's sick of this timeline.


His willingness to be shot is another thing that makes me think he's not Brother.  Brother - who sounds a lot more like the religious fanatic who started the nuclear war Delta is trying to prevent - was convinced he was right.  Delta isn't.  Delta is willing to be punished, which indicates he believes he has committed a sin.


There is a discussion to be had over whether Delta actually cared about his parents and sister or not.  I believe he did and he desperately wanted to be a more traditional family.  Part of what makes me think that are the codewords he chose for their deaths.  He calls Sigma 'dad' and Diana 'mom'.  He could have chosen 'mother' and 'father' but he went with the more personal names.  He calls Phi 'twin' and 'dear'.  'Twin' is objective fact, but 'dear' was entirely his choice.  He could have chosen something far more impersonal, but he didn't.


So then, if he cared so much, why did he leave them to starve in that one ending?  I don't believe he did.  I think, immediately after the bits we see, the doors unlock and Diana and Sigma are told where to find food and where to search for safety.  I think they're allowed to raise their twins in a semi-normal way after this, and that that timeline is Delta's own personal heaven.  He had to arrange events as he did so he and Phi could be born, but, as far as I can tell, there's nothing stopping him from arranging protection and happiness afterwards.  If I believed he were Brother, I'd wonder if this version of his younger self is Left, which would make Dio a clone of Delta and an image of what Phi's twin looked like when he was younger.  That's quite interesting.  I still believe Delta being Brother is a lie, though.


I also suspect that one of Delta's goals is to create a timeline where Mira is repentant and tries to prevent her original crimes.  I can't find it now, but I've previously read a theory that involves Delta and Phi being descended from Akane as well as Sigma and Diana.  That theory explains why he went further back to find the link to Akane's parents and Eric's mother, rather than just tracing the 'fault' of Sean's death back to the cab driver.  Why go back to who had originally called the taxi?  It doesn't make sense to go that way if you're only following the cause and effect from Sean.  You'd need to have some interest in the other end as well.  With this theory, that snail - and Mira - not only started the entire series, resulting in Delta being raised apart from his parents and sister, she has also directly killed more of his family.  I suspect undoing all of that is one of his main goals, though that does mean we would then need another timeline to prevent the Radical 6 outbreak and Brother's terrorism, since a lot of the powers in the game wouldn't have developed.


Oh, reading the TV Tropes page, it looks like most people have a different interpretation of what happens when Espers come together than I do, and their version creates plot holes.  Basically, it's stated in the game that when Espers are together, their powers resonate and the strongest person directs them.  This might be why Clover can't telepathic connect with Light (though other possible reasons are the distance being a lot greater than she thought, the time difference, or Light being somehow unavailable).  In Zero Time Dilemma, the resonance between Espers allows two very weak characters to jump timelines with the stronger characters, which some people think is a contradiction.  I don't think it is.  I think they're picturing it as if the strongest Esper is taking in all of the available power and redirecting it, like a vampire, so the original owner can't use their powers at all.  I don't picture it like that.  I picture it more like a river, with everyone contributing.  If a weaker Esper wants to do something totally different to the others, their power isn't strong enough to break away and move in a totally different direction.  But, if the strongest Esper wants to do something, they can force the entirety of the available power in that direction.  So, if all of the Espers want to do the same thing together, they can.  The weaker ones can jump with the others because they're all trying to do the same thing, but Clover can't pull out enough of her power to send a signal when a stronger Esper is trying to direct it in another direction.  Or, alternatively, it's like sound and the strongest Esper is just drowning out the signal Clover's sending but not actually preventing her from sending it.

Friday, 30 July 2021

Zero Escape Trilogy

Over the past few weeks, I've played through the entirety of the Zero Escape Trilogy.  This consists of 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors (aka 999), Virtue's Last Reward, and Zero Time Dilemma.  These are visual novel/puzzle games originally released on the DS and 3DS.  While the first game, at least, made use of the double screens as a plot point, I'm not sure if the other two did.  Either way, I played all three on PC.  


