Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Tao's Adventure: Curse of the Demon Seal
Nintendo DS​

This title, I would not recommend 'entirely' to players out there; but this is another game that's in obscurity and it's a game that has to live in Azure Dream's Shadow in the meaning of the phrase. It has some form of fun factor, but it's somewhat for a niche group; after reading this, if you find gameplay videos and you don't like it, that's fine. I found it fun, and these are my experiences with it.

First off, some pro's to the gameplay. The game is like Azure Dreams from the PS1 in terms of dungeon layout's with the addition of walls, fully rendered 3D models of monsters you can skulk around with and fight, different traps with a chance they become faulty based on your luck or spring, your own ability to plant traps and some other spiffy mechanics that go with the dungeon. There's also a magic system which is a rip of 'Lost Magic' where you have to draw your spell and while they didn't implement spell fusion like in Lost Magic, the spells they give you are pretty handy. Such as being able to skip to certain floors you want to reach to find specific items or weapons or the ability to teleport to safety when your in a jam; heck, some of the magic your learn looks pretty awesome in terms of animation when you cast it. Kinda like a mini summon spell. The game includes the mechanic where you climb the tower and look for eggs, have the chance to hatch and raise them or sell them off for good gold to upgrade your sword or buy healing items. Heck, there was an arena where you could bring your tower monsters and fight other players who had the same game or trade different monsters with one another if you wanted too.

Now for the problems; First off, the rouge element is not in the game anymore, all of the floors are preset with a single map layout; Pro's to this are you can now find your away around the dungeon a lot easier to get what you need, bad news is that the creatures you get in order are controlled this way, which kind of sucks. Ontop of that, the monster's are forgettable, They look cute-ish as if they we're trying to bank in on pokemon and attempt to take it down and none of the monsters from Azure Dreams are in there. Like Kewne, the dragon; I mean look at him!
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Awesome monster, has goggles, boots, looks like he's ready to go on a adventure and he's your first monster who helps you out. He's awesome! He's well designed for this type of adventure! I look at the Dragon partner in Tao's Adventure and see a cousin of Wobuffet looking for either it's trainer or a cake. Ontop of that, the game looks like it lacked polish in multiple departments; the text in place for some of the names of the monster's are uninspired, readouts for the menu's in some area's we're out of their placeholders and spilling off screen sometimes along with another hill of errors; the game looked like it was a college project made by some interns from Konami forced into a game jam as punishment for trying to do something other than Metal Gear Solid..... Which if it is, they did an OK job, but if it wasn't, then Konami has an additional reason they should go down in flames along with the rest of the trash heap.

Moving on; the other thing that did keep me playing this game and move past it's exterior was the story. The game makes mention of the tower in Monsbaiya, which is the town Azure Dreams take's place; and how a massive monster awakens from it; a massive murder of monster crows and they start flying towards an Island where Tao live's with his family of mages. These monster Crows come in as he's starting to learn magic, turn a large chunk of his family into statues, petrifying them and flying off to a certain tower over the ocean. As cheesy as the plots sounds and you can predict, he goes across the ocean to find a particular monster egg from a monster tower to cure petrifaction on his island. From here, he discovers he's not wanted anywhere near the town where the monster tower resides that he needs to set foot in. In fact; they pretty much despise him because of his race and their abilities to use magic. The only living thing willing to help you out is the wobuffet dragon; which, despite is character design, is a monster who see's himself as an elite monster and will prove everyone he can be one by entering the tower to fight with you, he has some form of depth and is a decently written character. The story evolves from there to the town warming up to you in way's I won't really describe unless you try the game yourself and If I had to mention 1 main advantage this game had over pokemon on the day it released, it's that they fully rendered all of their monster's from 3D model's. As simple as they are, on a DS cartridge, it was kind of impressive.

If anyone would ask, I do carry a soft flame for this title, not enough to call it good; but just enough. The lack of polish and ideas to make the game work is a further example of how Konami treat's its IP's. There is still stuff in this game to enjoy, if you like dungeon crawling, getting monster eggs to train and fight alongside you with magic and swordplay and the story is developed pretty well, I say it's worth a look: Really, it is. Otherwise, if you've played it for an hour and say it's not for me, I understand.
 
