Maybe you should quit your job. (Type Help, Day Repeat Day, Dead Letter Dept., Strange Horticulture)
Type Help
What's your job?: Some manner of data investigator.
Responsibilities: A recently-deceased colleague left behind some old notes on an unsolved And Then There Were None-style murder, sealed for decades for unknown reasons. Plumb the depths of his ancient machine, read his files, and try to piece together what happened and why this case was sealed.
What's the problem?: Only a few files are initially accessible; your first job is to figure out the naming scheme so you can start access the rest (though this reveals further complications). The files also have additional encoding that must be sussed out from context; the computer system still has a few twists in wait; and even after all the tech problems, there's still the issue of: How and why did all these people die?
(Note: This is a freeware text adventure; there are no images and no audio. I didn't need them and found the game compelling without them, but just so you know.)
On one hand, Type Help has some compelling and smart gameplay, strong prose, and a really excellent twist in the middle to its And Then There Were None scenario where I intensely wanted to see what was going on. (The death on the bed is the most disturbing scene I've seen in a while - not through gore, as there is none, but just through sheer ideas.) On the other hand - um, there actually IS nothing going on. The game doesn't really have an ending; it just...stops. I know some folks are gonna say "ooooOOOOOoooooh it's more MYSTERIOUS that way," but this is an instance, to steal from Roger Ebert, where less is not more. Less is actually less. (Even the handwave we're given makes no sense; what was with the thunderclaps, then?) Type Help has some dynamite ideas, but they deserved a smarter, stronger follow-through, and they didn't get it. Given the weak denouement, I don't think Type Help is going to have quite the legs that Her Story, Return of the Obra Dinn, or The Roottrees Are Dead have.
Also: while I appreciate the dev letting you create and load from actual files you can save on your hard drive for his browser game, that has a bit of inherent diciness due to browser shenanigans (I had to futz with Vivaldi a bit after it glitched and wouldn't save an updated file). I know Roottrees took this release path successfully, but I wish devs would stop putting these lengthy mystery games on browser-based platforms. Just let me give you money in exchange for a reliable saving system and the luxury of not feeling like I have to solve the entire case in one sitting. (I literally just looked up the last thing because I was feeling a little nauseous after playing the game for 5 hours straight.) I want to savor your game, not feel like I have to speedrun it the first time through!
Day Repeat Day
What's your job?: Corporate drone in order fulfillment.
Responsibilities: Scheduling shipment of various deliveries through a Match-3 interface.
What's the problem?: You took this job because your art degree's not in high demand on the employment market, and you're questioning where, if anywhere, this prospective career path is gonna lead you. Also, this is partially a visual novel, and your brother's struggling with a drinking problem (well, it's more like you're struggling with it - he seems perfectly fine with just hitting you up for cash with increasing frequency), while your nominal ex-girlfriend seems invested in stringing you along while painting any attempts at boundary-setting as toxic behavior on your part. Furthermore, Sadako seems to be sending you curse videos drawn from '50s workplace documentaries in between levels.
The twists on Match-3 gameplay are good - limited moves, modes where you have to clear every starting tile on a given grid, or clear pieces closed off on the sides of the grid by maneuvering & setting off "clear column" or "clear row" pieces, etc. - and I understand they get better, but I think I'm more satisfied with the way my story turned out: I left the ex on read, arranged to meet a receptive coworker for coffee, turned down the brother's latest loan demand, and went to look for another job after my protag expressed the thought that he just couldn't do this anymore. It was - and I say this honestly, without sarcasm - a complete, satisfying interactive experience for me in the span of 43 minutes.
(If you need more out of a game: the price tag on sale's three bucks, and while it's another artistic work about how being a cog in the corporate gears dehumanizes you, I think the Match-3 gameplay and choices afforded by the visual novel elements deliver well enough. But I was honestly thought the ending I chose for the character was the most satisfying.)
Dead Letter Dept.
What's your job?: "Data Conversion Operator."
Responsibilities: You type in handwritten or damaged addresses on mail the OCR can't make out.
What's the problem?: Your pay doesn't quite make apartment rent, even in Wisconsin (this is the rare Wisconsin-based title). Also, the mail seems to want to kill you.
