Monthly Update: June, 2026

 

Where do I start with May?  Where do I start with June?  Once again, I would like to apologize to the people of the world who know that the convicted felon and convicted sexual assaulter of a President of the United States is an absolute shit stain for being an absolute shit stain of a bloated sack of rippling flesh.  That's not slander.  That's good ol' 'Murican Red, White, and 1st Ammendment Blue Protected Free Speech right there, folks!

You can make the connection between data center construction, the increase in RAM prices globally, and the increase in cost for consoles and systems that have been out for at most six years (PlayStation 5) to the Switch 2, which is less than a year old, all seeing price hikes between $50 (PlayStation 5 Portal) up to $300 (Steam Deck 1TB OLED), that's pretty obvious.  And where data centers have been built and are being built run the political gamut, so you can't say one political party is more likely to saddle up to data center construction than another.  And with all of the recent pushback by rural communities against data center construction due to water and power usage, maybe the price hikes for anything that uses RAM will get the video game community off their collective asses.  It probably won't.  If anything, it'll probably generate a lot of "Well, you should've bought a PS5 Pro last year like I did.  Sucks to be you.  I hear Tiger is bringing back their LCD games."  I actually had a whole article planned out (not written, though) going into this topic, but it got too unwieldy, and I wasn't sure how to write it in a way that I would've been happy with.  So I'm just bringing it up here instead.

I'm hoping that I'll actually be able to get my Game EXP Trilogy series off the ground this month, along with corresponding MIDI Week Singles.  Except now that I type it out loud, I'm not sure how I want to space out three MIDI Week Single articles around a single post.  Maybe I'll just release one a month along with their respective MIDI Week Singles article.  That's probably the best way, so thanks for talking through this with me.

In Hades on the Switch 2, I had a rather amazing run.  It was probably attempt number 21 or 22, and I had only made it as far as the Bone Hydra one previous time.  On this run, I had the Eternal Spear equipped, and not only made it to the Bone Hydra and defeated it handily.  I also made it somewhat deep into the Elysian Fields, two or three rooms past the fight with the Minotaur.  I had also just recently spent some darkness to have the accessory cabinet (sorry, keepsakes) placed between Tartarus and Asphodel, so I had swapped out the Cthonic Coin Purse for Skelly's Lucky Tooth, and still had a Death Defied left.  Anyway, I'm really into Hades, when I get to play the Switch 2, which is usually at night after The Squire goes to bed.

While he's awake, The Squire has been playing a lot of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening remake (mainly because he's been watching gameplay videos for The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom and we don't have that game yet, but they use the same engine), but his expectations are all based on videos he's seen on YouTube, which are primarily just boss fights.  So he gets pretty annoyed (with me) and aggravated (with me) when I tell him that we can't just jump from one dungeon into the next dungeon, that there are things that need to be found and unlocked before we can even get into the next dungeon.  I blame YouTubers because it's easy, and I'm in my mid-40s.  He's also played the Donkey Kong Bananza Demo for over 10 hours (which has a 30-minute limit per play session), so the full game is likely in his future (read later today).  He's also bouncing back to Super Mario Bros. Wonder, which is what he's playing right now on the couch.

On my laptop, The Squire and I finished Big Helmet Heroes, a game that tries to capture the feeling of a more modern Castle Crashers, and I'll definitely get into it either at the end of this month or sometime next month.  And we're still playing Castle Crashers since we can download new characters and skins from the Steam Workshop; we just downloaded a Darth Vader character that The Squire said, "It looks more movie accurate."  I've since limited it to only downloading one new character per week, otherwise we'd be spending most mornings just looking through the same three to four pages of characters sorted by popularity and not actually playing the game.

On my own, I just finished Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown on Easy difficulty because I'm an adult and I had a bad experience with Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, but I'll get into more of that later.  I'm still playing Divine Divinity, and if you know anything about that game, I just finished clearing out the sewers in both Rivertown and Verdistis.  I'm working my way through the expansive Dark Forest, and I haven't accepted the invitation to the castle yet.  I also started Diablo IV (base edition) (again) as a rogue, but found that I was a bit disappointed that I was one-shotting wargs and skeletons right out of the gate.  You'd think that Level 1 would require a few hits to kill enemies, but this is the follow-up to Diablo III,  so I probably shouldn't be too surprised (again).  I also started playing Stone of Madness by The Game Kitchen from a review key I received, and I'm excited to go through and review a new type of game from the people who developed Blasphemous.

