Roosevelt Academy, mutant in the library, Nuka Quantum, hard locks, looting every ammo box, Pugilism magazine, super mutant has the key, Stealth boys, pre-war books, dancing with my bf Fawkes.
Picking through the ruins, Silver Lining Drive-In, Deathclaw vs Enclave, looting Faded Pomp Estates, Grognak the Barbarian, Agatha has scorpions, Vertibird blown away, what else do I have to say?
We didn’t start the fire …
~ J.L. Hilton
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This week, I played the free Steam demo of WYTCHWOOD, a game developed by Toronto-based Alientrap and published by Whitethorn Games. Whitethorn also published two other recent Try-It Tuesday titles, Calico and Teacup. With little time to play video games lately, I appreciate Whitethorn’s focus on stress-free and “bite-sized” games.
“While our games might challenge you, they’ll respect your time”
– WhitethornDigital.com
WYTCHWOOD is a single-player crafting adventure with storybook artwork and a fairy tale narrative, coming soon to Steam, GOG, Epic, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation and Xbox. As the old witch of the woods, players explore a strange countryside, collect magic ingredients, brew sorcerous spells, employ creative problem solving, and meet several odd characters along the way.
Keep in mind that an “adventure game” is one in which an interactive story is driven by exploration and/or puzzles. This is distinctly different from an “action-adventure” game. WYTCHWOOD plays more like Adventure Time: Finn & Jake Investigations, Teacup or My Brother Rabbit, than like God of War, Dishonored or Tomb Raider.
Unfortunately, I had some technical difficulties during my Twitch stream, which were entirely my own fault, and I don’t have a video to share, but here’s the trailer:
WYTCHWOOD is yet to be rated. The demo featured a talking goat, witchcraft and occult imagery, but lacked sex, graphic violence or adult language. I don’t know what will be in the full game.
I had fun with WYTCHWOOD and the end of the demo piqued my interest so much that I’m eager to stream this soon as it comes out.
* * *
UPDATE DEC 2021: The full WYTCHWOOD game released December 9, 2021, and I streamed my entire playthrough on YouTube.
I loved it and it is definitely one of my favorite games, not just of 2021 but of all time! The combination of fairy tales, witchery, clever writing and unique artwork, along with a sassy protagonist and the collecting, crafting, problem-solving game mechanics, make this a 10/10 for me.
FALLOUT (video game franchise) + HALLOWEEN (holiday) = “FALLOWEEN“
The FALLOWEEN photo challenge was issued by Mrs P on Twitter. There were spooky prompts for each day of October, inspiring players to take screenshots in Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout 4, Fallout Shelter and Fallout 76.
Fall is my favorite time of the year and Halloween my favorite festival, so I set myself the goal of posting at least one picture for every day of the month.
OCT 1: BLACK & ORANGE Power armor, Fallout 4OCT 1: BLACK & ORANGE Wasteland forest, Fallout 4OCT 1: BLACK & ORANGE Shroud Manor, Fallout 4OCT 1: BLACK & ORANGE Tree shadow on the Museum of Witchcraft, Fallout 4OCT 2: GRAVEYARD Cat cemetery near Walden Pond with plastic pumpkins, Fallout 4OCT 2: GRAVEYARD Gage’s tomb, Fallout 4I built this cement tomb for Gage in my “Rose the raider” run. I romanced him and created a raider empire in the Commonwealth, then left him for Danse. I joined the Brotherhood of Steel to complete the main story and went around reclaiming the raider outposts and vassals, turning them back into regular settlements, just to see if I could. I killed Gage while reclaiming Starlight. But I kinda liked that piece of shit so I built him a crypt there.OCT 3: MOON A sliver of moon seen through the roof of the Museum of Freedom, Concord, above tapestries with images of the moon (same as the images in the building’s mural). I just caught it like this, misty with moonlight, it’s not enhanced with a filter or anything. Fallout 4OCT 3: MOON My sole survivor Fiona wearing the Nuka Girl costume, beside the mural in the Museum of Freedom, in Concord, Fallout 4OCT 3: MOON My lone wanderer Charity beside the Virgo II lunar lander, in the Museum of Technology, Fallout 3OCT 4: WITCH A witch burning exhibit in the Museum of Witchcraft in Salem, Fallout 4
OCT 5: HAUNTED While collecting pictures for the Oct 1 prompt “Black & Orange,” I took these screenshots of the wasteland forest in Fallout 4But it wasn’t until I looked at them later that I saw a strange figure in the misty woodsSo I launched Fallout 4, went back to investigate, and found this mannequin next to a blood-stained tree.In the shadow of the tree is a headless corpse. I looked everywhere – in the trees, down the hill, under the body – but never found the head.OCT 6: SKELETON This is the only baby skeleton I’ve ever found in a Fallout game. It has an adult-sized skull but a small skeleton body and it totally creeps me out. Mass Bay Medical Center, Fallout 4OCT 6: SKELETON Crypt beneath Old North Church, Fallout 4. The crypt and church exist in real life, too.OCT 6: SKELETON Shem Drowne’s grave, Fallout 4. Shem was a real person and he really did make a gilded grasshopper, that wasn’t invented for the game. OCT 7: HOWL Three Dog working in the radio station, Fallout Shelter. He’s also the radio DJ in Fallout 3, where he howls and says, “This is Three Dog – HOWWWWWL – and you’re listening to Galaxy News Radio, bringing you the truth no matter how bad it hurts.” Probably inspired by real-life 1960s DJ Wolfman Jack.OCT 8: VAMPIRE Freddy Fear’s House of Scares poster featuring a pre-war vampire costume, Dupont Circle, Fallout 3OCT 8: VAMPIRE Vance, leader of the Family, Fallout 3OCT 8: VAMPIRE First law of the Family: “Feast not on the flesh; consume only the blood.” Fallout 3OCT 9: BOO My sole survivor Fiona, contacting the spirits in Hangman’s Alley, Fallout 4OCT 10: SCARY MOVIE Night of the Fish Men’s Revenge, Eden Meadows Cinemas, Far Harbor, Fallout 4
~ J.L. Hilton
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TEACUP was developed by Smarto Club, a team of three young developers from Santiago, Chile, inspired by games such as Night in the Woods and A Short Hike.
