The bonus puzzles and sequel, Glass Masquerade 2: Illusions, were not available for PlayStation 4, so I bought the game again on PC and played through the beautiful Halloween DLC, with stained glass puzzles for Ireland (Halloween jack-o-lantern pumpkins), Poland (Witch), Romania (Vampire), Japan (Obon) and Mexico (Dia de Muertos).
The entire Halloween expansion is only 99 cents if you own the main game, which is currently $4.99 on Steam.
I made these Halloween-themed printable inserts for my kids’ Guess Who? game back in 2014. They work with the kind of game that has a 4×6 grid of little windows that open and close.
This set features jack-o-lanterns and nothing scary (no witches, vampires, zombies, ghosts, etc).
* * * SPOILER ALERT * * * I mention a few plot points but try to be vague and speak in general terms.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is one of my favorite games of all time, so THE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT is often recommended. I prefer first-person games and creating my own protagonist, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying God of War. And I don’t want to devote hundreds of hours of my life to a game, but ended up doing that with Fallout 4, anyway.
So, after watching The Witcher on Netflix, I bought WITCHER 3 on sale and finally gave it a try, despite the lack of a character creator and an immense amount of content.
The above video is from my first Try-It Tuesday livestream of WITCHER 3 on Twitch. After that, I streamed about half the main game on Twitch and edited some highlight videos for my YouTube channel.
WITCHER 3 is a very rich, impressive game and I can see why people love it. There’s a massive amount of content and exploration. Much of the game is very well-written, with depth, detail and emotion.
I appreciate that the protagonist isn’t a savior. He’s not The One. He’s not the Dragonborn or the Sole Survivor. Geralt is just one of several exterminators who specialize in supernatural pests. Sort of a medieval fantasy Ghostbuster.
But the gameplay loop of fight, loot, repair, repeat, got me thinking I would make a lot more money, with a lot less effort, if Geralt gave up witchering and became a florist or an herbalist. I could gather flowers and herbs, and sell them, without the expense of constantly repairing Geralt’s weapons and armor.
After all, as a witcher, I wasn’t earning goodwill and I wasn’t getting rich. Everyone I tried to help seemed to be doomed, anyway. So what was the point? I didn’t feel very invested in Geralt or what was going on around him.
Skyrim has its dark corners and twisted tales, too, but it also had opportunities to make meaningful choices, have fun, enjoy the scenery and do some good in the world. Try to do the right thing in WITCHER 3, and it’s always fucked up. You are always damned if you do and damned if you don’t. The roads are lined with hanged bodies. Every field contains a fiend.
There were parts of the game I enjoyed, but plague, war, rape, misogyny, suicide, domestic violence, miscarriage, injustice, oppression, kidnapping, slavery, cannibalism and torture aren’t my ideas of fun. The excessive violence against women in WITCHER 3 made me uncomfortable. Women killed by lovers, husbands, angry mobs.
The suicide of a major character was the last straw for me, making it too emotionally overwhelming to enjoy. I’m almost 50 years old, I’ve seen a lot of shit, and I was diagnosed with PTSD in my 30s. I play video games to forget about that bullshit for a little while or to enjoy the fantasy of kicking its ass.
After all the hype I’d heard about WITCHER 3 being “perfect,” I was also surprised to encounter a number of glitches, such as quests that wouldn’t progress or didn’t make sense, confusing dialog, characters sinking into the ground, messed up merchants, and rewards not received.
Many choices seemed to provide only the illusion of choice. For example, I disliked one of the characters in the game and tried to avoid her, but the game seemed designed to make Geralt fall for her charms, regardless.
Clunky controls felt like they were designed for PC and later mapped to a console controller, but not very well. God of War was not an easy game, but I never felt like the game itself got in my way. In WITCHER 3, I fought with the game controls not just the enemies.
Despite these criticisms, however, I would’ve continued playing if it wasn’t such an emotional slog. WITCHER 3 seemed to wallow in misery and I couldn’t take any more. Maybe there will come a day when I’ve had just too many unicorns and rainbows and I need to do something tedious, miserable and depressing, but it’s not this day.