So I am still getting some game time in here and there.  Now off to bed.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Chambers in the Bath

Game EXP: Messy Hearts (PC)

 

Messy Hearts
Release Date: April 27, 2026
Systems: Windows, mac OS, Linux, SteamOS
Publisher: Black Heart Games LLC
Developer: Black Heart Games LLC
Time Spent: 48 Minutes

Messy Hearts is a short comic-styled visual novel about navigating developing and complicated relationships, inspired by real events in the lives of some of the members of the development team.  If you read the About Page on Black Heart Games' page, it's pretty easy to figure out who's who, to some extent, in the game.  While Messy Hearts is played in a traditional visual novel style (press/click button to continue), several moments allow the player to choose how the main character, Florence, reacts to her inner voice and people in her life.  The game is short, playable in only 48 minutes (for me, but I'm sometimes a slow reader), although it could be longer if you take advantage of the Rewind feature that lets you replay chapters to make different decisions.

Despite how much I really enjoyed this game, there was a lot I was not able to connect with about the main character.  I am not a game developer.  I am not a woman.  I am not a woman in a male-dominated field; although I am a male in an often woman-dominated field, social work.  I am not non-binary.  My pronouns can be correctly assumed by boomers by looking at my face.  I am not in a polyamorous or open relationship.  I don't think that I have complex relationship issues with either my friends or family.  I don't believe I have CPTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), or a sensitivity to rejection.  I am heterosexual.  As a cisgender white male-presenting 6' 2" white guy, you'd almost think that I'm not the target audience for this kind of story and that I couldn't find anything relatable the whole time.  Florence is in her 40s, experiences intrusive thoughts of varying degrees, has imposter syndrome, has a black cat, and is also the loving parent of a five-year-old wild child.  Hey, I know that person!  I also recognize that if literary transference is a thing, this was happening here.

I fully admit that by the end of the first chapter, my eyes were watering and I was thinking, "Yeah, me too."  Something about the simplicity of the pixel art, and the in-game question of whether or not you want Florence to explain the concepts of complex human emotion to her five-year-old son, Felix, along with the conclusion that Felix "is a good boy", just really hit me harder than I was expecting from a visual novel video game that I didn't know existed 15 minutes prior.  The Squire is also an inquisitive five-year-old who is a good boy, who just last year was also fixated with eating ice out of ice chests and loudly declaring 15 minutes into almost any car ride that he had to pee immediately.  I can totally empathize with wanting to explain concepts of human emotion to my child, who still has a mouthful of baby teeth while also trying to not to make a mess of his life.

I don't want to get too into the weeds as far as the story goes because the game itself is so short, but I found it really enjoyable.  Enjoyable in the way that one finds enjoyment reading and interacting with a story that's not their own, not specifically reading and experiencing someone recount, and inadvertently putting themselves in a potentially traumatic situation that they've found themselves in before.  As a free game with writing that I would consider 'very well written' with charming pixel art and animation that takes place in a region similar to my own (I mean, Hopworks Brewing!?), I honestly can't recommend this game enough.  

The only kind of caveat I have to add about this game is that the story is intentionally incomplete.  Messy Hearts contains nine chapters, but after the ninth chapter, the story doesn't actually end, and it doesn't end in the way that book or LOST would end on a cliffhanger.  The story of Florence and her complicated and messy relationship with her coworker is unresolved, and the game fully acknowledges this fact after you reach the end of this game.  In the Character Profile section of the menu, when you've reached the end of Chapter Nine, there are only 11 of 17 characters unlocked.  There is more to the story that has yet to be developed, and when the time comes, I will happily be a person to throw some digital real-world currency at Black Heart Games to read and experience more from Florence's life.  And because I know she won't mess up Felix any more than I could mess up The Squire, even though we're fairly different people.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
And I Go Where The Ocean is Deep

MIDI Week Singles: "라 운 드 2: 시공의 벽, 그리고 최후의 결전" - 우주 거북선 (SMD/SGN)

 

"라 운 드 2: 시공의 벽, 그리고 최후의 결전" - 우주 거북선" or "Round 2: The Wall of Time and Space, and The Final Battle" from Uzu Keobukseon on the SEGA Mega Drive/SEGA Genesis (1993)
Composer: Unknown / Samsung Electronics Game Console Business Team
Album: No Official Release
Publisher: Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.
Developer: Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.

I ended up running a bit of an experiment for today's MIDI Week Single by using Korean because Uzu Keobukseon was a top-down arcade shooter (1942, Dragon Spirit, Twin Bee), but this one was developed and published by the short-lived Samsung Electronic Game Console Business Team, which only released this one game to the South Korean market.  When I was researching this song, every instance I could find only had the title as "Stage 2."  In-game, all of the text is in Korean, so I went through a process of translating it, and every time it had the levels titled as "Round" instead of "Level" or "Stage."  Each round also included a subtitle, so I decided to relabel all of the songs from the game with the names of the round.  Oddly enough, the game uses this track in both Round 2 and Round 8.