The first two games are bundled as Zero Escape: The Nonary Games, while the latter is sold as Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma.  I got that first one in the Steam summer sale, for £9.51.  The normal price is £23.79.  I played for 49 hours in total, so it was 19p per hour of entertainment for me, and would have been around 49p per hour at full price.  I figure I might happily pay 99p or more for a book I can read in 2 hours, so about 50p per hour is worth it.  I bought Zero Time Dilemma at the normal price of £12.39 and so far I've played it for 21.4 hours, making it 58p per hour.  I feel like this was worth it, even though this game was the weakest of the series, because I couldn't not finish the trilogy.  Plus, even though I've finished the game, I do want to watch some scenes again with the knowledge I've gained from seeing the ending(s), so even if I don't do a full replay, my actual play time will be higher.




In 999, the basic premise is that you, Junpei, have been kidnapped by a maniac calling themselves Zero. Zero, for some reason, wants you to play a game to escape.  Yes, the creator of this series is a fan of the Saw movies, why do you ask?  


The game in question is the Nonary Game.  Basically, all of the players have a bracelet with a number from 1-9 on it.  The players must move through numbered doors, solve the puzzles behind them, and eventually make their way to (and through) the 9 door (Spoiler: Yes, I know it's a q.  I don't want to say anything untruthful in this post but I also don't want to give away the twist by typing a q.  I tried doing a superscript and making that one letter larger but it just doesn't work).  The twist is in the rules.  3-5 players must pass through the numbered doors - again, numbered up to 9, like the bracelets - and the digital root of the sum of their bracelets must be the number of the door.  A digital root - explained early in the game  - is what you get if you keep adding the digits of a number together until you reach a single digit.  For example, to get the digital root of 725, you add 7 + 2 + 5 to get 14, then add 1 + 4 to get 5, which is the digital root.  This gimmick forces different characters to pair up together throughout the game, often in configurations they would not prefer.  This is nice, it's interesting.  The only way to discover the secrets of all the characters is to make different decisions in different run throughs, to team up with different people under different circumstances.


This is actually the case, broadly speaking.  The dissertation I'm supposed to be working on is based on this premise.


While I compared the game to Saw earlier, the puzzle rooms aren't actually deadly.  The deadly part has to do with the doors.  Basically, those entering a door need to scan in, enter, then scan at a second machine inside the room.  If all those who scanned in don't scan out (out is the wrong word, but close enough), then anyone who entered through the door will die by having a bomb explode inside them.  The fear comes from, firstly, if Zero, who set up the game, is willing to do that then what else might they do?  And, secondly, the fear of not being able to exit through the 9 door, since it's subject to the same rules as the others. How will 9 people get through 1 door?




Gameplay is split into two segments.  There's the visual novel part, where you watch the characters interact and occasionally make a choice to direct the story, and the puzzle room part.  I really enjoyed the puzzles in this game.  I found they generally made sense with a bit of lateral thinking, rather than being built on moon logic.  I also found that, when I thought of something, the characters did too.  For example, if I found an item and thought "Oh!  I bet the solution involves combining this item with that item and attaching it to that thing!" then I would be able to attach this to that and put it on the thing.  I wouldn't have to click around until I found some arbitrary colour text that made the characters realise what the solution was and let me actually do it.  Plus, for me, the puzzles were generally at the right level to get the "huh? Ah!  Aha! Haha" sequence of emotions, which is very satisfying.  


'Solving' the game involves another puzzle, that of picking the golden route through the game.  This is also quite enjoyable.  The PC version has a flowchart screen where you can see which scenes a character has seen.  The flowchart even notes if you've triggered certain things which change which ending you see.  You can hop around to different places, rather than having to play through entire swatches of the game again.  I enjoyed this meta-puzzle as well.  Part of the fun of the game is that you gather information from lots of places, so you, the player, need to put it all together to figure out what's going and what your best options are.  This interface makes it really easy to see what you might have missed and go back and fill in the gaps.  Apparently that was missing from the original DS version.