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[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Golden Sun
Game Boy Advanced
​

Reader's of the obscure, I want to talk about an RPG that is constantly overlooked in lure of other RPG's such as Final Fantasy 15 or 14 where you swap classes on the fly while you fully run around in combat or Fallout 4 with the VATS system and you can pick which body part to sevre with your heavy-weapon Thor gun which shoot's balls of lightning and explodes with energy based damage that looks awesome. I could probably ask someone who just skims RPG's and ask about RPG games that they know of and it's either Fallout 4, final fantasy or some indie title such as Undertale which is also a sweet rpg in it's own right to get so many ports. Though not a lot of people have even bothered to learn about this RPG.

To begin with the story; your a young lad with your friend's who have access to using Psynergy and attuning to the elements with it. To put bluntly, you can control the element's like in avatar using your minds like Psychokinesis or PyroKinesis. You, your friends go on a 'field trip' to the Sol Sanctum, an area forbidden to go too, due to a disaster that befell your village for the last person who went inside it and then begin the process of setting into motion things that can cause a lot of damage, having your friends taken hostage and setting out on a quest to save your world and your friends. Though like in my previous reviews, the game gets more complicated in terms of the story and it's characters, this one of those titles you need to take your time to play through.

In gameplay mechanics, this series put's a new spin on how you perceive RPG's in a sense. There are the standard RPG battle's though they have their own complexities, such as using your synergy skills to summon a volcano, drop rocks or heal your friends. Find a rare weapons that unleash a 'Howl' which is basically a Crit stacked ontop of a status effect or spell. Find one an elemental Djinn which do spiffy things for a one time use until they save up to pull off a summon, which is always awesome to watch how much power and destruction the summons do..... Then walking around to refresh your mana and your Djinn's to reuse them again.

Outside of battle, your magic's have more practical uses; You have a move spell which is basically a force push or pull and you can move moveable stuff around, most notably pillars. Frost on puddles to create pillars to hop across, whirlwind to push things and tear up vines; to put simply, your spells and magic have multiple uses and they can change depending on the djinn you have or special weapon or equipment. A fire Djinn on an Earth Adept or psynergy user can use a growth spell he never had access too with earth alone; he can now grow vines in the game's over world of dungeons and cause plants to attack in battles!

If you wanted too, you could also do LINK BATTLES! Bring your own builds of heroes to another friend, link up and slug it out in traditional RPG style with summons, magics and sword attacks with the howls and such. If you actually beat the first game, you could TRANSFER YOUR SAVE DATA TO THE SECOND SEQUEL! OVER GAMEBOY ADVANCE! 'It was a golden age, a golden sun.' (So many bad jokes, so little time)

The game's story is superb, the battle system and the game's dungeons will keep you around to enjoy what content it has to offer. So why is it in obscurity? I don't really have the answers but more or less, it could just be that not a lot of people heard about it. Don't get me wrong, there are those out there who have a love of games and RPG's and probably have heard of a title like this, but there are those who are getting into gaming now because they can just now afford consoles and don't know of it's existence or have skipped it all together thinking it wasn't worth the effort to touch on. To top it off, there wasn't enough memory to put the entire Golden Sun game on one cartridge like the developers wanted to do for ages, so they had to split it up, meaning if your bought the first game, and beat it to the half-way point and saw that your journey ends until you had to wait one more year for the other title: It was kinda of saddening and frustrating.

..... Sorrow aside, the game can actually still be played today. You can find physical cartridges over Amazon if you got a gameboy advance to dust off or alternatively; you can pick up the game over the WiiU's virtual console, both titles actually. Though I would recommend against this, since the WiiU's virtual console does not allow Link Cable Battles or even the ability to transfer your game's save data from game 1 to game 2; it's still a method to play this classic.

Last note before I sign-off on the GBA Golden Sun. A cheat code!
Not a game breaking-infinite-life-like cheat code, but rather a fun one!
When you start a new game in Golden Sun and you get to the name input screen: Push [Select] 3 times.
If you did it right, the game will chime, allowing you to rename all of the playable characters in the game!

You can be immature, and name all of the characters something idiotic like (Deadpool, Oh sh*t, Mario, Batman)
Or name them after the Last Airbender Characters (Toph, Zuko, Anng,Kataraa)
Or name them after numbers and the whole game, the villagers wonder if that's your real name while also wondering how cruel your family really is.

Ciao!
 
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[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg
Gamecube, PC​

BILLY HATCHER AND THE GIANT EGG.... A game that's sort of overlooked and sort of for a niche crowd; though it's not really that bad as the title sounds.