As for the music itself, I can't quite place where I've heard something similar to it before.  It sounds very much like music that you would find in comparable top-down arcade shooters released in the late 80s and early 90s.  It's just a catchy song using the SEGA Genesis sound chip that I am admittedly not as familiar with compared to the SNES, and it's really too bad that there isn't much information about the development team and who composed this music.  The only credit in the game comes at the end and only lists "Samsung Electronics Game Console Business Team," so we'll likely only have that to go on unless someone comes forward.

So jump on your nearest space turtle battleship and fight some governmental AI defense systems that have taken over control of the world governments, or just the Samsung computers in 2020's Korea.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

Game EXP: Human Within (MQ2)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Human Within through Keymailer, a third-party company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game key was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that it be played, and content be created.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]

Human Within
Release Date: April 3, 2025
Systems: SteamVR, Meta Quest 2/3/3S
Publisher: Signal Space Lab
Developer: Signal Space Lab, Actrio Studio
Time Spent: 2 Hours 5 Minutes
Playthrough Videos on YouTube

Human Within is several things.  It's first and foremost a science fiction movie.  It's also an interactive science fiction movie.  It's an interactive science fiction movie where you decide certain key plot points, creating branching paths, but like all good time travel theories, there are only a set number of possible results from your choices.  And because this is a video game tucked within a story, there is only so much the player can affect during the course of the story, often leading to the feeling that, regardless of what you're doing, your choices have no real or tangible outcome on the story.  Human Within is also an independent video game made on an independent film budget, albeit one that received funding from several government grant foundations, yet it still feels like an independent film.

The story follows a pair of sisters, Linh and Nyla Gray, two cyber engineers working for a company leading the advancement of human and cybernetic integration.  The player takes on the role of Linh, who, at the beginning of the story, is in a semi-catatonic state while hooked up to a series of computers via a headset/neural link device.  The story is told in a combination of present day and flashbacks, often where, as Linh, you make decisions that affect the overarching story and likely, how the story resolves, ending on one of five possible endings.  In the present, your primary purpose is to assist Linh's sister, Nyla hack into various systems around the company you work for and throughout a futuristic and interconnected Berlin.

The hacking scenes are usually carried out by Nyla, but at pre-scripted times, Linh will automatically step in to break through an encrypted firewall.  When this happens, a 3D voxel loading bar appears in front of the player, and you have to bring your hand/controller up to the loading bar to "fill" the bar, which 50% of the time results in being blocked by a firewall.  You then enter a 3D space where you connect six-sided blocks with different connecting dot patterns to, what feels like to me, complete a circuit.  What I found interesting during these puzzle scenes was that there was no timer, no urgency on the part of the Linh to complete the hack, apart from what the player brings into the puzzle.  On one hand, this creates a no-lose scenario, so there's no fear of a Game Over screen and having to start over.  On the other hand, without a sense of urgency, it makes the stakes feel so much less significant.  Although I never noticed it stated in-game, my justification for there being no timer was that Linh's perception within this puzzle room was warped compared to reality.  So what might have taken me five minutes in-game to complete would have only been 0.5 seconds in the real world.  You know, Inception.

The other puzzles I encountered were what I would describe as a lite escape room from a low-resolution and colored staticky room.  In these instances, it was a lot harder to justify not knowing where exactly to look and what to do.  In-story, these types of puzzles would come about when Linh, while still hooked up to all the computers, would use cameras and data about a room, then place herself within that room to look and scan for objects and/or objectives.  While on one hand, it was nice to be able to move around, normally being stuck inside a computer looking at upwards of 13 screens, it was also disorienting being in a pixel/voxelated environment while trying to figure out what I could click on to interact with.  These types of puzzles, I couldn't find a way to justify with in-game logic, having spent 18 minutes trying to look around three different rooms to know what to do.

Some of my getting lost within these spaces could have been because I was playing the game with the French language track with English subtitles instead of the default English language.  I first started the game in English, but then thought that the French might actually be Quebecois since the developers had received a grant from the Canada Media Fund and Investissement Quebec; but no, it's confirmed France French from Conklederp.  The point being, while watching what was happening and trying to read the English subtitles at the same time, I know there were times when I lost what was being said.  I guess that's partly my own fault, and also not, since how was I supposed to know that I could use a temperature control panel to remotely hack into a service robot, let alone what that kind of a panel would look like in this space.  Excuses, I know.