You're here to see creepy mail, and the devs delivered. There is some excellent creepy mail in this title.
There are problems that get in the way of Creepy Mail Enjoyment, though. First, the devs have you spend a few minutes walking to your job each day, presumably to underline the hopelessness of the daily grind and bleakness of your shitty surroundings and employment sitch, but it's in practice just a tedious annoyance that gets between you and the USPS. I looked it up, and there are things you can do in your apartment to get different endings, but after the first walk, they should have just had you arrive at your job after exiting the apartment.
Second, you can save only once per run. A run supposedly takes about two hours, but it can be longer if you run into a few problem pieces of mail, and this is a game that can be physically taxing (see below). I assume this is meant to make you feel worn-down and compelled to work like the character, but I just found it a needless aggravation.
Third: The core of the game is making out hard-to-read handwriting and typing, and sometimes, the game approaches this by making text very blurry or very small. I can handle both individually, but both at once tends to give me eyestrain. I felt sick, and had to call my session, after attempting to type about 50 lines of light-colored tiny text that was printed sideways on one piece of mail. There's a "magnify" button, but it doesn't always help as much as you'd like.
(Note: The 50 lines of tiny text were a red herring, by the way. On pieces of mail where it seems you have to type in a ridiculous amount of text, there's always another, way shorter hidden message the game wants instead. The game is perfectly happy to encourage you to pursue those red herrings, though - there's no "ERROR: MAXIMUM NO. OF LINES EXCEEDED" message to let you know, hey, don't type all that in, we want something else, and the game is perfectly fine with putting you in physical discomfort elsewhere, so a trick like typing in 50 lines of barely-readable, sideways text wouldn't be beyond it.)
I know it sounds like I'm complaining, "hey, the addresses are hard to read in this game where addresses are supposed to be hard to read," but Dead Letter Office uses so many other tricks that don't rely on eyestrain to pull off its gimmick - extravagantly bad handwriting; blotched-out parts of the address where the info is available through other means; etc. The eyestrain traps seem to be inflicting physical discomfort for the sake of it.
This whole thing reminds me: We've made remarkable strides in accessibility in video games in recent years, but we seem to have overlooked that a good number of gamers have passed the threshold of middle age. The Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters, remakes of some of the most influential RPGs of all time, were released with a ridiculously, needlessly cramped, tiny, and hard-to-read font. The Lunar remasters were announced with a spidery font. Again, I understand "hard to read" is part of the bargain for Dead Letter Office, but, as the game itself demonstrates, there are plenty of "hard to read" options that don't inflict eyestrain. "Don't make things stupidly small and don't make stupid font choices" is an absurdly low bar, but it's too much to ask of some games, apparently. (Props to Strange Horticulture, discussed below, for noting the presence of small text and including a magnify function that makes a damn difference.)
The damnable thing: I am actually considering going back to the damn game, physical pain and all, for more creepy mail. Apparently, I can't pass low bars, either.
Strange Horticulture
What's your job?: Not computer-related! You're a horticulturalist.
Responsibilities: Providing the right botanical solutions to resolve your customers' many and varied problems. Uh, you've got a lot of plants, though, and it's not like any of them came with labels...
What's the problem? Besides the challenge of trying to ID dozens of rare & dangerous plants with Victorian-level info-distro tech, it seems the local druids have summoned a murder monster that wants to kill everyone. Fertilize your way out of that, fucker.
It didn't occur to me until another post called it out: this is a big-picture deduction-based game like Obra Dinn, Roottrees, etc. There's a loop of scrutinizing the physical characteristics of the plants in your greenhouse and what your character observes (scent, discharge, numbing/itching/etc. upon touch) to see which entry in your identification grimoire it most closely matches, then unlocking more grimoire pages and clues to new plant locations on your big ol' 500-grid square map of the environs by successfully fulfilling plant orders. You're a bit more on rails here than in the other games: the amount and range of info with which you have to deal at any given time is more limited, and your current objectives are more pointed. It's a more guided, less-freeform experience than the other titles, but it might appeal more to those seeking a more granular experience.
(If we're doing a power ranking, I'd put it: Obra Dinn -> Her Story - Roottrees (may move up a tier if you prefer a longer experience) -> Strange Horticulture -> power gap -> Type Help.)