Virtue's Last Reward has some recurring characters from 999, but takes place in a different location with a slightly different premise.  This time, the poison-injecting bracelets specify colours and whether a player is solo or part of a pair.  Once again, you have to go through doors, but this time the teams must combine their colours to match the colour of the chromatic doors.  Again, this mechanic forces the characters to team up in ways they otherwise wouldn't choose to, which is a great mechanic for creating narrative tension and letting you discover different things about different people.  Once again, the meta-puzzle is to figure out the entire plot by taking information from different routes, and, again, a flowchart screen is available to make that easier.  One difference from the first game is that, in VLR, each decision you make pushes you onto a different route.  In 999, a dialogue decision could change your ending, but this wouldn't actually push you onto a different route of the flowchart until later.  These decisions were marked with key symbols on the flowchart so you could tell if they were 'on' or 'off'.


This nonary game - run by Zero III - is a little more deadly than the first one.  The characters are repeatedly forced to play through The Prisoner's Dilemma, gaining or losing points until they either reach 0 - which is death - or until they have enough points to open and exit through the number 9 door.  If you're unfamiliar, the Prisoner's Dilemma is a classic example of the sort of game studied in Game Theory, that is, the mathematical study of strategic interaction between rational agents.  Basically, what decisions do perfectly rational beings make when forced into conflict?


In the Prisoner's Dilemma, the two agents are criminals who've been caught and are being held pending trial.  The prosecutors don't have enough evidence to convict both prisoners of their main crime.  Instead, they only have sufficient evidence to convict them both of a lesser crime, with a lesser sentence.  So, they offer each prisoner a deal.  The prisoner can give evidence against their collaborator, claiming the other prisoner was entirely to blame, in exchange for going free themselves (betray).  Alternatively, they can maintain their silence and take the sentence for the lesser crime (ally).  BUT, if they pick ally and the other prisoner chooses to betray, the first prisoner gets a much longer sentence while the betrayer goes free.  With some arbitrary numbers thrown in, you get the matrix of possibilities below.


Overall, the best result is if both ally.  The total number of years spent in prison is 2.  If one betrays, they go three and the other gets three years, which is better for the individual but worse for the pair.  The problem is that if B suspects that A will betray - or vice versa - then their best move is to betray in defence, and vice versa.  The best defence and the best outcome for the individual comes from choosing to betray, but, knowing that, no player would pick ally because they know the other player will betray.  So, both betray and spend more time in prison.  The best option for the individual leads to the worst outcome both overall and for the individual.


VLR uses this by having each team of three choose to ally or betray one another at regular intervals, in something called the AmbiDex game.  Because each team consists of two paired players and one solo player, there are still only two votes being cast.  The problem is that the Prisoner's Dilemma has a few assumptions that VLR violates.  Firstly, the assumption is that there will be no repercussions for betraying, apart from the risk of the longer prison sentence.  The betrayer won't gain a reputation, their collaborator won't later seek vengeance, etc.  That just isn't how human beings actually work.  We have a deep urge to correct those who behave anti-socially - by glaring, tutting, calling them out on twitter, etc - and that doesn't magically turn off, even if it makes the sums easier if it does.  This is not actually a flaw.  A character does explain the resemblance to the Prisoner's Dilemma without mentioning the violation of this assumption, but it's clear that the game makers themselves know it from how they have the characters respond to different decisions.  It's a feature, not a bug.


What is a flaw, in my eyes, is that...Well, firstly, because of the numbers given in the AmbiDex game, players need to play 2-3 times before they can open the exit door and leave.  If you choose betray in the first round, it becomes that much harder to win, because no one will trust you for the second.  So the optimum strategy should actually be to ally for the first round, not betray as in the classic Prisoner's Dilemma.  But, if you ally in the first round, then the best case scenario becomes playing at least two more rounds.  To get the points you need, you'll need your opponent to ally both times.  If that happens, then you'll have the points you need after the third round whatever you pick.  And since you need to play at least three rounds if you chose to ally in the first one, then you'll need your opponent to trust you until the third game, at least.  So you need to ally in the second, to make it easier for them to trust you and choose to ally in the third.  In short, the optimum strategy is to ally in the first two rounds.