I think I'm ultimately mixed with Human Within.  I enjoyed the novelty of playing an interactive movie in a virtual space, kind of like a video visual novel, or a lite-Choose Your Own Adventure.  I wish that there had been more choices and more for the player to do.  I know that narratively, there needed to be a reason for Linh to be hacking into things, and during segments where I was clicking on different things, none of Nyla's responses were canned or repeated, so that felt nice.  Maybe if the firewall cube puzzles had been more varied, maybe with different shapes instead of "Oh, here's another more complicated cube puzzle," but I guess it might make sense if it's a firewall in the same computer system that runs throughout Berlin.  That being said, with all of the choices that could lead to one of the five possible outcomes, part of me is morbidly curious to make wildly inconsistent choices for Linh to see what happens, but I don't feel so motivated to immediately jump back in.  Take that as you will.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

So I Cracked the Moon

MIDI Week Singles: "Valley of Helmets" - Big Helmet Heroes (PC)

 

"Valley of Helmets" from Big Helmet Heroes on Windows, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox S/X (2025)
Composer: Pierre Galibert
Album: Big Helmet Heroes Original Soundtrack
Publisher: Dear Villagers
Developer: Exalted Studio

Come on a musical journey with me!

While listening to the soundtrack to Big Helmet Heroes, as it is The Squire's Game of Choice right now, this song came on, and I immediately (as of 1:02 that is) felt like I knew the song.  I had heard this melody before, but I couldn't quite place it.  Once I started humming and da-da-daaaah-duh-dah'ing, that was when it clicked.  "Inis Mona" by Eluviete.  I replayed the song from the beginning, but now with Chrigel Glanzmann's vocals, and I couldn't initially believe what I was hearing.  Was this actually a cover of an 18-year-old Eluviete song in a game released in 2025?

Being the person I am, I started doing a bit more digging into the song "Inis Mona," and that was when I found out that the song uses the melody/aire from an older song from 18th-century lower Brittany titled "Tri Martolod."  Then the last piece fell together, and everything clicked.

"Valley of Helmets" plays during the fourth stage, "No so rainy Brittany."  It uses an 18th-century folk song/aire from Brittany and the Breton people.  And, it's covered by a folk metal band originally from Switzerland.

That's really it.  I was really excited yesterday afternoon while finding out all of this information, and now you're lucky enough to share in this personal discovery with me; if you didn't know already.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

I Am You, We Are One

Not a First Impressions for Outer Wilds (VSD)

 

Outer Wilds

Release Date: May 28, 2019

Systems: Windows, Xbox One/S/X, PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch

Publisher: Annapurna Interactive

Developer: Mobius Digital

Time Spent: 18 Hours 36 Minutes

As the title states, this is not a First Impressions article for Outer Wilds (thanks so much, Dr. Potts!🤎).  This is more of a confession of sorts and a brief explanation as to how my brain is working with progression in this game.

First off, I'm going to avoid spoilers because the Outer Wilds community is excessively protective about talking about story points.  There's even an in-game character who literally says, "If I tell you how, it'd kinda feel like cheating."  I did look up a solution to a particular puzzle involving quantum mechanics and the Observer Effect, because I felt like I was running out of time. I consulted the Internet, and their one hint reminded me of a piece of equipment I had forgotten about that I wasn't actually using.

And that's been it.  I have been experiencing this game without any further assistance, and at times it feels a bit daunting because of how the game progresses.  There is an in-game Ships Log that keeps track of all of the information that you collect while you're out scouting the solar system. As I see that log fill up with more information about more planets and other celestial phenomena, and seeing that little orange tag "There's more to discover here," I know that there's still more to find out.  The way I feel like I'm experiencing this game, in order to fully understand the story and to reach whatever the actual ending to this game is, I need to complete this log.  But only 3.8% of everyone who's played Outer Wilds on Steam (upwards of 101,000 people) have actually completed the ship's log, or maybe they did while in offline mode and the game didn't recognize their achievement.  So only 3,838 people have completed the ship's log, but likely more than that have actually finished the game, meaning that understanding the game and beating the game are not reliant on completing all of the entries in the ship's log.

That knowledge both comforts me and worries me a bit.  On one hand, knowing that I don't need to find out every bit of information in this entire galaxy is a significant weight off my mind.  On the other hand, if I don't need to find everything, how will I know if I'm investigating the correct line or if I'm following a thread that only 3.8% of all other players on Steam have discovered?

Ah well.  I guess it's just time to wake up, roast another marshmallow, and head back out into space.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

O partigiano porta mi via

P.S.  I love the trees in this game.

