Next Fest Autumn 2026 - The Choosing

 As I expected, it took me an hour or so last night, flipping through the demos on Steam, to pick half a dozen from this Autumn's Next Fest to play and review  And as I also expected, it was a less intuitive and user-friendly experience than it could have been. It's not that the search and sort options aren't there, or that they don't work, so much as it's the way so many games are tagged with so many genres and styles it renders the process of sifting through them opaque.

I started by looking through the demos Steam had dumped into my Discover queue. There's a warning that says it takes Steam a couple of days to learn about the games before it can personalize the selection for individual users but if I waited until 18.00 on Wednesday for that to happen, I wouldn't have time to play the damn demos. 

Even without personalization, the Discovery queue seemed pretty well-tuned to my interests, although checking it again this morning, that seems to have been sheer good luck. I picked a couple from there, anyway. Or I think I did. I can't honestly remember. After you've looked at a few dozen demos it all becomes a bit of a blur...

After I'd done that, I stopped to have a think about what sort of games I'd like to play and what I might like to write about. And guess what? It was all the same ones as usual. Sorry about that. I know these demo review posts are some of the least-read pages on the entire blog - even the music posts reliably outperform them - but I enjoy writing them, so...

The genres I looked at specifically this time were Point&Click, MMORPG, Visual Novel and Turn-Based Strategy. The only sub-genre I looked at was Tactical RPG. This time I didn't try parsing anything by Themes & Moods. Usually I at least throw Cyberpunk in there but I'm a bit cyberpunked out at the moment. 

Oh, wait, actually that's not quite true. I did search 1980s for some reason. Just to see what was there, really. And I ended up picking something, too.

There seemed to be plenty to choose from in all my selections, although too high a proportion in some categories seemed to me to have not all that much to do with the genre they claimed to be part of. I did notice there were a lot more MMORPGs than usual, which I found surprising. 

 

Checking it again, the search for MMORPG brings up twenty-six results, more than half of which are what I'd call true MMORPGs. The rest look more like MMORTS  or co-ops but they'd all broadly count as MMOs. It does seem like a lot more than usual and there are some familiar names among them - ArcheAge Chronicles, Loftia, Spirit Crossing, World of Slime... 

There were a couple of very unusual MMOs in the list, too. I'd almost call them original. There's a platforming MMO, certainly the first I've ever heard of, called Springtale. It's a roguelite, too, so god knows how that works in an MMO context. 

I'm very bad at platformers so I didn't even consider that one but I did have a long think about Band Stage, a music game where you play instruments and perform, either solo or with a band, which apparently you can form with other players, like a group in an MMO. Again, I'm very bad at music games, so that would just be embarrassing for me and infuriating for anyone I was playing alongside. Plus the music in the trailer isn't doing an awful lot for me...

I could easily have picked all MMORPGs this time. There were plenty that looked interesting. The problem with MMO demos, when it comes to playing them for a Next Fest review, is that they take too long. Hours rather than minutes and even then it's often only enough to see the very early stages. Not exactly practical for my purposes. 

In the end I chose three, two of which are creature collectors. I didn't actually realise that until after I'd chosen them and I might only have taken one if I had but it'll be interesting to compare them, I guess.

The third was ArcheAge Chronicles, which I'm not going to review for Next Fest. For a start, it's nearly 40gb and I'm not sure I want to download it just for a demo. More importantly, it's the sort of game I could perfectly well install and play outside of Next Fest and most likely will, whenever I have the time to give it a proper look. 

Eight demos is probably two too many, anyway. Especially if they're any good. I'll stick to the following seven and leave AAC for later. Probably.

The seven I'm going to try and get through in the next week are listed in a little more detail below. I have now officially retired, so I have all my time to myself, and the weather forecast for the rest of the week is very poor, so I'll be indoors most of the time. Should be ideal! 

 

 

The Other Side of the Wall - "Julian Reed is a 13-year old student at a New England all-boys Catholic boarding school in the early 1980s. When people begin disappearing and no one else seems to remember they ever existed, Julian investigates, with the help of a girl he has never seen, separated from him by a wall."

This is the one I found by searching "1980s". It's a Point & Click adventure and the promo video was what sold it for me. It starts with a shot of some dork in a baseball jacket dancing in the foreground while in the background another kid sits at a desk with his back to the action, writing a letter. A decent quality voice-over reads out what he's writing and I found it pretty funny, especially the bit about him having all the Police albums. After that it shows some classic point & click gameplay which made me feel right at home. I have high hopes for this one. The video is  on YouTube but weirdly it doesn't have the voiceover there. Watch it on Steam for the full effect.

World of Slime - "World of Slime is a casual MMORPG where you capture, collect, and grow with all kinds of slimes. Find new slimes through field capture, synthesis, and fishing, then take them with you into battles, exploration, and puzzles." 

I knew of this one from MassivelyOP so it got a quick grab on recognition value. I think I might be regretting that, now I look at it more closely. Also, what is it with slimes? They are not cute, no matter how often people say they are.

Never Wither - "Experience unprecedented creature collection gameplay—Transform into almost any creature you see! Collect and raise fantastical creatures, and command them to farm, build, and craft. In this open world survival crafting game, Establish your settlement, become the last hope against the Corruption."

This is the other creature collecting MMO I chose (Probably more properly categorised as open-world survival/crafting.) and it looks a lot more interesting. Graphically, it looks very attractive and the gameplay has survival elements including base-building. I'm getting Palworld vibes. Also, I like the name. It's just odd enough to be intriguing. The demo is the whole first zone of the full game and they estimate 3-5 hours gameplay, more if you try to see and do everything. Another I feel optimistic about. 

The Brilliant Detective Milo - "A narrative-driven cat detective game set some time during the 20th century in a city rattled by the resurgence of mysterious murders. As head detective of the Mew York Police Department, it is your duty to put a stop to these killings and exhume the secrets buried deep in the shadows of the city…"

Cartoon cats, bad cat puns, comic strips... I wonder why I picked it? It looks great but the problem with detective games is I always think I'm going to enjoy them more than I do. I don't get on with those evidence boards and I'm just hopeless at figuring out who the murderer is. It's always a murderer, too, isn't it? It's never an arsonist or a blackmailer or a sheep rustler. 