There are a couple problems. If you mess up too many times, you're sent to a series of minigames to earn another "life," so to speak, but I seemed to get locked up in one, involving find the right key to fit a lock, that just would not progress no matter what I tried. I don't know whether it was ham-handedness on my part - I was pretty sure I had the right key; maybe I was mistaken - but nothing I tried would work, and every wrong choice would multiply the number of keys available, and I just couldn't get out of the death spiral. (It got my first playthrough into an unwinnable state, actually, and I abandoned the game for a couple years before picking it back up- recently.) My advice: if you get one wrong move away from "death" - it's the "A Rising Dread" meter in the lower-left with the wilted tree, which resets at the start of each day - don't take any actions of which you aren't certain: risking wrong plant IDs, going to unfamiliar portions of the map that might fill the meter, etc. You might wanna be cautious after even one hit to your meter, in fact. Treat "death" like permadeath. (I'm making death sound like a bigger threat than it is, but you can run into trouble if you don't know what that meter means and how it can fill up.)
The second is that a couple of the major decisions in the game had the opposite effect than I expected, as the intended target of the plant turned out to be unclear. On Day 10, the choice of plant always concerns the safety of your client. On Day 15, the intended recipient of the plant is the druid.
That said, I had fun returning to this game. The graphics are good at relaying the necessary info for IDs and make the plants look cool and interesting, the game has a minor dark Victorian fantasy vibe that serves to distinguish it, the gameplay loop is really fun, and it's just a pleasant time if you like plants. (The story's not spectacular, but it's serviceable.) Again, it's a more granular, guided experience than similar titles, and it's on the short side (about 5 to 6 hours), which sets it apart - not necessarily in a bad way. Give it a try if you like the deduction genre, as I suppose it can now be called.
As with many '80s kids, The Goonies was my absolute favorite movie as a kid. It was the ultimate explosion of the idea of going out with your friends through your town on a Kids on Bikes backyard adventure. I made a point of catching it on broadcast TV (in the long-forgotten days when the major networks would air theatrical movies in prime time and they were a more reliable method of catching movies after their theatrical runs than VHS tapes, which were at the time expensive & extensively-delayed) whenever it was aired.
The Goonies isn't remembered as fondly nowadays, and - after catching a revival showing at my old high school, where some enterprising band members were projecting it on the side of a tractor trailer - I think it's because the kids yell a whole lot. It's a group of kids together, and to kids, yelling communicates excitement (and The Goonies sure was exciting to this kid!), but when you're an adult, a bunch of kids yelling can be just nails on a chalkboard. That aside, though I didn't come away as besotted with The Goonies as I was as a kid, and though much of the appeal of the movie has to be colored by the lens of childhood, I think it holds up sufficiently, the typical various '80s insensitivities notwithstanding.
Anyhow: given my love of the movie, my mother got me The Goonies II NES game by Konami. (In the U.S., the title billed it as a sequel to the movie, though it's actually a sequel to a previous Goonies game never released stateside.) I predictably played the hell out of it, and the title's garnered a bit of modern prestige by being one of the first Metroidvanias. I have to say, though, that while I recall enjoying the thing after some fashion - I cared enough to beat it, eventually - the overriding memory I had of the title was one of frustration: being stuck in an endless series of rooms, that maddening music looping over and over, hitting and otherwise poking tediously at every surface (as you did to uncover hidden entryways), or otherwise going over and over old territory in a usually-futile attempt to unstick myself and make some progress. The phrase ad nauseam was applicable in every sense. My experience was also colored by an inexplicable and utterly undeduceable bit where you have to, er, hit an old woman five times (and no less than five) with your fist or a hammer in order to obtain a necessary item. This was as much of a roadblock to me as the "kneel by this cliff for several seconds until a whirlwind appears" part of Simon's Quest, and it doesn't come attached to a title with Castlevania ambience or music chops. It's completely unexplained, and it deserves to be every bit as infamous as the Simon's Quest bit.