There are more factors, which makes it a little bit more complicated than that.  Firstly, whether you can trust the people you're playing against.  Secondly, the cost of losing.  Thirdly, the cost of delaying your escape until the third round rather than the second.


I'm going to ignore that first one, because whether you can - or should - trust the other characters is a big part of the game overall.  As for the second point...well, the cost of losing is dying.  That can happen, at the earliest, after the second game.  That's an incentive both to betray - to protect yourself - and not to betray - because, all else being equal, most people would prefer not to kill total strangers.  If you trust that the person you're playing against is not a total psychopath - big if - then I think the best strategy is still to ally in the first round.  You'll be closer to death, but you won't die, and if the other person recognises that you'll need to trust them in future rounds and they would prefer that you live than that you die (like most reasonable people), then they'll pick ally.  And if they ally, since you also need them to trust you in future rounds (whether or not you care if they die) then your best option is also to ally.


As for the second point...the cost of escaping on the third round is delaying your escape by 3 hours (Spoiler: Yes, I know...).  But, the cost of escaping on the second round is that you leave at least some of the other players behind, since they couldn't possibly have enough points to get through the door at that point (not least because you betrayed some of them).  If you don't want to do that, it might be worth delaying your escape for three hours and one more chromatic door, not least because, again, the puzzle rooms themselves aren't deadly.  The characters do gain information about the other threats in the game after the first round, but that information shouldn't affect the first AmbiDex game.  The fear of what Zero III might do - considering you've already been kidnapped, anesthetised into unconsciousness, and threatened with death - might be a motivating factor to get out slightly earlier, but, again, at the cost of many other players.


What if you did want to kill other players?  Well, if you betray them in the first round, they'll choose betray in the second game as a defensive measure.  In this game, betraying means you don't lose any points, so, worst case scenario, they won't die.  Best case scenario, they'll gain some points and be safer in the next round.   Killing them this way just doesn't seem like an effective strategy to me.  If someone already betrayed them then you can kill them by getting them to choose ally while you choose betray, but that will require them to believe you're trustworthy.  Which will be easier if you chose ally in the first round.  But, killing someone this way means you won't get out yourself, since you won't have enough points if you allied in the first round.  You'll need someone to pick ally in at least one more round, which will be harder if they just watched you kill someone.  Alternatively, you could leave your target behind while you escape through the door.  To me, it seems like the most effective way of doing that would be to ally in the first two games, then betray in the third game and get through the door, leaving them behind.


In short, it seems pretty weak to me that some characters choose betray in the first round.  Ally seems like the best way for everyone to reach their goals, whether they're in conflict with the other characters or not.  Even if you assume one of the other players is a psychopath, you'd also have to assume they're an idiot to assume they'd pick betray in the first round.


That said...humans aren't rational actors.  They are not the mathematically precise agents from the models, who always have correct information and weight it properly.   They're mistaken about something, or they don't understand the odds, or whatever.  A few characters claim to have chosen betray because "it's obviously the best choice" which indicates they have only a superficial understanding of the Prisoner's Dilemma and that this situation is not the Prisoner's Dilemma, it's an iterative Prisoner's Dilemma.  Which, I guess, is probably realistic for most people.  Still, having some people betray early on seems like a superficial way to create drama, to me ,which weakens the concept of the entire game.


She's going to die, you sick bitch.