Hela: Of Mice and Magic - "See the world through the eyes of a brave little mouse in this enchanting 3D co-op adventure. Explore breathtaking landscapes inspired by Northern Sweden, solve puzzles, and be a force for good in a land where heartwarming storytelling and the beauty of nature intertwine."

First cats, now mice. It says it's co-op but it can be played solo. I checked. Visually, it looks fantastic, to the point where I'm doubting whether it will even run on my machine. Of course I didn't check the minimum specs for any of the demos. Didn't even think of it. I might have to try re-installing the graphics card. If nothing else, this Next Fest is going to be a good test of whether I can trust this machine for gaming or if I really should think about getting a new one.

Et le Grain Mourut -  "A visual novel set in 1920s Paris. As summer draws near, young students are revising their end-of-year exams. Olivier is one of them."

Hmm. I did French up to the first year of university but it was a loooong time ago. I think that means "And the grain died." Let me see if that's right. Ah, close! It's "And the dead grain." Which still tells me absolutely nothing. 

It's a slightly strange demo in that it covers the first two days of the story and includes about 15% of the total text in the game but it doesn't include any "big branching paths", which is kind of the main gameplay in a visual novel.  They do say you can still make some choices, though, which is just as well. Otherwise it would just be a cartoon.

Kat Domino: Agent of S.H.E.L.L. - "Kat Domino is an agent of SHELL, the organization ruling the world. A routine mission will lead her where she doesn't belong, uncover things she was never meant to see, and unravel a conspiracy that could change everything she thought she knew. With a little luck, her trainee agent will survive"

Oh, look! Another cartoon cat! Who ever would have guessed? 

This one has more lore on the store page than all the rest put together. Someone is really invested in the world-building here. And it sounds great. Which is more than I can say for the trailer. I recommend turning the sound down. I hope there's none of that in the game or the music will be going off right from the start. Other than that, hitting all the right notes!

And there we are. Now all I have to do is play them. And then write about them.

Off I go. 

Any Color You Want, So Long As It's Blue: Pre-Ordering Descent to Val'Zyroth

For today's post I'd planned to be listing the demos I'd picked for the latest Next Fest on Steam but I'd forgotten it doesn't begin until about five in the evening, my time. I'll be eating then and after that Beryl will be starting her evening routine of food-playtime-walk, which generally takes about an hour and a half and requires my full attention. Since it usually takes me over an hour to make my choices for Next Fest,  it looks unlikely I'll have time to post about them as well, so instead here's a real placeholder post about EverQuest II.

I don't have anything to say about the game itself, seeing as how I haven't even logged in since the last time I wrote about it, but I have pre-ordered the expansion. It might seem like a bit of an odd move, given I'm not really playing right now, but I have no doubts that I will jump into the expansion, when it arrives, so why wait?

The expansion is called... no, it's gone. I'll have to look it up. I know it's got one of the least-memorable titles I've ever seen, which explains why I can't remember it. 

Descent to Val'Zyroth. That's it. I mean, do they even have a marketing department? Don't they focus-group these things? You can tell no-one's expecting anyone to go into a store and ask for them any more. 

Imagine going into Game or GameStop or whatever your local video game outlet is (Or more likely used to be...) and asking "Have you got Descent to Val'Zyroth?" Just the prospect of trying to say it out loud would make most sensible people balk. They'd lose so many sales that way.

I just had to press a button on a website to get it, thankfully. I looked at all the options, which I'm going to include here to bulk this post out a little, and I did have to stop and think about which one to choose. 

 It would bulk out the post one whole hell of a lot more if I included the breakdown of what's in all of those different editions. There's a long tick-list on the website, two dozen items or features altogether, starting with the vanity pet everyone gets for pre-ordering and ending with the nine items that you only get if you stump up the full $250. Sorry, $249.99.

 That's the pre-order pet above. He's called Pibippi Mudpuppy although I'm guessing that's actually his species, not his name. You can name vanity pets, so you can call him anything you want. He's kinda cute, I guess. For an amphibian, anyway. Is that classist?

I could probably log in and claim him now. You usually can with pre-order items that have no gameplay implications. I wouldn't get a screenshot better than that one, though, so I'm not going to try.

I had a good think about whether I wanted to go up to the Collector's Edition. I go through that every year. It's not a bad deal. You get a mount, a mercenary, a prestige house and a teleport item you can put in it ,so you can go straight to the new expansion's starting zone. 

Those are all things worth having but I always come to the same conclusion: they're none of them things I need. You always get a new mount and merc with the expansion anyway. They won't be as good as the Collector's Edition ones but they've always been plenty good enough for me. Teleport items in houses are nice in theory but I never remember to use them and as for the houses themselves, I have so many already. 

So I bought the regular edition, same as usual. With the 10% discount for being an All Access member, it cost me 

 

which is £28.54 at today's exchange rate. I'll easily get that much value out of it so I'm happy. 

The one thing that did almost make me decide to trade up was the inclusion in the Collector's Edition of 

 Having the new Overseer Season at the start of the expansion cycle, rather than after about six months, which is when it gets added to the game for everyone, is verging on pay-to-win. Overseer gives full sets of armor and weapons at a higher resolve than the baseline starting level for the expansion.

On the other hand, by the time you've done another ten levels of Overseer so you have a chance of getting them and when you've been lucky enough with the rng to fill every slot, you'll long since have acquired better gear from questing and mob drops, so it's not as great a deal as it might seem. As with most of the game's vertical progression systems, the change-out rate is so fast it makes little sense to try and subvert it.

For anyone playing the solo, casual game, the base expansion pack is always plenty good enough. All you really need is access to the expansion. Everything else is overkill. 

It's also excellent value for anyone thinking of making a comeback because you get last year's expansion thrown in for free. And all the others, for that matter. Just as a tip, if you ever decide to upgrade from a free account, which is limited to Level 110, the Planes of Prophecy expansion, don't make the mistake of buying the first expansion after that. Buy the most recent one and you'll get the whole lot thrown in. 

