Short Game Reviews: Itch.io Bundle, Part 1

October 19, 2020
3 minutes

What seems like an eternity ago, I picked up the Racial Justice and Equality bundle that was hosted on Itch.io. I was initially attracted to the big name titles that were included, but now that I’ve had a bit of extra free time I’ve been able to peruse and try out a few more.

I’m listing out the ones that I think are worth giving a try. Games are sorted alphabetically. I’m only on page 6 of 59, so I will probably have a few more of these posts as I continue through the backlog.

Celeste

Probably one of the most popular games included in the bundle. Platformer that requires specific button input timings. I got decently far until the later stages where it gets a bit overbearing. I can definitely see why there was a lot of hype when this was released.

Lenna’s Inception

Personally, this was one of the games that I was most interested when browsing through the bundle, as I’m a big fan of the traditional Legend of Zelda games. However, I’ve had little success getting this game to run properly. It crashes when switching or running in fullscreen. In windowed mode, it slows down randomly. It’s a shame because this looks very interesting.

Mable and the Wood

A few weird things about this one, there was a zip within a zip file that needed extracted. Also thanks to the forum posts, I found instructions to get this working in Fedora:

sudo dnf install compat-openssl10
cd /usr/lib64
sudo ln -s libcrypto.so.10 libcrypto.so.1.0.0
sudo ln -s libcurl.so.4 libcurl-gnutls.so.4
sudo ln -s libssl.so.10 libssl.so.1.0.0

Initial gameplay is fun, it took a few seconds for my controller to register after starting the game. There are only a few buttons to control Mable, and gliding around is an interesting alternative to regular jumping from a platformer. Unfortunately, my controller (8BitDo SN30 pro+) didn’t map to the transform ability correctly on the right analog stick and I got stuck. I’ll probably use a different controller or switch to keyboard and mouse.

Pikuniku

An interesting and quicky side-scrolling adventure game. Controller worked without any issues. Lots of good humor, and enjoying it so far.

Pyre

I actually started this one on my Ubuntu instance, and I had to modify the startup script with an export to get it working:

else

export TERM=xterm

if [ "$ARCH" == "x86_64" ]; then

This game has beautiful artwork and an interesting storyline. The main gameply is 3 vs 3 soccer-ish game where you set up characters with unique traits to score goals. Between matches are the RPG elements that lets you customize your characters equipment and choose different paths to travel along. Although I could appreciate the gameplay, it just wasn’t my style.

Quadrilateral Cowboy

A fun little 3d puzzle game that has an 80s retro feel where you have to type in terminal commands to activate doors, gates, lasers, cameras, etc. Another interesting part is the classical music or old timey songs from the 40s (I recognized Auld Lang Syne).

Shipwreck

Plays extremely similar to Link’s Awakening on the original GameBoy; it’s a top-down adventure game that you map items to your two primary buttons. Doesn’t support a gamepad, which is the only complaint I had so far.

Super Win the Game

This is a side-scrolling platformer that has an overhead world map. It’s designed essentially like Zelda II: Adventure of Link for the NES. The main difference is that the protagonist doesn’t attack, so the focus is purely on platforming. There is even CRT filters that further give it a retro look.

Underhero

The first thing I noticed was the pixel art is amazing. This is a side scrolling platformer with a timed RPG battle. Really digging the beginning parts, and the story of playing an low level bad guy is amusing so far.

Day 8 of #100DaysToOffload