I’m not familiar with those games but of all the games I’ve played, TEACUP reminded me most of Burly Men at Sea because it felt like an interactive picture book, and the game mechanics were a bit like Arthur’s Camping Adventure, a PC game from the year 2000 that my kids loved to play when they were little.
The game’s strengths are its cute and colorful graphics, casual gameplay, animal characters, subtle humor, and variety of mini-games and brain teasers, including a hidden object puzzle, tangram, QTEs and a retro-style arcade game.
TEACUP had a few issues, though, which I hope will be addressed in updates.
Text included multiple typos and confusing sentences, I assume because something was lost in translation. This seems to be common in indie games made outside the US and is not a big deal but … if anyone needs an editor, I’m available!
What was kind of a big deal though was cursor control in several of the mini-games. For example, in the hidden object game, I had to find and click on a very small key but had a really hard time getting the arrow to hover over it.
I couldn’t find any options to adjust the sensitivity settings and this turned what should have been a fun, relaxing experience into an exercise in frustration. I might have thought something was wrong with my controller – like the piece of garbage Xbox knockoff I bought once that was full of deadzones – except it’s the same controller I use for every other game and other joystick movement TEACUP was just fine.
This might just be an issue with the PS4 version. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve played a game that was fine on PC but janky on console.
I think TEACUP is worth buying if you’re looking for a low-key, movie-length adventure or if you’re looking for something to play with children. It’s a singleplayer game but would be perfect for an adult and child to play together.
TEACUP is rated “E” for everyone. While the mini-games are pretty easy (aside from wrestling with the controls from time to time), a few might be too challenging for a young child. The protagonist is a young adult and the text includes some big words that are probably not in a 5-year-old’s vocabulary.
~ J.L. Hilton
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POTION CRAFT: ALCHEMIST SIMULATOR is available in early access on Steam today for only $13.49, 10% off its list price of $14.99.
If you love alchemy in Skyrim, you might like this. I tried a free demo back in July (that’s the video embedded above) and I had a good time. I didn’t understand the haggling at first but eventually figured it out.
In POTION CRAFT, you physically interact with your tools and ingredients to brew potions, experiment with ingredients to create new concoctions, design the labels and bottles for your products, meet various villagers and navigate their needs, from rat poison for farmers (and possibly some other more nefarious plans) to weapon-boosting brews for adventurers.
It is similar to Mystic Inn in that the gameplay revolves around brewing and selling potions, but it’s not one of those timed games where you have to hurry. Play at your own pace.
Not only did I enjoy the gameplay, which is a combination of puzzle game and RPG, but I loved the medieval style music and artwork, which inspired me to make a charm bracelet and necklace featuring some of the POTION CRAFT ingredients.
POTION CRAFT is developed by niceplay games, a team of five people in Russia, and is published by tinyBuild.
UPDATE OCT 24, 2021: I’m halfway through the chapters of the early access game and much less enchanted with POTION CRAFT than when I played the demo. I could write a long, detailed list of issues but it boils down to the game feeling unbalanced and still needing a lot of work.
According to the developers, there are several features and game mechanics still in the works, so I’m going to try again after a few more updates.
~ J.L. Hilton
See a complete list of video game fiction, articles and more under the Video Games tab of this website or click here
I recently watched “Stonehenge Decoded” on Disney+ and learned about the 2016 discovery of an ancient passage tomb similar to Newgrange, dating back to 3,500 BCE, near an 18th-century house in Ireland.
I thought, Wow, how weird is it that people lived right next to an ancient tomb for centuries? Kind of creepy, right?
Then, just today, I was reading about a haunted place near Dublin where the Hell Fire Club met in the 1700s for buttered whiskey and debauchery. One legend even claims they played cards with the devil himself.
Turns out, the site of the ancient passage tomb and the haunted Hell Fire hill are the same location! There’s also evidence that they may have used stones from the ancient tomb to build the meeting house, which some say is cursed as a result.
What a crazy spooky coincidence, that I would come across two separate stories about the same place, within just a few days of each other. I’d love to visit, someday.
~ J.L. Hilton
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Disney produced 78 episodes and four specials of Zorro from 1957-1959, during a time when television was dominated by Westerns such as Bonanza, Have Gun Will Travel, Gunsmoke, Rawhide, The Rifleman, Bat Masterson, and many more.
While Zorro is classified as a Western, rather than featuring a white gunslinger, gambler or cowboy, the titular protagonist is a masked, swashbucking, sword fighting, university educated, Spanish vigilante.
I watched reruns of Zorro when I was a kid, over 40 years ago. I just watched them again on Disney+ this weekend and I still love it.
Maybe Zorro influenced my preference for all black Nightingale garb in Skyrim?
~ J.L. Hilton
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I bought some Halloween candy at the store yesterday and the young man bagging my groceries said “but it’s only September.” I replied, “It’s always Halloween at my house.”
Actual year-round decor in my downstairs bathroomCrystal ball soap
~ J.L. Hilton
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