Even better, should you be making a return to Norrath after a time away, you get a boost to the cap, which is currently Level 135. As I've been complaining, the recent expansions have re-introduced relatively slow leveling, making leveling alts a tedious affair again. It was such fun for a few years but no longer. At least it means a boost is a treat for regular players again. 

The Pre-order page gives some more detail about what the expansion's about.

For years, a tenuous pact between Freeport and Neriak has been reluctantly honored, but after sensing weakness within the surface city, Queen Cristanos is done biding her time. Soon, Freeport and the entire continent of D'Lere will fall to Neriak unless the skilled artisans and brave adventurers of Norrath can find a way to stop her!

Spelunk the twisting caves of Corathus Descent, a treacherous network of passages overrun with insatiable predators and crevasses that plunge into the unmapped worlds, far below, where the borders of Subtunaria and the Underfoot blur. This is Val'Zyroth Ness, an enormous cavern replete with menacing fauna and malignant flora, where the Teir'Dal city of Neriondalon has emerged from ruin!

Breach the formidable walls of this resplendent city, revitalized by Hate, and hide amongst the downtrodden who serve their Teir’Dal and drachnid masters, such as the gnemlins forced to create and maintain an army of clockwork golems. Aid the wary race of molemen, known as tontu, as they fight for their survival within the nearby, ancient mines of Khor Boldir. Follow the Teir’Dal as they pierce the Plane of the Underfoot and invade Keramos Caverns, Brell’s mythical planar workshop, with vengeful intentions!

Be amongst the rare living souls to enter the infamous Duchy of the Dead. Navigate the sprawling labyrinth of impressive Teir’Dal crypts and mausoleums now devoted to the exploration and advancement of necromancy and other dark arcanum. Defeat the magical defenses and face the unnatural denizens that haunt the Duchy. Witness terrible wonders, unravel deific mysteries, and unlock unknown potential within yourself. Only then can you possibly stop Queen Cristanos in her own holy sanctum!

Quite a lot of detail, in fact. Too much, probably. All those unpronounceable names! 

It's a cavern expansion. The second, as far as I recall. I didn't think the last one, Terrors of Thalumbra, was all that well-received so I'm a little surprised they've done another. 

 The screenshots look very pretty, if also very dark. A lot of blue tones, especially indigo. Keramos Caverns, as seen in the image above, is the only exception. I imagine it'll be a relief to get there and be able to see what you're doing for a while, assuming it's not the opening zone.

Feature-wise, in addition to the always-expected new zones and quest-lines, there are Personas, "New and Improved" Untold Dungeons and an Epic mount you can apparently get by way of a scavenger hunt. 

I should know what Untold Dungeons are but I don't. I have a feeling they're only relevant if you group, which I never do any more, but I'm not even sure of that much. Whatever they are, I suppose it's good that they've been improved.

 

Personas I have read about and don't entirely understand but I think it's a way of playing a main character as if it was several alts. In the past, I wouldn't have been interested but if it ends up being a way to have  multiple classes at the cap without having to go through the same repetitive quests to level each of them, I might be persuaded. I bet it isn't that, though.

The Epic mount could be worth pursuing. I generally enjoy a scavenger hunt although Guild Wars 2 soured me on the "epic" variety. I'd expect to give it a go but whether I'll finish it is another matter.

And that's about it. Filled a post, anyway. Next time I write about Descent to Val'Zyroth will most likely be after I start playing it. Probably when it launches in December. 

Now I'm off to see what's what in Next Fest. There'll be a post about that tomorrow, I imagine. 

The Melancholy Of Akane Rin

I saw, on MassivelyOP last night, that there was a new Neverness To Everness trailer out, promoting the arrival of Akane in the next update. The piece, by the always-reliable Chris Neal, mentioned that it featured a cover of a song called God Knows.  

I didn't know it and it comes from an anime I'd never heard of either - The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya - but then there are a lot of songs and animes I don't know. Almost all of them, really.

It was late when I saw the post. Intrigued as I was, I didn't have time to watch it then. Now I have. Oh, boy...

Let me begin with the set-up. Akane is a twenty-something (I'm guessing.) woman, who used to be in a band. These days, she manages an underground club that puts on live music. She seems to be the only employee, although there's an owner who shows up sometimes.

Through some wily teenage manipulatory techniques, Haniel and Nanally, who have already persuaded the Appraiser to join them on drums, somehow manage to get Akane to agree to front their (Newly formed and barely competent.) band, The Whoots!!! They rehearse a couple of times and they don't get much better but Akane helps them by putting them on, bottom of the bill, at the club. Luckily for them, she comes on with them and basically carries them with her professionalism, experience and actual musical ability.

When the next update lands, on October 21, it will feature a storyline centering on Akane and the band and what happens after that. I have no idea what's going to happen but based on the trailer, it's going to involve a big step up from bottom of the bill.

Here's the trailer. It's over six minutes long but that's the same song twice, the first time with the female version of Zero behind the drums, the second time with her male counterpart in the seat.

I'm very glad Hotta chose to do it that way. I'm even gladder (Is that a word?) they did it in that order. Watching the male Appraiser didn't do much for me but watching the version I play...

I don't think I've ever had an experience quite as strange, while watching a game trailer, as seeing my own character performing an entire song, live on stage. I literally got chills down my spine at one point. It was weird.

As I've said in the past, I'm not one of those players who tries to make characters that look as much like them as possible. Neither do I see my character as a representation of myself. Even with that distancing, though, I do end up having a close relationship with any character I play for as many hours as I've played Flora. She might not be me but she also is me, in a way, whether I like it or not.

Of course, when you play any game where the central character isn't one you've been allowed to create for yourself, you're going to see them appear in promotional material, doing all sorts of things. Fighting, usually. But I don't fight much in real life, especially with monsters. It's not something I find kicks up a lot of memories for me. Well, not of anything other than playing video games.

I don't play the drums, either. But I have been in a band and I have played in front of an audience, albeit not one as enthusiastic as this. And I have sat behind that kit, in the game, as that character, and tried to play those drums. The way those experiences, memories and levels of realities overlap feels a little disturbing, psychologically. Or at least it does for me.