The game kinda looks like something out of Sonic the hedgehog....and it sort of is since the Sonic team also developed this title for the Game Cube everywhere and PC out in Europe. You play as a young boy who has a nightmare involving Crows who have a love for the night, so they kidnap different Roosters or Chickens and shove them into eggs to seal them off. The, laugh if you want; I did, chicken deity or something another bestows you a 'chicken' suit to hatch these eggs and beat the crows.

From here there are levels you can visit which are colorful, both their nighttime and daytime times. The levels are designed pretty well with puzzles fruits and plenty of enemies to fight and bounce around along with plenty of eggs. If you have an egg, and are able to hatch it, you get a pet to help you out while you roll, bounce and fight with you next egg, whether it's a penguin with a water gun ability to harm enemies and put out fire or a fire dragon to burn down walls and let you get past them.

There's also a multiplayer mode where you can buddy up in some vs. matches whether you clug it out with eggs or hatch the most pet's first among other modes; it's actually kinda fun.

It's worth a play through if you got the time.

MY NEXT POST WILL BE ANOTHER ABANDONED TITLE THAT WAS ABANDONED BY MICROSOFT! By the original Xbox; a character abandoned for Halo and a game that's overlooked due to the master chief's destiny.
 
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Blinx The Time Sweeper
Xbox Original​

This is a game that was abandoned completely by Microsoft and I mean completely... Before I get into the game, I want to lay a little background.

The year is 2001, Christmas is roughly around the corner and your N64 is giving it's last hurrah or if your me, Your Dreamcast and your N64 are giving their last Hurrah; Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony are preparing to release the next generation of consoles to boggle your young gamer brain; The Xbox, Game Cube and the Sony Playstation 2. With the release of the consoles, they have their smug or kind, yet memorable characters. Playstation had Jak and Daxter or Rachet and Clank, Game Cube had Luigi's Mansion or Super Mario Sunshine and Xbox had Halo which they stole right out from underneath Apple.

You might be wondering 'Ok, so where does Blinx fit into this scene?' Blinx was suppose to be the character representing the Xbox console as a mascot; in fact, Microsoft went out of their way to try and represent their studio with this character to a point where they made a sequel with master's of time and space. However when the cards we're dealt and chips we're down and Halo sold more copies than Blinx, Microsoft had two choices; either double down on the time bending cat or leave him in the rain and embrace the heartless, badass super soldier who barely speaks a line. History with constant Halo Sequels speak for itself; as Microsoft did the latter and embraced Halo to where they now control your next Halo release on their console. To add insult to injury, they NEVER renewed their copyright to this series; any studio or indie developer can make a fan game and sell it off without having to fear Microsoft bringing them a take-down order! Kind of sad, but on the flipside if there we're indie developers willing to do a fun time warping game, they can use this fun guy.

The game itself is just as it sounds, It's a 3D Platforming time manipulation game where the objective of each level is get to the end. You pick up time crystals to perform a specific action of time control whether it's recording yourself a clone to do a specific action, rewinding time, fast forward, pause, it's pretty impressive with what you can do and the amount of though in some of the level's puzzles you have to think about in terms of time, like a being from the 4th dimension. The mechanic is a little faulty in the first game where you attain those powers, via the various powerups such as the stop power up or the pause powerup and so on; As such, to get the abilities, you need to collect 3 pause power-ups in a row per level to get a 'pause' charge to use to pause time and vice versa for every other power up. If you get a mix of power ups, you don't get a charge at all and have to start all over; THIS does get improved upon in the sequel, where you still have to get the power-ups, but it's less punishing for what you need and what you gather. How you fight enemies in the game is also creative, you are given a vaccum where you suck up items or trash and shoot it back at any badies, you can also upgrade your vaccum to hold more trash, gain better armor or health and so on. The story to the game is kinda surreal; Blinx works for the time factory along with other Blinx Clones... Well, Time duplicates I suppose. Time Factory picks up a time anomaly and they announce it over a giant TV screen and a girl is in trouble. The girl looks attractive to the one Blinx in particular and he goes to that timeline to save her.

The second game, everything is improved from the time control to some of the level and monster designs. In fact, with Halo on the rise, the studio attempted a multiplayer experience with the sequel and give you your own team of time duplicated Blinx's where you can modify how they look a little from their height to the color of their gear and bring this team into online multiplayer, Lan multiplayer or the single player campaign.

This is, quite literally, a fun game. It takes some time to wrap your mind around the mechanics, but it's incredibly playable. With Microsoft now claiming you can play the original Xbox games on their newest Xbox console, I recommend checking out any retro game shop you can look into and look up a copy or hit up Amazon.