Game EXP: Climb Out: Escape from Anomalous Sewer (MQ2)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Climb Out: Escape from Anomalous Sewer through Keymailer, a third-party company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game key was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that it be played, and content be created.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]

Climb Out: Escape from Anomalous Sewer
Systems: Meta Quest 2/3/3S/Pro
Release Date: December 19, 2025
Publisher: Skycamp Studio
Developer: Skycamp Studio
Time Spent: 2 Hours 4 Minutes
First Play Videos on YouTube

I had decently high hopes for Climb Out: Escape from Anomalous Sewer (just Climb Out from now on), and then 0:04 seconds into the playing, you can actually see my confusion through my hand gestures in my First Play video.  The best way I can describe it is that your virtual hands, your hands in the VR space, are flipped 180 degrees.  So when your in-person hands are facing the ground, your in-game hands are facing up, like you're ready to receive alms or a loaf of bread.  This might not be a big issue, but in a game where one of the main mechanics is climbing a ladder, holding onto a zipline, and taking pictures with a handheld video camera, the default hand position can be integral to overall comfort.  Throw in some less-than-optimal hand mechanics and some questionable anomalies, and you have the makings of a game that is not always fun to play.

The premise for Climb Out is similar to other 'spot the anomaly' games, where you pass through a looping hallway.  If you see an anomaly, you go through one hallway, and if you don't see an anomaly, you go through the other hallway.  If you're wrong, you start back at the beginning.  Once you sucessfully make it through 10 passageways, you beat the game.  There are a few differences in Climb Out compared to similar games like The Exit 8 and Room 713, and that's to take a picture of the anomaly.  That picture (which is actually a pre-taken picture regardless of the actual picture you take) is automatically placed on an evidence board, complete with a red string connecting the pictures.  When you see an anomaly, you don't actually have to take a picture like you do in The 18th Attic, to sucessfully proceed to the next sewer tunnel, but there is a secondary quest of sorts to the game where you have to collect 20+ pictures on your board to unlock the true ending, or at least find out how/why your detective character ended up in the sewer in the first place.

The biggest problem with trying to complete your evidence board, or at least acquiring 20 pictures, is that, unlike other games in the genre, the pool of anomalies that the game pulls from doesn't seem to eliminate the ones that you've already come across.  During my playthough, I came across the hanging mannequin corpses three times, the ladder with twice as many rungs three times, the fleshy eyeballs twice, the floating tools twice, and the flipped tunnel twice.  By not removing already sucessfully observed anomalies from a pool that the game pulls from, the game artificially extends the time required for a person to play in order to see "the one true ending."  I don't like that approach.

Two other narrative choices the game makes, I can't figure out if they were planned and not implemented, or mentioned only to mess with the player.  The first is that the game tells you that while you have a headlamp, "and a digital camera on you, though the battery is dying."  Of all of the times I spent playing, I never once had the battery on either the headlamp or the digital camera die.  The headlamp would often flicker, but even playing for more than 30 minutes, never once did the game indicate that the camera battery was in danger of dying.  Maybe there was a planned mechanic, similar to Outlast, where you had to find and replace batteries that died, but that became too difficult to actually implement?  The second mechanic that didn't work was pressing the trigger button while riding the zipline across the open sewer.  The game says that you will be able to stop while on the zipline, presumably to get a better look at anomalies, but again, possibly due to in-game limitations, this function did not actually work.

The last thing I want to harp on is the design of the stage.  For those of y'all who haven't watched any of the gameplay videos, I'll do my best to describe the general layout.  You start in the sewer tunnel with a caution sign telling you which one of nine possible floors you are on.  In front of you is a ladder that leads up to a large open area with a zipline.  Behind you, while climbing the ladder, are two nooks that can hide anomalies.  While riding the appropriately slow-moving zipline across the water-filled gap, anomalies can pop up if they're not already visible.  Once you're across the gap, you can slide down one of two tunnels leading you back to the starting sewer tunnel.  I felt that the ladder should have been moved to the end of the level, so that you're climbing out into the next floor, and the reveal when you poke your head out is when you discover if you sucessfully made it to the next level or if you just climbed back up to the starting floor.  Having to climb the ladder during the first third of the stage felt very cumbersome, even after finding the two nooks.  The sliding tunnel also could have used some fine-tuning, as I felt that I had to constantly push myself to keep moving down to the next floor.

What I liked about Climb Out was that after playing a handful of these 'spot the anomaly' games, I really liked playing this type of game in a VR space.  Being immersed in a virtual world where spooky stuff is happening will always feel a lot scarier than when you play on a TV, computer, or handheld screen.  Playing Layers of Fear on my computer was really scary, but playing it in VR was terrifying, even on my third time through the game.  A couple of the anomalies were genuinely scary, like the woman who appeared right before the zipline ended, trying to get the player to jump and let go of the zipline, leading to "death."  I also loved the two times the world flipped upside down, as it made traversing more challenging, but in a way that was fun and not frustrating.

I really wish I had more positive things to say about Climb Out, but when I look up at everything I've written, it feels like I liked the concept more than the actual execution of the game.  The bones are somewhat decent, but the final end product still feels like it needs a bit of work, especially in the hand orientation department, before I could give it a glowing recommendation.  The coat of paint is nice, but everything else needs work.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Why Should I Be Frightened of Dying?