The other thing I disliked about this game is the character models.  Okay, the director has a thing for scantily clad, large-breasted woman.  Fine.  One character in the first game fits that description but, okay, she dances as a hobby, presumably she was abducted on her way to or from a belly-dancing class and didn't have a chance to change.  I can live with that.  It's a bit disturbing when, in one of the bad endings, a character's corpse is posed - by the artist, not the killer - to coquettishly show off her short skirt, and I kind of hate it, but the rest of the game is good enough that I can put up with it.  In this game though...well, one character is literally just wearing a thick necklace which is apparently glued to her nipples.  That's it, that's all she has to cover her breasts.  Another is wearing what appears to be a fur-lined bikini, clearly inspired by a teenage Pebbles Flintstone and ugh, really?  Can you just jerk off in your own time instead of subjecting the rest of us to this nonsense?



The other problem with this character model is that she defaults to smiling or doing a flirty little wink.  Neither expression is appropriate for the vast majority of the game.  The character will pull other faces - shock, sadness, etc - but will then revert back to smiling at the end of the line.  Which means when asking about, for example, how deadly the game is, or the amount of danger her closest friend (in the game) is in, she'll be doing a little smile to herself.  Like a complete sociopath.  Despite the fact that this is clearly not the impression the game-makers intended to give us in those scenes.




Again, can you just jerk off to fictional characters in your own time, instead of having them make flirty faces at the camera?


The third game, Zero Time Dilemma (ZTD from now on, because I cba to type that every time) does have another large-breasted, scantily clad character, but she's the most covered of all of the large-breasted scantily clad women so far, so that feels like a relief.


ZTD maintains several traditions from the previous two games - people being captured by a maniac calling themselves Zero and forced to solve puzzles - but also breaks a few of them.  The first one, which seems small, is that the scenes are acted out more.  The previous two games were both voice-acted, but the player chose when lines would advance.  In this game, the scenes just play.  Like I said, that seems small, but another thing this game changes is that you don't start with a puzzle.  It takes a while to get to the first puzzle room and, until then, your only choice is which series of scenes to watch next.  After about an hour, in which I'd needed to touch the gamepad only a handful of times, I turned to my fiancé and said "This game seems fun, I hope they let me play soon".  I suppose it was lucky that it continued playing when it was in the background, so I could work on my dissertation during the long scenes, but most people don't buy games based on being able to have them playing as background noise.  


This game did have more violence than the previous games and the puzzles were actually risky or deadly.  A lot of the gore is just off-camera or the injuries aren't actually shown on the character models, so you don't see much more than you did in the earlier games, there's just a lot more implied.  That's not really a flaw or a selling point, it just is what it is.




Another change, which I think does weaken the game, is that you can jump between different characters.  This means that, unlike in the second game, you don't need to try to figure out their motivations and what they're likely to pick, and they can't surprise you with their choices.  The rationale for this is explained at the end, and it does become more powerful, but that doesn't help in the first few hours when you're basically watching an interactive movie (which is less interactive than Bandersnatch or Kimmy vs the Reverend).


The puzzles were also weaker in this game while also being more frustrating.  Even when you have enough information to figure out a solution - or at least something you want to try - the characters are too dumb to let you until they've seen an arbitrary bit of colour text or until you click on exactly the right pixel.  And then there are moments like when the characters realise you need to take every key from a harpsichord and the game makes you click on every single key individually.  Oh my god.  They've got the idea, just have the characters grab all of them.  And then, when you need to put those keys back down elsewhere, you need to put them all down individually, while clicking on exactly the right pixel.  It's tedious.  Being able to read and click on the slot labelled 'G' instead of 'C' isn't part of the puzzle and it doesn't add anything.


There are still a few interesting puzzles.  My favourite was working out which symbols stood for the numbers 0-12, using only  a higher/lower game and some algebra.  I enjoyed working that out.  I also enjoyed the game based on the Monty Hall problem.  If you're unfamiliar with that, the Monty Hall problem comes from a gameshow, hosted by Monty Hall.  The player is presented with three doors.  Behind one is a car, while goats are behind the other two.  The player picks a door, say, door A.  Monty Hall then opens one of the two remaining doors to show a goat, and asks the player if they now want to stick to their original choice or switch to the remaining closed door.  It's a common mistake to think that your odds of choosing correctly have now gone from 1/3 to 1/2.  They haven't.  The question is posed to make you think about the statistics wrong and come to the wrong conclusion.  The actual answer is that you have 1/3 chance of winning the car if you stick with the door you have and 2/3 chance of winning the car if you switch to the last remaining door.  