Luckily, the version of the Appraiser in the video is one hell of a lot better at playing the drums than I am, either in the game or in real life. Like probably everyone who's ever been in any kind of rock band, I did get our drummer to let me have a go on several occasions. It always looks so easy. It is not.

 

I kind of hope there isn't too much actual drumming in the story when it comes, although I bet there is. I'll just have to suspend disbelief, the way I had to about the speed at which Haniel and Nanally improved. Seriously, it was like three rehearsals...  

The song itself is excellent. Also incomprehensible, for me, since Akane sings it the original Japanese. It is Akane, too, or rather it's the Japanese voice actor who plays her, Ikumi Hasegawa. (The voice actor for the English dub is Cristina Vee. I don't know if she's going to sing in English in the game...) No word on who did Akane's impressive shredding, though. If that was Hasegawa, too, I can't imagine why she's still working as a voiceover artist.

Naturally, the first thing I did after I watched the video was look up the anime. What I know about anime could fill about two sides of A5, if I wrote it in capitals with a felt pen, so it's not much of a surprise that something described as "one of the most iconic animes of the 2000s" was completely new to me. 

I skimmed the massive Wikipedia entry ("Contains an excessive amount of intricate detail."), trying not to pick up too many spoilers, and it looked very much like something I'd enjoy, so I ran one of those "Where can I watch...?" queries, to which the answer was, unsurprisingly, Crunchy Roll. I also checked out the DVD situation because who doesn't want physical these days? I might go that route but cost-wise an add-on sub for Crunchy Roll on Prime seems like the obvious choice.

Or maybe I could watch it for free on YouTube? 

It's not on YouTube. But guess what is? The original version of God Knows, as it appeared in the anime. Now I've watched it, I can see The Whoots!!! cover is very faithful, not just in the way it sounds but in the performance and how it's shot. Take a look.

I'm impressed with the dedication and attention to detail. They've even dressed the Appraiser in something that's a clear call-back to what the drummer wears in the anime. This has clearly been a labor of love for someone.

I think it makes for a great, positive example of the way pop culture doesn't so much feed on itself, as is often said, but reinforces and learns from itself. Back when I started this blog, we were still in the tail-spin of post-modernism. I loved post-modernism (Still do...) but it did sometimes carry an unfortunate taint of superiority - even disdain. I'm very happy to see that the modern version, maybe we could call it pan-modernism, has largely lost that brittle, critical tone and replaced it with warm joy.

Moving away from the metafictional influences, there's also a trailer shedding some light on Akane's back-story. It's called "Letters To Me" and even though it's purely musical, with no dialog at all, I warn you it's a bit of a tear-jerker.

I'm a bit vague on the provenance of that one, which once again is the same song, twice, one each for the female and male versions of the Appraiser. It's not on the official Global NTE channel but several fan channels have it.

Although it's supposedly about Akane, the video really leans into Aurelia's story. She used to play drums in Lines, the band they were in, before he esper powers manifested and she lost the use of her legs. Some of it is flashbacks but some is presumably part of the new storyline. If that's true, it looks like it's going to be an emotional one.

I hope it is. It's the kind of story these games do best, in my opinion, and why I currently find them so much more appealing and rewarding to play than the high fantasy titles I've played for decades. I'm really looking forward to it.

And I'm looking forward to watching The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya. Now all I need is for Hotta to announce there's going to be a Neverness To Everness anime and I'll be all set!

Sunrise Over The Stacks: Some More First Impressions Of Nivalis Nights

I've left it too late to write a proper post today. I spent too long playing games. First, I played Neverness To Everness, in which I didn't really do much and still managed to spend an hour and a half not doing it. Then I spent two hours playing Nivalis Nights, where I did a lot and didn't really get much done.

Add that to a couple of hours last night, when I played Valheim and did very little indeed and it's not hard to see some kind of pattern starting to form. I've always played my games in a fairly aimless, haphazard way but it used to seem like that was my own, idiosyncratic choice. These days, the games seem to be designed to encourage my kind of playstyle.

Nivalis Nights, as I can confirm with a certain amount of pique, has not been particularly well-received by the critics. I made the mistake of picking it for Wilhelm's Fantasy Critic League and as of this moment it's made me precisely no points at all. For a while it was sitting at a moderate and probably quite fair average of 75% on OpenCritic but some curmudgeon, who would have to be a "Top Critic" gave it a miserable 55% and tanked the few points I had.

The gist of most of the "meh" reviews is that the game looks good but gets boring after a while. It has a peculiar elevator pitch: "What if Rick Deckard ran a Noodle Bar?" - that already sounded like a hard sell before the game came out. The general consensus seems to be "nice try but you missed".

 

Having put ten hours into the game, I'm not going to say the reviewers that haven't been all that impressed don't have a point. The game does seem to have a bit of an identity crisis. It continually tries to push you towards expanding your hospitality empire, while constantly giving you quests to go do something entirely different - and more interesting. 

On the business side, it doesn't just want you to run a noodle bar, it wants you to rent a greenhouse to grow your own food and go out in a boat and catch your own fish because that keeps your costs down. It wants you to hire staff, set their hours, deal with their complaints, buy them better equipment and negotiate their pay rises.

You're supposed to buy the furniture and install it, put up decorations, talk to customers and restaurant critics and health inspectors and every other kind of grifter that wants a piece of you and your business, which in Nivalis is anyone who knows you and it exist. You're clearly meant to feel as though becoming a successful business-owner is the whole point - of both the game and life in the city.

Except the myriad of narrative quest-lines it keeps throwing at you have nothing to do with noodles. The streets are teeming with people and any damn one of them might suddenly pop a quest marker and invite you to get involved in their frequently incomprehensible problems.

 

The quests are complex and time-consuming and numerous. I have over thirty in my Journal. I spend most of my playtime trying to get some of them done. So far, I have finished seven. Out of a hundred and eighteen! 

