The Flipside of Gaming
For this entry in my best of 2022 series, my favorite puzzle games, which is separate from adventure.
Owner of Game Wisdom with more than a decade of experience writing and talking about game design and the industry. I’m also the author of the “Game Design Deep Dive” series and “20 Essential Games to Study”
And now we turn to the horror genre, which had some fantastic games this year.
Owner of Game Wisdom with more than a decade of experience writing and talking about game design and the industry. I’m also the author of the “Game Design Deep Dive” series and “20 Essential Games to Study”
For this category, these are my favorite platformers I had a chance to play in 2022.
Owner of Game Wisdom with more than a decade of experience writing and talking about game design and the industry. I’m also the author of the “Game Design Deep Dive” series and “20 Essential Games to Study”
I’m doing my best of 2022 series over on Game-Wisdom and I’ll be posting the videos over here, starting with my favorite action games.
Owner of Game Wisdom with more than a decade of experience writing and talking about game design and the industry. I’m also the author of the “Game Design Deep Dive” series and “20 Essential Games to Study”
It’s time to talk about my favorite games that made me ponder while I was pointing (and clicking).
I’m pretty sure everyone forgot that this game even came out this year. What started as a project for a Dread X Collection, transformed into its own visual/novel meets adventure game. The premise alone is enough to turn heads — as you try to romance three very eligible women who just so happen to be elder gods who can tear apart the fabric of reality.
This is a game that fully commits to its premise, and while it’s not the hardest game in the genre, the complete package stands out as one of the most strangely charming games I’ve played. I don’t know if we’ll get a sequel to it, but it’s an overall great title.
Lucy Dreaming harkens back to the golden age of Lucasarts-styled adventure games, with its own verb list and wacky logic. Combining the waking and dream world sections did lead to some interesting puzzles. While it can be on the harder side due to its structure and logic, it is definitely a must-play for any fan of old-school adventure games.
Adventure games oftentimes either land on the side of challenging puzzles or focus more on the story and mood. With the Excavation of Hob’s Barrow, we have one that does both — a gothic horror point and click adventure with some very striking cutscenes. The game, at times, feels like an episode to one of the many anthology horror shows in the past, as the player explores a mysterious village, has creepy visions and dreams, all leading up to the surprising ending. The puzzle difficulty stays on the easier side until the very end, with the final chapter being the most puzzle-filled out of anything else.
I really like the charm and the story of this one, with the world feeling both familiar and alien at the same time. If you slept on this one, and in the mood for a mysterious adventure, then don’t miss this game.
Brok the Investigator manages to combine beat-em-up gameplay with point and click adventuring and puzzle solving to deliver one of the most original takes on the adventure genre. You are free to approach your problems by using your brain or your fists, with the story and ending changing based on your process.
The story itself is also very well done, and despite featuring a goofy talking alligator, there is a lot of heart to this game. Brok is trying to do right by his adoptive son, earn a living, and the push and pull between doing the right thing, and to keep going is an interesting one. This is one of those games I know a lot of people slept on, but this one gets my recommendation as a game worth playing.
Owner of Game Wisdom with more than a decade of experience writing and talking about game design and the industry. I’m also the author of the “Game Design Deep Dive” series and “20 Essential Games to Study”
Some of the posts we published last month:
Sept 1: We only had one @Play post in September as other things competed with my time, but it was a good one, on the history of Angband!
Sept 6: We linked to the Reno Project, which seeks to preserve information on early and foundational virtual worlds Lucasfilm Habitat, Club Caribe, WorldsAway and its variants and descendants, a matter of which I have some personal experience.
Sept 7: We pointed to Nicole Express’ post explaining NES Mappers!
Sept 8: A true classic of one-person gamedev tools, the Zelda Classic engine and its editor software ZQuest! It originated way back on DOS but is still being worked on today! Amazing!
Sept 9: I’ve been doing a lot of looking back on old web games personally as of late, and we look at a quick and very dry joke on the formula, probably going back to at least 1994, Find The Spam.