How this works is; when you pick door A, B, or C, there is 1/3 a chance you've chosen the Car and 2/3 of a chance that you didn't, the Car is still behind one of the remaining doors.  There's is a 100% chance that there's a least one goat behind the other door.  So, you've picked door A, which has 1/3 chance of hiding a Car.  You've left doors B and C.  Behind doors B and C there is definitely at least one goat.  There is also a 1/3 chance that B hides the car and a 1/3 chance that C hides the car, adding up to a 2/3 chance that you picked the wrong door in the first place.  When Monty opens door B to show you a goat, what new information has he given you?  There's still a 1/3 chance the car is behind door A, and there is still a 2/3 chance the Car is behind doors B or C.  There was always a 100% chance that B or C hid a goat, and now you know where it is.  Which means the 2/3 chance of the car being behind door B or C is now all on door C.  


To put it another way, when you're at the point of choosing whether to switch doors, there are four potential scenarios you might be in:

  • You pick the right door in the first place (1/3 of a chance).  Monty Hall opens WrongDoor1 to show you a goat (1/2 a chance of opening WrongDoor1 instead of 2).   There's a 1/6 chance you're in this scenario and should stick with the door you originally picked.
  • You pick the right door in the first place (1/3 of a chance).  Monty Hall opens WrongDoor2 to show you a goat (1/2 a chance of opening WrongDoor2 instead of 1).   There's a 1/6 chance you're in this scenario and should stick with the door you originally picked.
  • You chose WrongDoor1 (1/3 chance).  Monty Hall opens WrongDoor2 to show you a goat (100% chance, or 1/1).  Remember, Monthy Hall is not picking randomly.  He will never open the right door to show you a car.  There's a 1/3 chance you're in this scenario and will benefit by switching doors.
  • You chose WrongDoor2 (1/3 chance) and Monty Hall opens WrongDoor1 (1/1 chance).  There's a 1/3 chance you're in this scenario and will benefit by switching doors.

In short, there is a 1/6 + 1/6 = 1/3 chance you picked the right door in the first place, and a 2/3 chance you didn't.  If you didn't, and Monty Hall removes one of the goat doors, you will win by switching.


ZTD has you play a version of this, but with more than 3 doors.  Increasing the number of doors makes the problem more intuitive, so it should be easier to guess that switching gives you better odds.  One interesting thing about this game - which I really liked - is that some right answers, including this one, are random.  So you might still lose even if you switch.  It only increases your odds of winning, it doesn't guarantee it.  There's are a few more puzzles with random solutions, like one where you need to test out 8 potential antidotes in one round of testing with only 3 people.  The right antidote will make your tongue numb.  I would have liked to work out the set-up for finding the answer myself, but the game doesn't let you.  It just gives you the set-up and results and has you pick the right answer.


Unlike the previous games, this one sometimes lets you type in your choices instead of just choosing them from a list.  This sounds good on paper, but it's just not implemented that well.  At one point, for example, a possible answer is some variation on "I don't know".  To be fair, the game-makers did make the effort to make various forms of "don't know" acceptable.   But, as a player, there's no indication that not knowing is an option.  You'd expect to input the answer in the form of a name.  I can't see putting in "don't know" except out of frustration or as a joke, and I certainly wouldn't expect it to work.  There are some hints for some of the boxes, but these can be read as a translation error or just badly written when the game makers were actually going for "exact words".  