I only know they're done because every time you finish one you get an Achievement Point and it shows up in your permanent record. Achievements are a lot more important in NN than in most games. Entry to different parts of the city is reliant on reaching certain AP thresholds. Some trains won't let you board if you don't have enough AP. Points are easy to get - you get one every time you speak to a new vendor, for example - but you only get one for anything. One point for clicking on a vendor you haven't met before. One point for finishing a quest that had a dozen stages and took you two days.

For me, this is fine. I like it. It suits me. I have always approached quests or missions in any game as though they were windfalls in an orchard. I go around gathering them all up just because they're there, without any real intention of doing anything with them. I love a big quest journal that lets me add every quest I find until I have far more than I can finish and that's just what's happening here.

It's especially to my taste when the quests are also interesting and well written, which most of these are. My main problem right now is that, because I'm in the middle of so many at once, I have trouble remembering who is doing what and why and to whom and what they expect me to do about it.

 

It doesn't really matter. The overall effect is a palimpsest of life in Nivalis and that's precisely what I want from the game.

The restaurant, I'm happy to say, seems to be looking after itself, at least for the moment. I hired a manager and she seems to be doing a good job. I no longer have to do my own marketing, most of the staff seem happy enough and every day we make a small profit. I've hardly had to steal anything from the cafe next door in days.

I suspect that won't last. Or, rather, the game keeps dropping hints that it won't. But then, the game keeps dropping hints that all kinds of terrible things are going to happen and so far none of them have. Then again, even ten hours in, I'm still getting quests that are very obviously Tutorials, so maybe I haven't even gotten to the real game yet.

I do have a few more constructively critical things to say about Nivalis Nights but they're going to have to wait a while. As I said at the start, I don't have time for a full-length post about it. I just thought I'd give a quick update to go along with the gorgeous snapshots I took today. 

The visuals are just wonderful. The game's worth playing for them alone. The stories are pretty good, too. It's just the noodles that let it down.

 

Notes on AI used in this post.

I used SnapEdit to remove the UI because if there's a way to take screenshots with the UI off in game, I haven't figured it out yet. As you can see, I forgot to remove the little circle in the middle of each shot. If it was really AI, it would have done it for me! 

Enter The Eagle

 Objectively, this scarcely deserves a paragraph in a Grab Bag but subjectively I've been waiting a whole year to post it, so indulge me!

I don't generally do streaks. (Cue Ray Stevens.) I'm opposed to the whole idea of them, psychologically speaking. In theory...

Of course, once you find yourself on a streak, it can be hard to stop. Even more so if there's some visible reward for keeping it going for a certain length of time. Every day you see that reward edging incrementally closer. It makes it hard to quit and walk away, even if the weight of expectation of success and responsibility for failure both get heavier by the day.

Oh boy, that's a lot of psycho-twaddle for a dumb badge on a stupid web site, isn't it? And for something that takes, at most, less than a couple of minutes every day. But as you get closer and closer to the finish, the fear that you might fumble gets more real all the time.

Especially when you've already flubbed it once. This was my second run at the damn thing. I muffed the first after not much more than a couple of months and I was pissed! Imagine if I'd done it again after most of a year!

I was determined not to make the same mistake the second time. I'm very happy - but even more relieved - to be able to say I didn't.

I'm talking about the completely pointless badges you can get for using NightCafe, specifically the ones they give you for making a new image every day. I posted about the way it all works back in May so I won't rehash the details. I'll just recap the relevant bit:

The specific badges I've been working on, if you can call it working, are Bee, Owl, Horse, Bear and Eagle. These animal-themed awards come from making a new image on your first day, then on the 30th, 100th, 200th and 365th days in that order. 

The ostensible purpose behind making a daily image is to earn the free credits you get for doing it but I had more credits than I was ever going to use long ago. What kept me at it was knowing one day I'd be an Eagle!

I mean, it's better than a Bear, isn't it? Let alone a Horse. Why they picked the animals they did is a total mystery. There's certainly no obvious progression there. 

Eagle, though, does seem like the winner. Would I have been as motivated to maintain the streak if they'd handed them out in reverse order and the end-point had been Bee? I don't think so.

The oddest thing is that Eagle is where it stops. Not the daily rewards. They carry on indefinitely. Not even the bonuses you get for reaching the same trigger points in the second year. No, what stops are the badges. 

Given the sheer number of badges you can get - there are well over two hundred and  fifty of them - it seems bizarre that they wouldn't have carried on with them for the second, third and every other year, as long as the streak continued. I'm very glad they didn't. If I knew I was going to become, say, a Condor after another year, I might have felt obligated to carry on with the streak, even if it meant going through Camel, Duck and Aardvark on the way.

As it is, though, I feel completely liberated now from any responsibility to myself or tradition to carry on. I don't need the credits (I have nearly eight and a half thousand stored up and, after a controversial rule-change was reverted, they never expire.) and as far as I know, I keep my Eagle badge either way.

I most likely will carry on, though. For a while, anyway. It's part of my routine now: first thing in the morning, open NightCafe, find the automated prompts, pick one, collect the rewards. 

As a result, I have a ridiculous number of completely useless images of anthropomorphic otters, owls, lions and badgers, most of them dressed as though they're headed to a Steampunk convention. 

The daily suggested prompts are very, very repetitive. As well as the aforementioned anthropomorphic animals, there are lots of nebulae, ancient libraries, private detectives, futuristic cities, the occasional fairy and, for some inexplicable reason, quite a lot of toasters.

For a while, I thought they were based on images I'd made. I did generate a few pictures of badgers a long while back. But I've made plenty of images for posts here in the past that don't feature any of these things, some of them a few times, and none of those prompts seem to have... erm... prompted any follow-ups. 

If I miss a day now, so be it. The streakwill reset to zero but I won't care. 

That'll be a relief. The tension as I came nearer and nearer  to the finish line this time, was intense. I'd authorised NightCafe to send me reminders every day but it isn't all that reliable. Sometimes I don't get any at all. The last few days, just to be sure, I wrote myself a reminder and propped it up in front of my monitor so it would be the first thing I saw, when I sat down at the PC every morning.

And now it's over. It's the longest intentional streak I've ever attempted. I have every hope it will be the last of its kind.   