I recently decided to replay it, though, inspired in part by Jeff Gerstmann's NES ranking project, where it enjoys an in-my-opinion unwarranted ranking of #16 out of 478 games as of this writing. Given my own extensive memories of the title, and the existence in the game of an outright unsolvable puzzle, I'd chalked this up to nostalgia bias on Gerstmann's part. Did the reply change my mind? Well...somewhat, but not really, not fundamentally.
That Last Post:
From all appearances, I posted a few lines about stuff I did in 2024, promised more, and nipped off. I actually do have this post mostly completed on my hard drive, but in the interim, I landed on a new professional job that involves a lot of watching franchise material. With the demands of work and the Translation Project (below), something had to give, and the something was that post. I held off on blogging further primarily due to lack of time but also because I wanted to see that post finished before moving on, but, well, this existence of this post proves that that ain't gonna happen. It will be finished, but not before more new material appears. Sorry.
The Translation Project:
The Translation Project is continuing apace. Not a glamorous update, but there are certain phases of projects where it's just a lot of heads-down work, and the best you can say is "yep, still ongoing." I should be able to make the "end of April" date I projected for my end of the work - that is, of course, providing that no other work or life matters intervene. If that changes, I'll post notification here. (I will say that for purely personal reasons, it would be hard for me to stay on the project past June, and there is a practical limit to the amount of time I can take up from folks who are graciously volunteering their sweat & tears here, so there's a built-in hard stop to faffing about on my end.)
I'm knocking out the larger files first, dedicated to love interest lines; there are numerous smaller files I have basically done but want to check something in the actual game before I send them on. In any event: The part that was the big sticking point for me alone, having a format for the script that's usable for a patch, has graciously been remedied by other parties, and I'm dedicated to seeing a properly-translated version of this game happen, no matter what it takes.
Other folks' writing projects:
On a note: Kimimi wrote an appreciation a few days ago of a certain game. It's a strong overview. It's an excellent fond summary of the Angelique experience: "sitting in a room so pink Barbie would think it was a bit much while a grumpy Guardian tells me how much he dislikes lobster." No, seriously: as essential as that is, Kimimi brings home many of the core characteristics of the franchise: how safe the game's romances and universe are, or its smart use of the smallest actions or bits of dialogue to illustrate character (such as Clavis during the tutorial jumping, so far as he jumps, at the opportunity to teach you how to cut out of conversations quickly), or the importance of soft power on the road to the throne (admittedly, I have a more mercenary view than Kimimi on this).
My site:
Effectively on hiatus until I finish The Translation Project. I'd like to finish up the Beep! magazine Lunar interviews before the Steam rerelease at the end of the month, but that might not be in the cards. It seems as if most people have concluded I'm making up the interviews and Kei Shigema's Lunar 0 ideas, but I can say from decades of experience that that's the Lunar fandom for you (the part of it off Tumblr, anyhow; the fans on Tumblr are uncharacteristically friendly).
Dead by Daylight:
Dead by Daylight is taking a break from content for a big quality-of-life update, and so am I. I was aware of how much of my gaming time it was taking up - mostly not wasted time; I genuinely enjoy the game, and it's made with great love - but it feels so good to make actual progress in other titles I want to play. There was a Resident Evil-themed 2v8 mode I wanted to try, but I missed the deadline, and I think I'm better staying on the wagon, in the end. In retrospect, Brad's years-long obsession with a live service game to the detriment of his personal and professional well-being, considered an anomaly in the day, is more of the more prophetic bits from Giant Bomb.
Tumblr:
I am back on Tumblr. Reservations aside, with the world going to hell (or the United States going to hell and trying to drag the world with it), it's no time to disconnect, I suppose. I don't post there often, but it is my sole social media presence. There are folks there I'm very happy to see again, but there are times when I wonder just what it is I'm doing. I still think the AI mining is, well, a minefield, but it's the only place to social media platform to post and view art that has a opt-out option for AI.
Movies:
I'm OK with the cinematic experience dying now.
Note: I meant to have this post completely ready by today, but I've had a few job and other real-life matters to which to attend over the close of December, and I have a few celebrations to enjoy at the end of the year. I'd rather take the time to commemorate the stuff that meant a lot to me this year properly instead of rushing it to meet a 2024 deadline. This post, then, will have to be a work in progress for several days. When it's complete, I'll post a notification here.