Then there are passwords you don't even realise you've seen.  Now, this only happened to me once, but it meant that I had absolutely no idea how to continue or see any content I hadn't already watched until I looked at a guide and discovered that I had, in fact, already seen the answer.  This was annoying because, firstly, as far as I recall, the characters didn't actually say the password, which was a date, it just popped up on screen at the start of the screen.  Secondly, there's no reason to believe that the characters present actually knew what the date was.  They had been kidnapped, given anaesthesia to knock them out and induce amnesia countless times (literally countless, since they couldn't remember) and had no contact with the outside world.  Sure, one character says he's been counting the days, but, firstly, he couldn't have known if the day he'd started from was the right one and, secondly, it would be so easy to lose count in these circumstances.  In short, the precise date just didn't seem very important, despite being the exact information I needed to continue.  Also, because you don't need to touch the gamepad to advance the text, I wasn't even looking at the screen the first time it showed up.  So that was annoying.  Checking guides for this game is risky because they're hard to write without spoilers, and also lots of people like to just tell you the answer instead of telling you how to find the answer.  I don't want to be told what it is, I just want a hint.


So, this game just felt a bit weak compared to the previous ones.  While it did have some recurring characters, it didn't answer some questions - like what happened to specific people from 999 - and it did create something of a sequel hook, so perhaps there'll be a fourth installment.

Saturday, 26 June 2021

A Mortician's Tale

A Mortician's Tale doesn't feel like a game.  It looks like a game but you have very, very few choices and you can't fail, so it plays more like a workplace training exercise.  Have you done those?  We used to do those in labs.  The 'game' tells you which piece of equipment to pick up and where to use it, and won't let you do it wrong, it'll just keep reminding you as you click around.  It will also explain what you're doing and why, in a way most games leave up to you to figure out.


There are screenshots from the game below, including a representation of a human body being prepared for burial.





Basically, you take the role of a mortician, that is, one who prepares the dead for burial or processes their cremation.  You pop in on her career for a day at a time, over a few months.  During that period her workplace changes a few times, allowing you to see different aspects of the funeral industry.  Each day begins by checking your emails, which will tell you who you're preparing and how - e.g., for an open casket, for cremation - and gives you a bit of gossip.  On most days, your mortician will also have another webpage up that you can read.  On one day, that other webpage lets you play Minesweeper, but with a twist.  The twist is that the numbers are replaced with symbols and which symbol corresponds to which number changes on each attempt.  I didn't find it at all difficult.  If you manage to click on an empty square and so reveal several at once, it's pretty easy to see which are the 1s, and then you can work out the 2s and 3s and so on from there.  That said, I'm really, really good at Minesweeper - I'm currently playing Minesweeper 3D because normal Minesweeper doesn't challenge me any more and no one will play me at Minesweeper Flags because I keep winning - so my experience isn't typical.  Still, it's not an essential part of the game (though it does give you an achievement).


The game then has you prepare the body.  This involves some combination of cleaning them, fitting caps under their eyelids and gluing the lids shut, sewing the mouth shut, replacing their blood with formaldehyde, and suctioning out their liquefied organs.  The game isn't exactly gory, and all of the above just involves clicking and dragging the mouse, but it is discomforting.  I can see it being weirdly cathartic if you're recently bereaved - though it could also be incredibly upsetting in those circumstances - and it did help me figure out what I want done when I die.  Incidentally, I'm currently completing a Master degree in bioarchaeology - skeletons - and I still find that corpses make me uncomfortable, even fictitious ones.  I'm okay with bones - I've handled medieval skeletons - but I don't like fleshy bits.



Having prepared the body, you attend the funeral or wake, where you can speak - or eavesdrop - on the guests and pay your final respects to the remains.  Having done so, you re-enter your workspace and the next day begins.  Your only choices within the game are who to speak to - with an achievement for speaking to every guest - and whether or not to prepare the body of someone who has committed suicide.  I went with yes, because we are all equal in death and because I don't think suicide is a personal moral failing.  It's sad, and we, as a society, should take steps to make sure it isn't necessary, but the individual hasn't, in my opinion, committed a sin (I'm using 'sin' to mean a bad, immoral thing, not literally in terms of what the Catholic church has decided is a sin.  I am Catholic, I'm just not very good at it).  I've also realised that I believe having your body treated respectfully after death is a human right, no matter what someone has done.  It's a bit like the way our legal system (British, for me) has decided that everyone deserves a lawyer to argue for them, no matter what they've done or how obvious their guilt appears.  Someone has to be on your side, no matter what.  Because, I don't know, maybe this is the one in a billion time when an innocent person is unlucky enough to look really guilty, or when there are circumstances that should change the normal sentence for their crime.  I don't know.  I can't make that decision, no one can, that's why we have a whole system to decide that sort of thing, with lots of people coming together to discuss it and examine it and find the truth.  The whole issue is above my - and most people's - paygrade, and so is deciding that someone has committed a sin by committing suicide.