Sept 13: Final Fantasy IV has an unusual bug concerning how it handles doors leading into buildings that we examined, in a post on its Door Stack Glitch.
Sept 17: Sonic Retro’s guide to that series’ physics!
Sept 19: Also to do with Sonic the Hedgehog, did you know that game’s Chemical Plant Zone boss is much easier than it first seems?
Sept 28: Remember the GROW games, from EYEZMAZE and On?
Sundry Sunday:
Adam West in the PS1 Golden Nugget game! Crash Bandicoot commercials and live-action videos from Japan! Cutscenes from Pepsiman! Strong Bad plays DOS text adventure Vampire Castle, with illustrations made by The Cheat!
Josh Bycer’s indie dev posts:
Top games of Gamescom! Demo Spotlight – Video 1 – Video 2 – Video 3 – Video 4
Indie Showcases! 9/12 – 9/21 – 9/23 – 9/28
Zachtronic’s final game, Last Call – Fashion Police Squad – A review of Moonlander’s Steam store page – Rogue Command developer interview – Genfanad developer interview
Romhack Thursday, a new feature we began last month:
Advanced NES Rom Utility and Metroid romhack Junkoid
To find more invigorating posts, please look through our well-stocked sidebar. Many of our posts aren’t the sort to spoil, so as we put up more content, you’ll find more there to discover!
Thanks for reading Set Side B through the month of September! We will continue bringing you the most interesting finds from the Flipside of Gaming.
A spotlight on some interesting posts from August….
2nd: What are blobbers? Wizardry-style maze games, usually party-based dungeon crawls. How many has there been? At least 48, and definitely a lot more!
8th: A short post, but interesting. I found, from the official Nintendo SNES devguide on the Internet Archive, a list of things that could get a game rejected.
10th: It was all over the internet, but still, we reported on that hidden cheat code in Super Punch-Out!! that let you play it against a friend.
11th: The developer menu buried in arcade versions of Mortal Kombat and its sequels and how to access it from attract mode. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to show this off to multiple people in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and it never fails to impress.
12th: Mamesaver, the screensaver that uses the roms in your MAME folder.
13th: Revivals of old online services QuantumLink, AOL, and Prodigy. No word about Compuserve though.
15th: Arcade Mermaid visits Vs. Castlevania, in which a hard game gets much, much harder.
16th: Hyrule Interviews, a ton of information that the developers of Zelda games have revealed to the media.
17th: An old video but still fascinating, the last new Data East Jurassic Park pinball machine is opened on camera.
19th: Chasing the world record in Hatetris, a player-hostile Tetris variant.
22nd: NCommander on Youtube on why 3D Pinball was removed from Windows Vista.
27: The absurdly weird and detailed romhack of the prototype of Monster Party, starring Elvira!
29th: The long (in both number of entries and runtime) Youtube series Identifying Luck in Mario Party, which is an amazing detailed look into the internals of those games.
30th: The Museum Monster presents a weird moment in video games: the Cleopatra bonus in arcade Star Force.