May 10, 2020, was my last livestream of this game, and I won’t be going back. “Tragic End” (above) is the final highlight video from that stream.
THE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT is rated “M” for mature audiences, ages 17+, due to blood and gore, intense violence, nudity, strong language, strong sexual content and use of alcohol. It’s available for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.
~ J.L. Hilton
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This week’s Twitch Try-It Tuesday stream will be FALLOUT 3, a game I’ve never been able to play before!
My oldest daughter got it working for me on my new Windows 10 laptop. There may be quirks, crashes and bugs but let’s see how far we get into the Capital Wasteland!
Join me on this new adventure at 3pm EST on Tuesday, September 15, 2020, at Twitch.tv/jewelsmith
~ J.L. Hilton
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I didn’t find out about DARKARTA: A BROKEN HEART’S QUEST until a representative from Tutti Frutti Interactive offered me a review copy earlier this month. The game came to PC in 2017 but mobile versions in eight languages are now being released for Android and iOS.
Other than the free review copy, I was not offered nor given any form of incentive, compensation or payment to play this game. As with all of my Try-It Tuesday posts, these are my honest opinions.
I’ve played a lot of hidden object puzzle adventures over the years and this is one of the best. The scenes are beautiful and the puzzles are incredible to look at, as well as being challenging, engaging, complex, fresh and fun. The music fits the game, especially the tune in the memories room that made me want to burst into tears.
DARKARTA is not only a story about a love triangle that spans lifetimes but is also very much about a mother’s love. Mary must find and rescue her little girl Sophia from an evil immortal. She discovers ghosts, magic, treasure, and the dark secrets from her past life along the way.
A helpful in-game journal provides character descriptions and information, in case the player ever misses anything or feels confused by the story. I noticed a few minor typos and grammatical errors but I thought, overall, the story and voice acting were much better than other HOPA games I’ve played.
There were moments near the end that seemed like they were supposed to be dramatic revelations, yet the information had already been explained by the journal or provided earlier in the game. The conclusion felt a bit rushed and incomplete but the real resolution comes at the end of the bonus chapter, Rising of the Phoenix, so make sure to play that, too.
DARKARTA has four difficulty modes, including a “custom” difficulty where you can adjust several different aspects of the experience, such as the hint recharge rate and the appearance of sparkle clues. I wish every point-and-click puzzle game had this.
Puzzles can be skipped but I didn’t take that option. I found the hidden objects, locks and other mini-games challenging but not impossible.
Inventory items can be used more than once! Hooray! If you’ve watched me play other HOPA games, you’ll know how frustrated I get when knives, axes, scissors, matches and other useful objects just disappear. I know that’s how these games usually work but I’ve long wanted a more realistic experience. At least in DARKARTA, when Mary loses her inventory, it’s because she’s had a boat accident or something that makes sense.
Speaking of making sense, in many puzzle games, the things you have to do with the objects and environment are just crazy. I once played a game where I had to put a corked gourd on some lava so the cork would shoot across a ravine. WTH? In DARKARTA, the environmental interactions aren’t so bizarre. An ax chops wood, stones are thrown to knock something down, a pocket knife cuts a cord, etc.
The only technical problem I had with DARKARTA is the fact that hovering the cursor near the bottom of a scene or puzzle gives the “go back” prompt, when I’m just trying to click a hidden object or pick up something. This got a bit annoying after about the tenth time I accidentally left a puzzle or location. Usually, my puzzle progress would be saved and I wouldn’t have to do it over again, but it was still frustrating.
The collector’s edition comes with several bonus features. Mini-games and hidden object puzzles can be replayed. You can listen to the soundtrack or download wallpaper images. There’s even a full-length prequel comic book that tells the story of the main characters’ childhoods.
I think the developers put a lot of love and attention into DARKARTA and I look forward to playing more games from Tutti Frutti Interactive.
DARKARTA is rated “E” for everyone on GooglePlay but I couldn’t find an age rating on the ESRB website. I think it’s best for ages 12+ as the violence (stabbing and fighting in flashback scenes), spooky aspects (skeletons, ghosts, etc), child abduction and frequent visions of Sophia crying for her mother may be distressing to young children.
