![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xyzzysqrlRetro Game Crunch is a package of seven retro-y NES-y-flavored video games bundled into a single launcher sold on Steam. At first I was going to consider the entire seven-game package as one game and only post about it once, but the two I've tried easily crossed the Manos Threshold(*) and were suitably playable games in their own right, so I figured I'd split them out to pad my game count for the year give them their appropriate due.
Of the two games I finished, Brains & Hearts is absolutely the lesser. A combative card game between Einstein and a robot in which you compete to make ascending or descending runs of numbers using at least one of your opponent's placed cards. It took me a while to work out how to win it, and I still don't think I could do it reliably, but I did declare victory once so yay for me.
The other game, Super Clew Land, is an exploration-style platformer with some ideas that feel a little underbaked but a good challenge all around. You begin as a sort of gel mass and eating lets you evolve your body (in a fixed way, no EVO shenanigans here) until you're at Peak Gelsquoosh Power. Then you flap around collecting things, fight a final boss, and win.
Eventually. That final boss is a toothsome heap of spikes and purple that slaughtered my goo-poo a few dozen times before I nailed him by dint of him just not using the moves that killed me so often. Took a little over an hour, so it was a well-invested bit of time.
I'll probably return to Retro Game Crunch a few more times. The games in here are good and fun.
* The Manos Threshold, strongly implied but not explicitly defined by a cute reader/blogger Celine, is the point in a game blogger's play when they reflect upon a topic, realize "I've written more about less than this, so I might as well..." and resign themselves to knocking out a couple paragraphs.
Of the two games I finished, Brains & Hearts is absolutely the lesser. A combative card game between Einstein and a robot in which you compete to make ascending or descending runs of numbers using at least one of your opponent's placed cards. It took me a while to work out how to win it, and I still don't think I could do it reliably, but I did declare victory once so yay for me.
The other game, Super Clew Land, is an exploration-style platformer with some ideas that feel a little underbaked but a good challenge all around. You begin as a sort of gel mass and eating lets you evolve your body (in a fixed way, no EVO shenanigans here) until you're at Peak Gelsquoosh Power. Then you flap around collecting things, fight a final boss, and win.
Eventually. That final boss is a toothsome heap of spikes and purple that slaughtered my goo-poo a few dozen times before I nailed him by dint of him just not using the moves that killed me so often. Took a little over an hour, so it was a well-invested bit of time.
I'll probably return to Retro Game Crunch a few more times. The games in here are good and fun.
* The Manos Threshold, strongly implied but not explicitly defined by a cute reader/blogger Celine, is the point in a game blogger's play when they reflect upon a topic, realize "I've written more about less than this, so I might as well..." and resign themselves to knocking out a couple paragraphs.