If your an independant developer, I would pay to see another Blinx the time sweeper game.
 
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[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Mystical Ninja
Starring Goemon
Nintendo 64​

I've been shedding light on some games that most people have some familiarity, but let's go a little further off the radar on a game platform nearly EVERYONE has played on once in their life; Nintendo 64 and a title that could roughly be a close 3rd to a Legend of Zelda Mystical: Ocarina of Time, Mystical Ninja!

Mystical Ninja is an interesting title in the most extreme term I can describe it. You play as a band of warriors in Edo Era Japan who go on a quest to stop a traveling theater group from conquering Japan.... If that's not surreal enough, the story is just out there as if it was something out of a Japanese TV Game Show mixed in with Shonen Jump! Having to eat gold candy to have the ability to shrink, using a conch shell to summon a giant robot, attain a log called the Achilles Heel where you through it at some idiot guarding a door just so you can get past him... It gets up there in how weird it gets. That can be excused, mostly because the game was mostly made for kids out of Japan and the game is mostly a comedy-adventure to begin with; You would have to play through the game to understand what I mean.

The game play? It's.... actually interesting, especially when I mentioned it was a close 3rd to Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The game is a platformer with Hack and Slash mechanics with one main difference, there is no Z-targetting or lock-on when you out in the Overworld. Though this really isn't a bad thing, about 85% of all the enemies are big enough to smack or cut with your weapon, easy to kill until you reach later sections of the game so there isn't a need to Z-Target though there is a need to be aware of your surroundings. You start with 2 characters you can swap back and forth between; though you can find more to join your cause. There are also magic's you can learn to do all sorts of things in the game's overworld, such as shrink or become a sexy mermaid. Another mechanic in the gameplay is the mech; yes, you pilot a mech in this game and the entire view is from the cockpit when you fight a mech vs. mech, it's pretty awesome actually, though it will take some practice, but it's worth it.

Some of the downsides to the game are the constant need for cash; more or less to buy items before you enter a dungeon to get temporary hearts via Armor or pack up a lunch. You also need gold to pay for the games hints at the fortune teller, the inn to get some rest, you will need some gold and a little farming might be a wise thing to do before diving into a dungeon; though beating up baddies is fun in this one, so there really shouldn't be a problem with it.

If you can find the game and have an Old N64 hooked up that you still use, I recommend, highly, giving this game a look; you will need a memory card to keep a saved game, but with Amazon, flea markets and used game shops still in business somewhere in the world, that shouldn't be too much of a problem. I hope you enjoy what I did when I first played this game years ago for the first time.
 
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[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Lost Kingdoms I & II
GameCube​

Ladies and gent's, fans of Yu-Gi-Oh; I got a question for ya. Does Yu-Gi-oh have a card game where you can summon your monsters to partner up with you on a overworld field to fight alongside you and defend you? How badass would that be; have the dark magician or dark chaos magician, out of no where travel alongside you and using magics and weapons to fight with you..... There's no game like that? The closest we got is Dungeon Dice Monsters and Capsule Monsters?

Get your gamecube, travelers who read with me over these obscure games. This card game is fun but not much for the faint of heart. Lost Kingdoms is a card game and a incredibly interesting one. You play as a princess in both games from a dying or dead kingdom. In the kingdom's family, they pass down a runestone through the generations, given to them by their worlds deities or guardians, to give to their next of kin. On possession of the Runestone, they gain a deck of cards and use it to defend themselves against the coming onslaught of death and destruction. Cards where they can summon minions to move around and fight for you on the field. Cards that can heal you, cards where you can become the creature to attack or defend others, and cards to wipe the field of nearly everything.

The game itself does NOT play like a traditional TCG; When a battle runs, the monster's will try to come and kill you, you need to summon minions from your deck out of the cards in your hand to defend yourself or play spells to deal some damage. In the first game, it's not as apparent since the battles act out of random encounters and your deck doesn't replenish unless you reach a save point in the level. The same can be said for the sequel, but the battles aren't random encounters; they happen on the field as you get close and your minions stay out and follow you until they or you die. You are given a deck to begin with of roughly 25-30 cards and your expected to go buy you own or capture your own. You can grind cash for cards, gather monsters and build your deck to suit your playstyle with the battles both of the titles have; if you and a friend have a save on different memory cards, you can plug up the two and have a match with your decks against each other; which is kind of awesome though I never had the honor or attempt to actually do so.