MIDI Week Singles: "House at the Bay" The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (NS)

 

"House at the Bay" from The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening on the Nintendo Switch (2019)
Original Themes By: 
Composed and Arranged by: Ryo Nagamatsu
Album: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening Original Sound Track
Label: Columbia
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Grezzo

"The Ballad of the Wind Fish" is an amazing theme for The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, and it is liberally peppered throughout the game, so the likelihood that I'm going to land on a song that is some variation of that theme is very high.  With that in mind, having mostly played the original Link's Awakening on my Game Boy sometime after it came out (thanks again, Sharad), I have a strong affinity for that original music played out of the Game Boy's mono speaker.  So I was a bit surprised when "House at the Bay," originally titled "Ghost's House," came up, and was just floored by the amount of emotion instilled in only two instruments (marimba? and chimes/bells in the beginning).  Then about 30 seconds in, those two instruments are joined by, I think, a clarinet and violin/cello/viola (I can't tell).  

The softness of this arrangement of "The Ballad of the Wind Fish," coupled with how forlorn the ghost acts after Link takes it back to its desolate house by the cove, can be pretty heart-wrenching.  Who was this ghost?  Is there significance in what they look at in the house before asking Link to be taken back to their grave?  Was the one bed a shared bed, or did the ghost live when they were alive?  Was the ghost an adult or a child?  Does the chime/bell carrying the melody have any significance to the ghost, or was it what Ryo Nagamatsu wanted to use for this particular scene?

Whatever the reason behind the arrangement decisions and the significance of the ghost, I love this song and how it's effectively used in this one short scene.  Another instance of less is more.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Sheltered Behind the Walls

Game EXP: Room 713 (PC)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Room 713 through Keymailer, a third-party company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game key was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that it be played, and content be created.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]

Room 713

Systems: Windows

Release Date: April 30, 2026

Publisher: GoragarX

Developer: GoragarX

Time Spent: 3 Hours 12 Minutes

Gameplay Videos on YouTube

I'm going to gingerly describe Room 713 to you, and then I want you to forget that I said it.

Room 713 is like The Exit 8, if The Exit 8 took place in The Overlook Hotel from Stanley Kubrick's 1980 adaptation of Stephen King's 1977 novel, The Shining*.  Room 713 is like The Exit 8, but it's not, because apart from the "walk down a hallway and spot anomalies," it is vastly different in ways that are both expansive on the formula and regressive in terms of playability.

We're going to need to do a spot of contextualizing here, otherwise I'm going to write myself in circles.  The general premise of the two games is similar.  You walk through a looping hallway and look for things that are out of place.  But where The Exit 8 has you turn around to acknowledge being a witness to an anomaly, in Room 713, you walk down a different hallway and go up a different flight of stairs that will lead you to the beginning of the same hallway you started in, but a floor higher, if you're correct, otherwise you start back at Floor 0.  The other major difference is that Room 713 includes more than a single hallway, but also an elevator landing/lobby, and three hotel rooms of varying sizes, from a single room up to three individual rooms, including a living room, bedroom, and bathroom.  All of these spaces need to be taken into account when trying to locate anomalies and, as I found out after the fact, finding an anomaly in one place might mean that there are similar anomalies on the same floor in different areas, not just limited to one location.

And that brings us to the concept of Change Blindness, or the inability to notice changes in the environment, something that the developers of all of these spot the anomaly mechanic video games are playing with against the players.  I don't know if there's an additional phenomenon coupled with Change Blindness when taking into account the player playing a game for an audience.  As in, when I was recording myself playing Room 713, knowing that I was recording what I was playing, did that have any effect on my ability to recognize differences in the different environments?  Was the need to "create good/watchable content" getting in the way of my not noticing that the pattern of the carpet was flipped upside down, or that the doors on the rooms didn't have the usual room numbers on them?  It's hard for the player to miss something as obvious as a dinner table in the middle of a hallway, compared to the light fixtures on overhead lights changing from a dome to a flattened box.

Room 713 does something I haven't seen before in the 'spot the anomaly' genre, and that's giving clues when you end up going up the "No Anomalies" staircase when you missed the statement on the radio about the elevator not working.  Clues like, "How's anyone supposed to find their room like this?" or "Did the carpet always look like that?" are obvious when you know what to look for, but at times seem obtuse when you're faced with failure while on the fifth floor, and you might have to start back at the beginning.  For the three times I got the first clue above, I was convinced that the map of the hotel floor would be missing or altered in some way, so I would frequently look at the map each time I entered the hallway.