At the start of the year, bonbonbunny above pointed out that enjoying games nowadays encompasses more than playing them firsthand - it also includes enjoying when people you like are playing them, or enjoying content produced about them. This really struck home with me, reading it as I watched Jeff Gerstmann play a bit of NES Dragon Warrior, and though I did manage to play a good amount of games this year, I indeed found that much of my enjoyment of games came from sources outside of playing them directly.
Translating (Professionally):
My professional translation career experienced a number of landmarks in 2024. First, there was the release of Sand Land, the open-world, vehicle-heavy RPG based on the Akira Toriyama manga. It was an incredible honor to work with Toriyama's characters—I love you, Rao—and I was super happy to be part of this project. It was a joy to watch it from pre-release work to the announcement to it coming to market - the first time I've ever been part of a single-player title release this big.
Second, I've been working for much of the year on another title based on a manga from one of the field's most venerable and globally-popular artists. This title hasn't been announced, so I can't say more - other than the game genre is a change of pace for me, but offering plenty of character in which to sink my figurative teeth. It's an honor to work on this property, and it's been a pleasure to spend time with the game's cast, which has, after these many months, come to feel like a second home.
Third, I was fortunate enough to be appointed (it's a supervisory role! I'm using "appointed"!) to an editing position on an RPG in one of the genre's foremost franchises. One of those franchises on which you dream about working when you first join the craft. One of the franchises. The title's still under wraps—shh!—but I'll be sure to let everyone know in an extremely tiresome manner of my involvement once the cat's out of the bag.
These jobs, though, delivered joy not only via the prestige and the work itself, in the ability to be part of bringing these stories to audiences, but in the substance of the stories. There are a couple moments I encountered in translating text that were some of the most potent of the year for me - even though I experienced them solely in text and stage directions - that I was hoping to discuss here but can't, because the relevant games haven't been released or, in one case, even announced yet. I'll come back to this post in however many months it takes for that to happen to share my thoughts properly.
One moment, though, I can discuss: the closing questline of Sand Land, which involves the chance discovery of a long-lost song by the late wife of one of the main characters, with the party then becoming the vehicle of a grassroots idea from a few fans to share the song with the world's newly-reunited populace. I got to translate that questline, and I felt it was a beautiful coda to the game. The group finds some part of civilization, of happier times, surviving in a pocket of the world where it's been loved in a smaller scope and has been bringing joy to others, that is rediscovered to bring a message of joy and hope to a larger, reborn world, bringing unity to a society that's long lacked it - and a small reminder of love to a man who's learned to go without such things but deserves one nonetheless. This wasn't labeled as the final questline when it was handed to me, but its role in wrapping the game up in a beautiful bow was shiningly obvious regardless. A glorious way to commemorate the survival and reflourishing of this world.
(I will be the stereotypical persnickety translator here for a moment, though. When the party finally hears a proper recording of the song and has an emotional response, one of the group asks after their comrade Rao, the late singer's husband, wondering if he isn't upset to perhaps have a wound reopened. (His wife died as part of a tragic mistake he made decades ago while working in the service of a corrupt military endeavor.) His laconic response was, in my translation, "My tears all dried long ago." I see from watching a video of the quest that this was edited to "My tears all dried up long ago," which is literally a two-letter addition, I know, but to me connotes a different emotional reaction, one less involved and more dismissive. I feel the original communicates that Rao's had his tears, but that he's come to a point of...not acceptance, quite, as the situation is not one that can be accepted, but of acknowledgement and coexistence with the past and the way things are, good and bad, that seems at the core of Rao's character. The edit (my tears have dried up, it's impossible for me to have an emotional response to this anymore) seems to dismiss the possibility of tears at all, to dismiss what's happened, to be about stuffing emotions down and denying them in a stunted way. Editing has to happen, but I feel this was a loss nonetheless.)
Translating (Hobby):
There have been ups and downs with The Project That Has Consumed Me, but I'm grateful that I have the help of folks who know what needs to be done on the technical side and am finally within what might be generously called the homestretch - even if, in the process, I discovered that, due to version differences and formatting considerations, I basically had to translate the entire goldang game again. Again, thank you for your patience.
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