If you can find it, I do recommend picking up this beauty of a title and playing it for fun; the story in the first, your a princess saving her kingdom from a mist that's consuming her kingdom and destroying it. In the second, you play as a descendant from the first game, tracking down a groupe of mercenaries causing people trouble while they make their own RuneStones; which is impossible in the games lore, so you set out to figure out why and stop them before they destroy more than what can be fixed. I recommend a play through or purchase if you can.
 
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[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding


Survival Kids
Game Boy Color​

SURVIVAL KIDS, is a game about... well, survival and it's one of the few games where you need to constantly keep on your toes because of the multiple endings that take place in the game!!!.... Yes, multiple endings; such as bad endings, good endings and in-between endings.....

The game's story begins on a ship where your father gives you a survival knife for your birthday; your ship then hits a massive storm and you arrive on the island. From ehre, you choose what happens next and it's kinda something like Skyrim in the sense. You explore the island, looking for food and goodies to keep you alive. There are plants that you have no idea what they do until you eat them and learn what each of them does; When you pick it up for the first time, like short grass, it will give a description like "???" After eating it and the effect kick in, it will probably read out something like this "Medicine, recover status aliases." Aside from this, you need to find a fresh source of water and large abundance of food to keep living.

As for multiple endings, without giving too much away, you can escape the island if that's your end goal and no, dying via lack of anything is not an ending. Whether it's to fix a radio that washed ashore to see if they're still searching for you and you make signs on the beach to say 'HEY! I'M HERE!', find another survivor and survive together or build your own escape. It's a pretty fun play through and you just need to play it yourself.

It's worth mentioning this game got a sequel out over in Japan; so there is some market for this, it even exist's in the DS with another survival Series 'Lost in Blue.' But that's for it's own post.
 
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Ephemeral Fantasia
Playstation 2​

This is a title that I have actually forgotten about for a LONG time and it's actually kinda of a fun game.

The story to Ephemeral Fantasia is that your a thief who doubles as a famous musician, known as the phantom musician. You play music to earn gold and get your way into ritzy gigs and steal from the richest people who hired you along with your partner, a living-talking guitar who doubles as a sword. You are invited to an island kingdom to perform for a prince's wedding, on arrival; you give a demonstration of your skills to the prince and are invited to the wedding that happens in 5 days. While you make your plans to rob the guy, your invited around the island to watch the performance of different rituals before the princess can be married and at the end of the 5 days. On the wedding day when you perform, you're double crossed by the prince as he comes out to kick your ass and the week starts over.

The prince is a powerful mage that decided to keep his island in a constant time loop to relive his wedding over and over again, mostly for the lulz. The only people aware of the loop are himself, the princess, the ferryman who dumps you off on the island; which after your first week he kicks you off the ship like he's in a hurry and you. You are spared the fate from the time loop and decide that you want payback, so you go around the island gathering clues and allies that you release from the loop in an attempt to kick the mage into next week in the literal sense.... Or rather, break the time loop so you can leave in peace.

The game is reminiscent of Majora's Mask from Legend of Zelda where you are looped back after so many days to prevent a terrible fate and the game includes some elements of a traditional RPG and Guitar Hero... Before you ask on the later element, you can plug up a guitar for the Playstation 2 and play the guitar in the game in the literal sense. In fact; for you Guitar Hero Enthusiasts out there who pick up this obscure title, It's highly recommended. The earlier songs are easy to play with the exception of the wedding song, that's kinda difficult to perform, even on a standard controller. I had fun playing the game as the theif who got screwed out of his gig and heist and I can understand the want for revenge and the need to escape the island's time loop. The character's you release are well written in term's of story and their backstories are believable; tracking them down and releasing them from the loop is a challenge; in fact, one of the characters can only be released within the first 2-3 loops of the game, you will need a guide for it to figure out how to release them; but it's pretty much worth it.

If I had any Nit-Picks about the title, it's the graphics are too rough and low-defined for it's time. Even in the early 2000-2001 when this game was released, we had games like Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy and that was a plat-former with models and graphics that fit the console and was more highly defined.