 

Notes on AI used in this post

For completion's sake, I suppose I should document that one image of an otter.  The prompt, which I had nothing to do with, was

"An anthropomorphic otter scribe, hunched over a colossal desk overflowing with scrolls and ancient texts within a grand, abandoned gothic library. Towering shelves reach into the gloom, illuminated by a single ornate lamp casting dramatic cinematic lighting. The otter's focused expression and aged parchment textures are highlighted amidst the imposing architecture, evoking a sense of quiet study in a storybook illustration style, with atmospheric backlighting and rich, muted colors inspired by the works of Arthur Rackham and the atmospheric lighting of a film noir scene."

It's a lot, isn't it? The otter isn't even all that anthropomorphic, really. It's just a regular otter in an odd position. You'd have thought the AI could at least have given him a waistcoat or something. 

The model was Flux 2 Klein 9B Fast. I didn't choose that, either. 

Rating Pukaland For Fun And Profit

After I finished yesterday's post, I cracked straight on with this one but - surprise, surprise - it ended up running a lot longer than I planned. I wrote most of it last night, then some more in the morning and I finally finished it in the afternoon. Was it worth it? Let's see...

The first thing I did yesterday, to save me the trouble of logging back into the game for the umpty-umpth time to check for myself, was to ask Gemini to give me the names of all the rides and attractions in Pukaland. It gave me the following list, which as we've come to expect from AI isn't entirely accurate. It's correct as far as it goes but a few are missing. 

The thumbnail descriptions seem about right, though, and it's a handy template so I used it. I kind of wish I hadn't now but too late for that now. It didn't save me any time in the end, either. I had to log in several times anyway, to check details and replay some games to see exactly how they worked. I also watched a bunch of short YouTube videos to refresh my memory of some of the others. 

Then, as I was writing the post, I realized that while I remembered the rides and games well enough, I didn't have a very clear picture of the Pukaland Travelogue event, and it seemed silly not to cover that at the same time, so I spent a while looking at it in detail. 

It's in three parts. One section's called Spooky Adventures, another's called Dreamsnaps and the third doesn't seem to have a name. 

Dreamsnaps is all those big rides you just sit on and go round and around or up and down. Each of those, you only have to do once for the event rewards. This section also includes the fireworks display replay, Where Wishes Bloom, and the gambling tent, Magic Spin, for some reason. 

Spooky Adventures is the Maze, Punchulum, Pixies, Candy Jar, Gold Rush and something called Spooky Cookies, which isn't in the game yet. 

The third, unnamed, section is everything else.

 

 

Here's how Gemini laid it out: 

Scenic Rides & Attractions

Lavaton Gold Rush: A minecart roller coaster that races through a chocolate volcano.
Punchulum Ride: A thrilling swing/pendulum ride located along Puka Avenue.
Candy Jar Raid: A water-based teacup ride where you pilot a cup equipped with a harpoon and cannon to gather treasure and fight off octopus tentacles.
Dreamland Tea Party: A classic spinning carousel-style tea party ride.
Puka Wonder Wheel: A large scenic Ferris wheel.
Pearl Cloud Odyssey: An atmospheric scenic ride.
Pixies Waltz: A spinning or waltz-style ride featuring the Pixies characters.

Mini-Games & Activities

Flora Maze: A large snow/hedge-themed maze where you race against the timer and look for cakes to extend your countdown.
Candy Carousel: A candy-themed rotation challenge.
Plushie Shootout: An interactive shooting gallery mini-game.
Star-Struck: A dart-throwing/timing mini-game.
Whack-a-Puka: A Pukaboo-themed whack-a-mole style game.
Pukaboo Stack: A skill game where you knock down stacked cans/objects. 

Missing from that list are Secret Match, The Magic Spin, the Cloud-Chasing Tour and Where Wishes Bloom. I don't think the way they're split up in the Travelogue makes any more sense than how Gemini has done it so I'm going to stick with the AI version for convenience and just feed the extras in where they seem to fit best.

 

As far as I can tell, everything on the list is in the Travelogue and therefore required but for lots of them you also need to get all the grades (S, A, B, C) from those activities that award them and fulfil four specific criteria on top of that for each, if you want to max out the rewards and get completion for the event. I am not about to write a full walk-through for all of that. There's a decent one here if you need it. 

 

If you just want to farm Stars, you don't need to do any of that. You can just pick your most efficient option and grind it 'til your arms fall off. But the event does hand out huge quantities of Stars, so you'll probably want to do at least the gimmes. And there are plenty of those. 

 

What I'm going to do here is give my impressions of all of the rides and activities in terms of a) how much fun they are and b) how productive they are for earning Puka Stars. It's entirely subjective and if you do it, your experience may be totally different because you may be good at things I'm bad at and vice versa. You'll certainly have different ideas on what is and isn't entertaining.  I've graded them using the same grading system the game uses.

 

With all that in mind... 

 

 

Lavaton Gold Rush - There's a Wild West mining town in Pukaland with a ride that's basically a roller-coaster. You get in a mining cart and race around the track, running into gold coins as you go. The track splits often and comes to dead-ends a lot. You have to hit the directional keys to jump tracks or hit space to jump the car up to hit hanging coins or dodge obstacles so it's one of the most active events. 

 

And it's... alright. Very easy to understand, which is good because none of the rides or attractions come with any kind of instructions and some aren't at all intuitive. Fun once or twice, I'd say. I found it a bit jarring and jangly on the nerves and I wouldn't want to do it too often, which makes it a pretty close analog to a real roller-coaster, I guess. Rewards didn't feel great for the time it takes, though. Generally too much effort for not enough reward.

 

Fun - B

Efficiency - C

  

Punchulum Ride - Speaking of things that aren't intuitive... I had to go look this up online to figure out what the hell I was meant to be doing. It's a big mechanical arm with a cabin you sit in and it swings and turns. It moves automatically and the idea is that you look at the big targets ahead, figure out what directional arrow is on them, then hit the appropriate WASD key as you get there. 

 

All good so far, until you learn there are three colors of targets and they require different key-presses. The Pink ones you just press the key, the blue ones you press and hold and the orange ones you hammer the key repeatedly. How you would ever know that if you didn't look it up out of game I have no idea, although maybe it's all in that Tutorial book I never remember to open. I guess someone must have figured it out somehow, or there'd be no guides.