~ J.L. Hilton
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Despite its name, MODERN TALES: AGE OF INVENTION is set in the year 1900. As one might expect with steampunk, there are steam trains, airships and crazy gadgets.
Emily Patterson is a headstrong, independent and educated female protagonist, who ditches skirts and corsets in favor of men’s clothing. She uses a parachute, understands chemistry, and repairs pipes, flat tires and telegraph lines. When presented with a freshly-caught fish, she says, “I’m no housewife!”
When her father and his colleagues go missing from the Paris expo, Emily pursues a suspicious character named d’Albignac who blackmails inventors and steals their inventions. This reminded me a little bit of the 2015 movie April and the Extraordinary World, which is also a steampunk story about a daughter’s adventure with disappearing scientists.
In MODERN TALES, Albert Einstein is a love interest who helps Emily steal an airship from Zeppelin himself. Coco Chanel is a fashionable friend. Ferdinand Porsche sells Emily a car.
But don’t expect MODERN TALES to be a history lesson. I Googled things that appeared in the game, such as duct tape, disc records and airplanes. A non-adhesive form of “duck tape” was in use in 1900, but the sticky version didn’t actually come along until years later. Disc record players existed but many people still had phonographs with wax cylinders in 1900. And despite d’Albignac’s clever plane/snowmobile, the first airplane flight didn’t actually happen until 1903, with stable, sustained flight in 1905.
The story and voice acting are a bit cheesy, typical of games in this genre. The scenes are lovely but the characters seem slapdash at times and look as if they’re drawn by different artists from scene to scene.
The images above are all Coco Chanel. The images below are the protagonist, Emily. I like her promotional image (left) much more than her actual in-game character. Is she a blonde? A redhead? What’s wrong with her boobs?
Overall, I had a good time with MODERN TALES. I found its quirks and anachronisms amusing. The puzzles and hidden object games are fun, the game controls are easy to use, and I didn’t experience any glitches or gameplay issues. I played on expert difficulty and the challenges felt balanced, neither too easy nor too difficult.
Don’t miss the bonus chapter, unlocked after playing the main game. Things get really bizarre!
MODERN TALES is a 2017 hidden object puzzle adventure, developed by Orchid Games and published by Artifex Mundi for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC and Nintendo Switch. Rated E 10+ for ages 10 and up.
DREAM DADDY: A DAD DATING SIMULATOR is a visual novel video game released in 2017 for PC. The expanded Dadrector’s Cut was released for PlayStation 4 in 2018 and a Nintendo Switch version in 2019.
I heard about DREAM DADDY because I’m a fan of Game Grumps, the publisher, but I didn’t get around to playing the game until May 2020.
In DREAM DADDY, you’re a single dad who moves to a new neighborhood with his high school daughter. You can create and customize your dad with a variety of options, including body hair, facial hair, glasses, clothing, binder, hairstyles and more.
You have the opportunity to meet and romance a variety of dudes, including a Goth Dad, Teacher Dad, Bad Dad, Cool Dad, Fitness Dad and others. But the story is also about your relationship to your daughter, Amanda, and you can get different endings depending on how you interact with her.
There are dialog choices in DREAM DADDY, and you can choose who you date, but there’s not much choice about who you are. The protagonist is written as a messy, sarcastic loner interested in reality TV and junk food. I don’t usually play visual novels, so maybe that’s just how they are, but it kind of sucked for me.
And I get that this is a story game so, y’know, story. But this game had an awful lot of “um” “sure” “hey” and rambling conversations that made me all too painfully aware of how much I was clicking … and clicking … and clicking to get through them. If this visual novel was just a novel, it would be in sore need of an editor.
DREAM DADDY was a unique little romp with funny mini-games but not interesting enough to play all over again. I got the good ending with Amanda and the romantic ending with Brian (Rival Dad), my favorite, then I reloaded my last save and did the romantic ending with Hugo (Teacher Dad), a close second.