@Play: Reintroduction to Angband – Playing the game
Sundry Sunday:
Lore Sjoberg’s Alt Text: The Five Most Guilt-Inducing Video Games
Old Commercial for Pitfall!, with a young Jack Black
Strong Bad Email #94, Video Games
Cabel Sasser’s Buggy Saints Row: The Musical
Josh Bycer’s indie dev posts:
Store Page Review of Metroplex Zero
Interview with Dave Gilbert of Wadjet Eye Games
Interview with independent dev Brian Cronin
Interview with Gideon Griebenow of World Turtles
Store Page Review of Transcendence
Indie Game Showcase:
8/6: Mahokenshi, Gastova The Witches of Arkana, Castle Cardians, Transiruby, Vesper Ether Saga, BackBeat
8/12: Ancient Gods, Critadel, Deiland: Pocket Planet, Monster Tribe, Zoeti, Printersim
8/15: Spellbook Demonslayers, Mech Shuffle, Endling Extinction is Forever. Ginger the Toothfairy, Lightsmith, Myth of Mirka, Supernova Tactics, Fabled Lands, Kokoro Clover Season 1
8/22: Trinity Archetype, Green With Energy, Super Grave Snatchers, The Lightbringer, Happenlance, Timemelters
8/24: Affogato, Rogue Genesia, City Limits, The God Unit, Redshot, Combo Card Clashers
8/27: Evertried, Sands of Aura, The Shore, Infraspace, Rogue Spirit, Ruin Raiders
8/29: Hex of the Lich, So to Speak, It’s a Wrap, We Took That Trip, Eternal Remnant The First Chapter, The Mortuary Assistant
To find more interesting posts, please look through our over-full sidebar. We now have archives that you can browse from! Many posts you find here aren’t the sort to go obsolete, so as we put up more and more content, you’ll find more and more wonderful stuff to discover there.
Thanks for reading Set Side B through the month of August! We will continue bringing you the most interesting finds from the Flipside of Gaming.
Favorite posts from July….
1st: Popular Minecraft YouTuber Technoblade passes away.
2nd: The weird “Triforce%” run from SGDQ’s 2022’s TASbot presentation is explained.
5th: Review of games presented in SGDQ’s Silly Block.
7th: @Play: An early level FAQ for Omega. After doing a ton of posts the month before, we took it easy on @Play in July.
9th: Reviving the Ouya.
10th: A rare substantial Sundry Sunday post, a collection of YouTube videos that purport to explain Kingdom Hearts’ legendarily convoluted story.
11th: Arcade Mermaid: Pepper 2, ultrafast maze game from Exidy.
18th: A popular longpost we did about rebus crossword puzzles. Of special note, this is currently the Set Side B post with the most hits, with over a thousand pageviews.
21st: Obituary for Robert Koeneke, creator of Moria, the first non-Rogue roguelike.
23rd: Video review of Zachtronics’ final game, Last Call BBS.
27th: A weird find, GameSurge, a gaming website that hasn’t updated since 2005 but is still on the web.
Indie Dev Showcase archives
2nd: Monster Harvest, Recompile, The Night Is Grey, Space Tow Truck, Fire Tonight, Arboria.
23rd: Hack or Die, Batboy, Citizens Farlands, Alina of the Arena, Remnants of the Rift, Itorah.
Developer Interviews
Sundry Sunday
Pixel Orson Welles Disses Game Characters, Summarizing Kingdom Hearts, Mario Frustration, Take Me Home Mario, Classics of Game
To find more interesting posts, please look through our well-stocked sidebar. We still need better archive browsing, I recognize, as we work to fill Set Side B full to overflowing with interesting and entertaining video game news and information on a daily basis, and most of our posts do not have an expiration date.
Thanks for reading Set Side B through the month of July! We will continue bringing you the most interesting finds from the Flipside of Gaming.
Some favorite posts from the month of June….
4th: Arcade Donkey Kong Romhacks
11th: Baba Is You XTREME
18th: Fixing E.T.
21st: The Looker
24th: Chrontendo #60
30th: How Retro Games Have Taken On A New Life
and
Sundry Sunday: Eleanor Rigby/Pokemon Battle Theme, Nintendo Says “You Cannot Beat Us,” Mornal’s Phoenix Wright animations, and There’s Something About Zelda: Breath of the Wild Speedrun Animation.
@Play, on Omega: first – second – third – fourth
Indie Dev Showcase: on the 5th, 11th, 12th, 16th, and 18th, and
Best of Next Fest: on the 19th, 22nd, 24th, 25th, and 28th.
To find more interesting posts, may I direct you to the Useful Tags link in the sidebar?
Thanks for reading Set Side B through the month of June! We will continue bringing you the most interesting finds from the Flipside of Gaming.