 

Once you know how it works, this one's good value. I could reliably get an A reward although S remains out of my skill range for now. A is 600 Stars for a two-minute ride, though, which is excellent.

 

Fun - C

Efficiency - S

 

 

 

Candy Jar Raid - Another very unintuitive one. You sit in a teacup and go round in a big circle while giant tentacles pretend to attack you. There's no way to get hurt in any of these rides so it's all just for show. In the water around you, you'll see dozens of floating treasure chests and some piles of gold bars. You have a thumping great harpoon. Off you go!

 

First time around I shot at the chests and got nothing. Second time I shot at the giant octopus in the middle. That didn't work either. Third time I accidentally winged one of the tentacles and it took dama ge and popped a health bar so I took the hint and kept shooting at those. That seems to be the idea. You get points for killing them anyway. They take two hits each to kill. Shooting the chests sometimes seemed to give points, sometimes not. Couldn't figure out what made the difference. 

 

I didn't find this one much fun. It took a long time and felt chaotic. I can't remember how many Stars I got but I know it felt like a poor return on time spent. Might be better if i understood exactly what to do but I kinda doubt it.

 

Fun - C

Efficiency - C

 

Dreamland Tea Party - As far as I recall, this is just a ride. Fun if you're five years old or want to pretend you are. No rewards. 

 

Fun - A

Efficiency N/A 

 

 

 

Puka Wonder Wheel - A modern take on the classic Ferris Wheel, with pods that close rather than open cars that swing. Another pure ride that doesn't get you any Stars. As noted by Nimgimli in a comment, the wheel goes sooooooooooooo slooooooooooowly...... 

 

I get that big wheels do turn slowly so people can get a good view but not this slowly. And the view isn't even that great either because the structure of the wheel gets in the way. I tabbed out for most of the ride and caught up on some blogs. Flora was at the door, waiting to jump out the second they opened. If I hadn't needed the full ride for the tour credit, I'd have mapped out long before - assuming you can use the map from the pod.

 

Fun - C

Efficiency - N/A 

 

Pearl Cloud Odyssey - Do not do this directly before or after Puka Wonder Wheel, unless you need a nap urgently. It's not as dull as the wheel but it's not what I'd call a thrill-ride. You get on a boat much the same as the one you can buy and your invisible butler-turned-boatman sculls you around the lake for what seems like forever. There's not a lot to look at and I made the mistake of going at night, which meant there was even less. 

 

Again, I only stuck it out for the whole thing because you have to do it once for the credit.

 

Fun - B

Efficiency - N/A

 

Cloud-Chasing Tour - This is the one where you go up into the stratosphere in a teacup-balloon. I have a whole post coming about it. For the purposes of the Event it's just a simple ride but as an addition to the game in general it's awesome!

 

Fun - S
Efficiency - N/A 

 

 

 

Where Wishes Bloom - I didn't really understand this one. It's a shop where you can go and get them to replay a memory of the firework display, if you missed it. The fireworks happen every night at a set time but apparently you can do this at any time and see them again. I tried it and nothing seemed to happen. I don't think I got credit for it in the Travelogue either. I guess I did it wrong but I don't care enough to find out for sure.

 

Fun - N/A

Efficiency N/A 

 

Pixies Waltz - OMFG! What even is this?! I had not the first clue what was going on from start to finish. I did it three times and it never even began to make sense. 

 

You're in some kind of gondola that goes up a pole. There are arrow keys to press that do... something and then suddenly you fly up into the air and all hell breaks loose and stuff starts flying around you and you shoot at the stuff and then you crash back down and it all starts up again. I hated it. 

 

Then I watched this video on YouTube, which at least gave me a rough idea what I was supposed to be doing. I hadn't even figured out the arrows were fuelling you up until then. Once I knew what I was meant to do, I still couldn't do it and I still hated it.

 

Fun - C

Efficiency - C

 

So much for the rides. On to the sideshows.

 

 

 

Flora Maze - It's a hedge maze. A big one. All you have to do is find the exit. Out of competition, which is where I took the screenshot above or else I wouldn't have been able to climb on top of the hedge, there's a way out in all three sections, which are themed by season - Summer, Autumn, Winter. Once you pay for a ticket and the timer starts, two of those gates are locked. You have to find the one that's still open.

 

You get two minutes but there are power-ups all over the maze in the form of cakes that add seconds to your timer. I managed to stay in there for over ten minutes once and still didn't find the exit. You can't see over the hedges or climb them and none of your esper abilities work so you have to do it properly.

 

All the exits have some bright red bushes on top, though, and you can jump high enough to catch a glimpse of them to see which general direction you need to go. You also get a few seconds at the start when all the hidden features of the maze - exits, cards and NPCs needing to be rescued - light up so you can see their outlines through the foliage. And there's a pair of magic glasses you can use to repeat that, although it knocks a big 12 seconds off your timer every time you use it and it has a cooldown.

 

At first I thought I hated this one. I generally dislike mazes in games and I was finding it frustrating. It had that "one more try" thing going for it, though and I kept at it, mostly just blundering about randomly until one time I fluked my way to the exit and got 900 Stars. That's a huge payoff and it motivated me to keep trying.

 

I watched a video and read some comments and I started to figure it out. After a while, I realised that if I just focused on making sure I knew which Season the door was in, which I could do by carefully watching the reveal at the start, I could pretty much guarantee finding the exit. Eventually. Once I was able to do that, I started enjoying myself and making plenty of Stars.

 

There's also a full set of playing cards scattered around the maze and they don't repeat, so you only have to find each of them once. That kept me interested because I got one on most runs even if I didn't find the exit. I don't know what you get for the full set. I still have two to find. I hope it's something good.

 

I have to say I enjoyed the maze a lot more than I thought I would at the start. I kept doing it long after I found more efficient ways to earn Stars because I found it weirdly compelling. I'll keep at it until I have those last two cards and even after that I might do it some more for fun.