I didn’t like the rivalry with Brian though. It made the protagonist seem really petty and immature. I wish they’d had Brian be Cuddly Dad or Confident Dad or something.
DREAM DADDY is rated “T” for teens due to sexual themes, language, use of alcohol and tobacco.
~ J.L. Hilton
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This game is called THE SECRET ORDER: SHADOW BREACH on PlayStation, but it’s called The Secret Order 7 on Steam. It definitely felt like part of a series, with references to characters, story and events from, I assume, the past six games I hadn’t played.
But I still had a good time with THE SECRET ORDER, a hidden object puzzle adventure developed by Sunward Games and published by Artifex Mundi in February 2019. It is definitely possible to play through without having played any of the other Secret Order games before.
As the protagonist, Sarah, I collected several magical artifacts scattered across the world in secret labs, forests, mansions, and mountain ruins. There were elements of fantasy and science fiction, with dragons, druids, ray guns, aliens, knights and scientists.
The beautiful artwork is the biggest appeal of THE SECRET ORDER, followed by the challenging puzzles. The story… well… the dialogue was so bad it was funny, almost like a porno.
At one point, Sarah walked into a room and said, “I’m looking for a special relic. It’s an urgent matter. There’s an evil force.”
And the dude replied something along the lines of “I don’t know anything about relics, but we have some great wine.” Then sent her to find his “secret room” in the cellar, which wasn’t a sex dungeon … but for a minute I thought it might be.
I played the entire game on “expert” mode and didn’t have much of a problem until the bonus chapter, which I found difficult and a bit weird.
I mean, games like this are always odd, in their own way, with elaborate puzzle locks on jewelry boxes, unusual ways to use every day items, and villains who somehow don’t notice me rummaging around in the piles of hidden objects five feet away. But this particular bonus chapter had some solutions that felt really random, achieved by just clicking everything, everywhere until something worked, rather than being able to think through logical connections.
Or maybe I couldn’t think straight because I was too disturbed by this purple genie creature who showed up out of nowhere to stare at me with its glowing eyes of judgment! What is this? Was it in previous Secret Order games? Why is it smiling at me like that?!
THE SECRET ORDER: SHADOW BREACH is for ages 12 and up. Available on PS4, PC, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and mobile phone apps.
This week I played EVENTIDE 3: LEGACY OF LEGENDS, developed by The House of Fables and published by Artifex Mundi in 2017.
I enjoyed the first Eventide game back in January 2018 and I tried the EVENTIDE 3 free demo back in September 2018. But I didn’t continue at that time because I wanted to play them in order. I played Eventide 2 earlier this year, so it was time to complete the trilogy.
Like the others, EVENTIDE 3 is a point-and-click HOPA (Hidden Object Puzzle Adventure) developed by The House of Fables and published by Artifex Mundi.
Of course, another family member is in peril and this time botanist Mary Gilbert must travel to the Cloud Kingdom to rescue her brother, a meteorologist with magical powers. She must prove her worth to the thunder god Perun and save the world from catastrophe.
EVENTIDE 3 was a fun finale to this fairy tale series. The voice acting could be better, but the music is relaxing, with lovely scenes and a good combination of story, brain teasers, and hidden object games, with the option to play in “casual” or “expert” modes.
Rated “E” for everyone aged 10 and up by the ESRB. Available on PS4, PC, Xbox One, and mobile phone.
The troublesome Team Trashcake trio played Sims 4 today. Well, technically, IceStella played Sims 4 while Sulfur & I visited via headset to help create avatars of ourselves, choose outfits and decorate our rooms.
I joined them about halfway through the stream, hosted by IceStella on her YouTube channel.
Near the end of the stream, she also showed us a sneak peek of her latest project – a replica of her Stardew Valley house built in Sims 4.
~ J.L. Hilton
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I made these Halloween-themed printable inserts for my kids’ Guess Who? game back in 2014. They work with the kind of game that has a 4×6 grid of little windows that open and close.
I played the entire game on “expert” mode and didn’t have much of a problem until the bonus chapter, which I found difficult and a bit weird.