There were several changes to the spot the anomaly formula (is there really a formula, though?) that the developer took.  In at least one instance, an anomaly will outright kill the player if not avoided.  In The Exit 8, this manifested as a darkening of the metro tunnel, a door opening to darkness, or a flood rushing towards the player.  When you died, you would respawn at the beginning of the hallway.  In Floor 713, respawning after the dying mechanic felt a lot clunkier and less user-friendly as it functioned more like an old-school Game Over screen, and took you back to the starting menu screen.  Likewise, every time you started the game, you began at the entrance to the hotel, where you would need to pick up your room key, enter the nearby stairwell, and enter Hallway 0.  There is a notice at the start of this hallway that lets the player know that Hallway 0 will never have any anomalies, so unless you feel you need a refresher on what the default rooms look like, you can just sprint through up to Hallway 1.  On some level, I can understand having this default setting for the player to compare against, but like being sent back to the starting menu screen, it often times just feels unnecessary.

The last way that Room 713 differentiates itself significantly from several other anomaly games is that there is an attempt at telling a story here, which I did not discover until ~13 minutes into my sixth playthrough.  Prior to this, I thought that there was some kind of overarching story, but I wasn't picking up on it, and then the table appeared, coupled with the bloody bathtub anomaly from the previous floor, and everything clicked.  The knife in the bathroom, the body on the floor of the kitchen, the bloody footprints, the numerous radio stories about a murder, and the introductory text that "A man full of guilt arrives at a lonely hotel."  But what to do with these revelations?  The two times I reached room 713, they both resulted in your playable character committing suicide, going back to the starting menu with the following message: "You learned nothing.  The cycle continues."  There are three possible endings in the game: A, B, and C, and according to the Steam Achievements page, while over 50% of players have reached room 713 and gotten the bad ending (Ending A), only 7.8% and 2.4% have reached Ending B & C, respectively.  Even the trailer hints that there is a lot of story to uncover, with the presence of the briefcase and the code-locked door in the lobby all but claim this to be the case, but how that story is discovered, remains to be discovered.  U

Unless you're required to play through the three additional modes the game offers, then there might be a way to see the whole story.  Maybe.  There's a speed running mode, which only adds a timer to the top of the screen, but the gameplay is identical to the standard mode.  There's an Extreme mode that requires you to go up 21 stories (compared to only seven) to acquire a warm slice of pizza, but there might be other things to find along the way.  Lastly, there's a custom mode where you can set which of the anomalies you've already experienced to be the pool of anomalies the game pulls from as you play through an otherwise regular run.  So maybe you have to experience all of the anomalies (6.6% achievement rating on Steam) to have the chance to experience and unlock the full story?  If you've watched any of my playthrough videos, you'll also know that I looked in a lot of drawers, dressers, wardrobes, looking for anything, even when the game tells you that anomalies aren't hidden behind drawers.

So that was Room 713.  A fun 'spot the anomaly' game that feels like it's only pulling from The Shining as an homage, rather than a gimmicky crutch, and is different enough from other games of this similar genre and just enough content to stand on its own.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
How I Yearn For My Return

*  Yes, I know the carpet is different from the one that was used in the movie.  Maybe it was too on the nose, or maybe GoragarX changed it to avoid potential copyright infringement?  The color is similar, and I understand the sentiment, so I wasn't offended at the change, and it does not make the game unplayable.  I mean, it's called "The Grand Hotel," not "The Overlook Hotel."

MIDI Week Singles: "Gall Spaceport" - STAR WARS: Shadows of the Empire (N64)

 

"Gall Spaceport" from STAR WARS: Shadows of the Empire on the Nintendo 64 and Windows (1996-1997)
Composer: Joel McNeely with themes by John Williams
Album: No Official Release*
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: LucasArts

I know May the Fourth was, on the fourth, but we're only two days out, and it's Revenge of the Sixth, so I thought it would still be appropriate to use music from a STAR WARS game for today's article.

Without getting into the weeds about the production phase of the music used in the game, I primarily want to point out a couple of things about this song.  First, the first 25 seconds of the song are taken specifically from "The Departure of Boba Fett," composed by John Williams for The Empire Strikes Back.  This makes sense as it's Boba Fett that you're hunting in the Gall Spaceport in an attempt to rescue Han Solo on his journey to being delivered to Jabba the Hutt.  The last half of the song, from about 0:30 through the end of the song before it loops at 0:49, is an original composition by Joel McNeely, although I could've sworn that this actually appeared somewhere in the original trilogy; although YouTube's copyright seeking algorithm disagrees, so I'll trust it on that.