With the steps for preparing the body are so thorough and grounded in realism, messing up would be very upsetting, so it makes sense that the game doesn't actually let you fail.  But, this hand-holding does make it less of a game, and that's one of the reasons that the Steam reviews are 'mixed'.  The short playtime compared to the price tag is the other major reason for negative reviews.  I completed the game, with all achievements, in 90 minutes.  The description says it normally takes an hour, so I assume that extra thirty minutes came from minesweeper and intentionally moving slowly because it felt like the respectful thing to do.  I got it on sale for £1.79 - which will be the price until the 24th of June 2021 - but the normal price is £7.19.  I'd say my enjoyment of those 90 minutes was closer to £1.79 than £7.19.  I had a good experience, but I probably would feel a bit ripped off if I'd payed £7.19 for it.


You can get a similar experience to playing this game by reading the book Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty, aka Ask A Mortician.  This isn't surprising because both Caitlin Doughty and The Order of the Good Death, with which she is associated, are both acknowledged at the end of the game.  I think 'acknowledged' is the right word - instead of, for example, 'credited' - but I'm not 100% sure and would need to replay the game to check.  To be honest, the mortician's career progression and the decisions she makes - without your input - feels a lot like propaganda for the Order of the Good Death.  I can't say I like the propaganda aspect but, also, I do agree with their goals and their approach to the death industry, so it's hard to pinpoint exactly what's making me uncomfortable.  I think it has to do with the mortician being such a blank slate and being the player's avatar, but also making her own decisions and whims without us.  It feels as if the game is telling us "you agree with this, you want this" but not actually interacting with us or accepting any input from us.  Like we're being railroaded.  





I'm not sure what would fix the rail-roading aspect for me.  Maybe it's as simple as giving us more input.  Maybe let us make some decisions about how the mortician's career will go, and explain to us the pros and cons of each step.  There must be a reason the funeral industry is how it is, and why most morticians don't make the decisions the protagonist does.  Why is that?  Sure, some of it might be "because they're evil and only care about money", but I doubt that's all of it.  Maybe some of it is "because there just isn't enough land" or because "X is really expensive" or "the general public don't know enough to value this skill so people can't earn a living this way".  I'd like to have seen more of that explored.  As it is, it feels like some issues exist in the middle of the game, to force the mortician's workplace to change, but then those issues just suddenly disappear when it feels like, realistically, they should still be in play for her final career move.  If that makes sense.  I'm trying to avoid spoilers.  With spoilers, what I'm trying to say is: if the funeral industry is so bad that Rose is forced to sell her family-owned funeral home to a big corporation, how does the mortician afford to start her own 'wild' funeral home?  What did she do differently?  Why did the money struggles suddenly go away?

Overall, I had a good experience playing this game.  Like I said above, I might not feel that way if I'd paid four times as much for it, so I can't recommend buying it at full price.  Also, like I said, it feels more like well-made workplace training + propaganda than a game, which has garnered it some bad reviews.


I feel pressured to make a recommendation - yes, you should buy it or no, you should not - or to assign a rating, or state whether this game is good or bad, because that's how many sites invite us to review products.  But, I don't actually think that's what reviews are for.  I can't disagree with the bad reviews on steam, they are accurately describing aspects of the game.  I also agree with the good reviews.  This is what the game is, and now you have that information, you can make your own decision about whether it's worth buying.