 

Fun - A

Efficiency - A

  

Candy Carousel - Wait, what? What is this? I don't remember it at all.... Okay, I just watched it on YouTube and I've never done it. I don't recall seeing it on the event schedule either. Talk amongst yourselves while I log in and check...

Ok, it's there alright. I just missed it. But I've done it now and I didn't miss much. There's a carousel with large clamshells going round on it. They open and close. You have to toss a round ball into the open ones and a star onto the closed ones. You can change your ammunition from ball to star with the R key. You can also make the carousel revolve the opposite way with Q. You have a limited number of both balls and stars, with a lot more of the former than the latter.

It's fine. I was terrible on my first go but after half a dozen rounds I could get an A rating easily. Couldn't get S though. Of all the games of its kind I'd say it's the least fun but it's still fun enough.

Fun - B 
Efficiency - B

Plushie Shootout - Classic fairground rifle-range. You shoot at two-dimensional targets that are supposed to be plushies as they move across the stage in front of you. They're in several layers from front to back and they move at varying speeds. They hide behind things, too.

I  usually like games like this, both on a screen and at an actual fairground. This isn't a particularly great example but it's fine. The rewards seemed a bit stingy from what I remember but it was one of the first ones I tried and I've forgotten exactly how much I got. Can't have been that much, though, or I'd have gone back  before now.

Fun -A
Efficiency - C 

 Secret Match - There are some cans on a board in front of you. They lift up to reveal some pairs of objects underneath. Then they get covered up again and you have to pick the pairs. As the game goes on the number of objects increases and the cans get moved about like in Find the Lady.

It's a pretty basic version of the old memory game. I'm hopeless at anything that involves remembering anything but even I could do this one. If you're good at pelmanism you'll walk it.

Fun - B
Efficiency - B

 

Star-Struck - Despite the misleading name, this is a darts game. You get five darts and thirty seconds to throw them. You're trying to get the highest score but anything over 150 is S-Class and 100 gets you A so the bar is quite low. 

The way you throw the darts is simple: there's a reticule that moves slowly and erratically about. You control it with WASD and when you have the center over the number you want to hit, you release the dart. Do that five times and you're done.

This was the first game I tried and I loved it. I played it over and over and enjoyed it every time. It took me a long time to realise that where the darts display as having landed on the board isn't where they land as far as scoring is concerned. Once I figured out the only thing that matters is where the central dot on the reticule is when you let the dart go, it got a lot easier.

After a while, I could get S about 80% of the time and A 100% of the time. And I could do it it in under ten seconds. The individual rewards are very small but if you like the game and you can play as fast as that, it becomes very efficient indeed.

Fun - S
Efficiency - S

The Magic Spin- Flat-out gambling. You bet Stars and the wheel spins. You can win double or even ten times your stake or you can get your stake money back, or half of it, or nothing. There's a chance of a 50k jackpot, too. I gave it a few spins, came out even and stopped. If it's anything like the Catzebo, it'll just slowly drain your wallet until you're broke. Best avoided but gambling is fun....

Fun - B
Efficiency - C

 

Whack-a-Puka - I like the way we're supposed to know what a Pukaboo is. Or, for that matter, how Pixies figure into things. I get the strong feeling the real citizens of Hethereau, the ones who were born there and grew up in the city, are as familiar with the Puka mythology as we are with Peter Pan or Winnie the Pooh. 

Of course, Zero aka the Appraiser aka Flora is almost as ignorant of the society she finds herself in as we, the players. It's quite important to remember that while playing. The whole "I woke up not knowing anything about the world I'm in" trope is extremely useful in allowing the player-character to act as an agent on behalf of the player, rather than an independent actor. It's probably the main reason it's so commonly employed. 

In this case, Pukaboos are gophers you hit on the head with a mallet. There are probably some subtleties (Hah!) to Whack-a-Puka that I'm missing, but there was no hope I'd figure any of it out while I was trying to whap the little buggers. I just hit them and hoped. It was about as fun as these things usually are. I kinda like whack-a-mole games myself but I can see why some people don't. I don't remember making all that many Stars, either but it wasn't a waste of time.

Fun - B
Efficiency - B

Pukaboo Stack - By chance, Gemini has left the best 'til last. This can-shoot is a lot of fun and it's also by far the fastest way to get Stars. 

It uses a slightly odd mechanic for a shooting game. In front of you are some very traditional pyramids of cans on platforms. Your goal is knock all of them off. 

When you hit them, they roll about quite convincingly with some pretty good game physics, bumping into each other, spinning round, flipping over... I found it entertaining to watch. There's also an element of strategy involved in that you don't want to leave orphaned cans on the platforms after you remove most of the stacks because you only have six shots (And a time limit, although that never really comes into it.)

So far, so standard for a knock-down-cans game. The part where it gets weird is how you aim and fire. There's some sort of gun that swings slowly across the screen in an arc, back and forth. You can't control its speed or direction but when you hold down the left mouse button, a dotted line rises from the end of the barrel. It looks like you're using a garden hose. When you get the end of that "stream" where you want it, which is in the middle of the stack at the bottom, you just release the mouse button and a ball shoots out of the gun to hit the spot you've targeted.

It's very tactile and weirdly satisfying in the same way aiming a garden hose at something is. That sensation, coupled with the unpredictable ways the cans fall, meant I found it probably the most fun of all the games. It's just sugar on top that it's also extremely rewarding in terms of Stars. After only a little practice, I could guarantee an A result every time and pretty often it was an S. I imagine with more practice I could get it to S about 90% of the time, which makes it as efficient as the dart game but with much bigger payouts.

Fun- S
Efficiency - S

Pukaboo Stack, then, is the clear winner. If I need to farm Stars, that's where you'll find me. But I'm not at all sure I do need to farm Stars any more. Thanks to the massive rewards from the new event, I already have the boat and the plane and several thousand Stars left over. I'm not sure there's anything left in the store that I want.

There is one more game still to come. Currently greyed-out on the event program is Spooky Cookies. That's going to take place in the Haunted House, which is currently closed. When it gets patched into the game I'll try to remember to come back here and add my thoughts about it, just for the sake of completionism.

Until then, I think we're done. Go and have fun!