Lastly, this song only lasts about 50 seconds before it loops.  That's a ridiculously short amount of time for a song to start looping when the stage can take anywhere between 13 and 35 minutes, meaning you could be listening to this snippet of song 16 to 44 times.  But I find that it works.  The fact that I'm surprised that the music in this stage is looped every 50 seconds is a testament to being immersed in the STAR WARS galaxy in 1996-97, both in terms of having a John Williams quality score (albeit one being piped out in mono and compressed down to a 16-bit audio file), and playing a background part in the expansive story between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

It's all just a really good, dread-inducing bit of music that works in the Gall Spaceport setting, knowing that you're going to have to fight not just Boba Fett, but Slave 1 as well before the end of the level.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

*While there is the official Shadows of the Empire soundtrack that was recorded and released to accompany this multimedia project, it is not a one-to-one soundtrack from the N64 game.  The 1997 Windows port does use longer tracks from this soundtrack however.

Monthly Update: May, 2026

 

I feel like April was moderately productive with punctuations from various horror games, because nothing screams horror games like April, 2026.  Organ Quarter, The Exit 8, and 8AM.  Then, in the coming weeks, we'll have some more articles for a couple of additional horror games on both Steam and Quest 2 VR.

On the Switch, I started Hades, for good or ill.  Meaning after only three runs and dying to Magaera twice.  I'm hooked.  I've not played a lot of rogue-likes, but I totally get the "one more run" at 12:30 in the morning.  I also tried showing The Squire Scribblenauts Unlimited at the same time I was trying it out, and that is some wonky keyboard typing mechanic in that game.  Was it invented by Steve Jobs?  I was hoping for some touchscreen functionality akin to the other Scribblenauts games on the DS, but this typing mechanic, I think, is going to kill the game for the Squire.

On the Steam Deck, I'll bounce back and forth between Outer Wilds, which Dr. Potts got me for my birthday, Ace Combat 7 that I'm slowly progressing through, and also recently started (because why play just one game when you can play eight?) Karate Survivor.  I was telling Conklederp yesterday that I sometimes find it hard to start up Outer Wilds because of how vast and daunting the game feels, with there being very little direction apart from "Go explore the solar system and discover stuff."  But once I get into the cockpit of the spaceship and take off from Timber Hearth, I feel more driven and focused.  Thank bloody Christ for the digital corkboard, which tracks your planetary progress through each loop.

On my laptop, I'm also playing back through NightSky, which I first received from Dr. Potts back when Humble was still doing Indie Bundles.  This was specifically Humble Indie Bundle IV, and now I can finally say that, 14 years later, I've either beaten or given the ol' college try to all of the games in that collection and will have a collection of Game EXP articles in the coming weeks.  I'm also a slut for nonogram games, specifically, right now, Picross for a Cause, which is no longer functioning for a cause, but is now just a massive Picross game that's free on Steam.

Reading-wise, I just started part II of John Steinbeck's "The Red Pony," which is part of a larger collection of short stories called "The Long Valley."  But that's an old-timey hardbound book that I like to read downstairs.  Upstairs, while I'm in bed, I'll either read "Shadows of Doom" by Ed Greenwood, also a physical paperback, or "Mexican Gothic" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia on my Kindle.  I also have perpetually open a chronology of all of H.P. Lovecraft's works and all of Arthur Machen's works.  People should really read more Arthur Machen.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

I Found a Bird

P.S.  Also, our President (still) sucks.

MIDI Week Singles: "Tavern 5" - Kingdoms of Amalur Re-Reckoning (NS)

 

"Tavern 5" from Kingdoms of Amalur Re-Reckoning on the Nintendo Switch, Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4 (2020-2021)
Composer: Mark Cromer
Album: Not Released on the Official Soundtrack
Publisher: THQ Nordic
Developer: Kaiko, Big Huge Games

I'm not going to assume that I know the instruments in this song, be they balilaikas, bouzoukis, mandolins, guitars, citterns, or lutes.  They're plucking and strumming instruments, and we'll leave it at that.

I probably first heard this particular tavern music while visiting The Silken Seat in the village of Canneroc; it's the town that makes their living from the gossamer threads of the normally non-aggressive spiders in the Webwood.  While doing the various quests for the citizens of Canneroc, I didn't really register this music apart from being catchy tavern music.  After my character purchased a home in the town, and since I wasn't able to install a blacksmithing station in the house, I found myself frequenting The Silken Seat to visit the local blacksmith to repair armor and sell all my unwanted goods.  As I made more and more trips to The Silken Seat over the 100+ hours I've (currently) put into Kingdoms of Amalur, this song has really grown on me.  I love that I can hear a muffled version of it as I approach The Silken Seat, as if everything is already in full swing when my character arrives to offload a bunch of gear and to repair what she's wearing.

So I hope y'all enjoy this song from a game that almost had too much going for it for it to succeed, but at least the Re-Reckoning remaster is still widely available.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

And In Us It All Combines