Well, the counter to this problem of why it is like it is, believe it or not, the game was originally intended for the Dreamcast, one of my favorite consoles. In fact, playing the game again, all of the graphics look like they came directly from the Dreamcast. Everything! The models, the model's animation; the game itself is basically a re-release of itself for the Dreamcast! Why? After a little digging, I discovered it was originally slated to go to the Dreamcast; though development and Konami saw the rise of the Playstation 2, scrapped the build for the dreamcast and took all of the assets and rewrote it to put on a Playstation 2. They didn't even bother to clean up or remodel the graphics to go on a higher cutting-edge console; they just threw it on there and expected it to sell... It's kinda disheartening. I can't vouch if this was a Konami move or if the developers decided to do this; because it's understandable in their position in the time period this game was released. N64, PS1 and Dreamcast we're hitting their expiration date and the next big thing was coming; as a developer, you have to decide whether to rewrite and release your game with the assets and everything finished on the newest console or release it now for a failing one that may never give you the revenue you we're expecting back from it.

We see the results of decision and it's another RPG, underrated and lost to time. If you see a copy, I recommend picking it up or giving it a try.
 
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[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Pulsar: Lost Colony
PC​

Do we have any fan's of Star Trek on board the ship into obscure video games? This is a game you don't really want to skip out on if possible.

Pulsar is a 'Star Trek' -ish simulator in the traditional FPS style that encourages teamwork from real physical players. 1 Player needs to be the captain to help manage money, peaceful negotiations with star ports and control some of the more 'captiany' functions of the ship. Another Play needs to be a pilot, another a science officer to heal and scan items, a tech officer to blow things up and install ship mods and so on and so forth.

The game has 2 perspectives, either you can work for some form of federation or you can work as a space pirate for hire and you are given quests to go and perform... If your me and found quest's boring, you got into character as captain and probably went off like this to all of the players who joined your game , "Men and Women aboard the current ship; It has come to my attention that command has not complied to my demands for a tiki-bar to be built right into the hull of the ship to pick up females or males for those with different tastes. It has also come to my attention that they cut our pay due to the space station being blown to bits right outside our window; which is why, as of now, we are commandeering this vessel to be the 'S.S. Kahn!' fly around aimlessly in space and blow up everything we come across, steal it's stuff and live out the rest of our lives as space pirates..... Those who disagree or wish to perform mutiny, The airlock is 3 floors down, try not to get blood or slobber on my ships shiny door as I jettison you over the next sun we warp close too." From there, the game was a blast.

Actually, what convinced me to try this game out in the first place was this review written by one of the player's in the Steam Workshop! Which is conveniently located here.
Spoiler:


The downsides to the game, when first playing is that the learning curve is kinda steep. Before you actually play the game, your better off setting up a solo game and trying each role out for yourself to see which class or job does what and who can do things faster than the other. A prime example; first game where I decided to act like a pirate, we we're getting use to the ship controls, I had to figure out the ship's captain controls for setting up red alert, yellow, all clear and so on while also buying things for the crew such as ship upgrades and handling our share of pirate booty or funds that we could spend at merchants.... The whole process roughly took anywhere between 5-30 minutes, more or less figuring out which action did which. Ship engineers had it worse; having to figure out when to dump the core on the ship when we used too much power to overheat and learning how to divvy up power to other functions of the ship, such as taking power from life support and adding it to Science bay increased the rate we could heal while in science bay but cut off our air, which we needed to live or we would loose more HP than what we would gain back.

Another con or flaw in my personal taste's are the models.... I mean they look.... primitive. I know it's an indie game, and you can customize the face set you have on board as apart of the crew, but the face set's aren't even that good.... or good-ish. I mean, I can't model worth jack and if that's the developers current ability to do models, I can understand and let it slide, though I kinda wish there was a helmet option other than to use the space suits onboard the ship.

THESE flaws aside, this is actually a fun Co-Op game. You can play by yourself, the game gives the option to add bots to help balance and manage the ship to allow single player, however this is a game better played with friends or people who just want to have fun; whether going out into space and doing the games quest's or acting like I did and just went fighting and gallivanting for the lulz.

Note: If you read about the Space Pumpkins in the review Spoiler, bought the game and ask where the pumpkins are; the review was written a long time ago when the developers decided to add something for the game to be more festive during Christmas, Thanksgiving and Halloween.... what they came up with was a festive and colorful space pumpkin.
 
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[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Evoloution: World of Sacred Machine
Dreamcast, Gamecube​

This is another RPG that's out there in the left field and is one of the few-er RPG's made for the Gamecube... I mean there wasn't that many turn-based RPG's made for the gamecube; I looked. Largest library of RPG's with turn based mechanics I could find was Skies of Arcadia, Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean, Paper Mario and the thousand year door and this hefty title. There are probably more I haven't mentioned yet; though, again, the library of RPG's on the Gamecube of what I could find was pretty short.

The game's story? Your a kid, belonging to a well renown family of diggers/archeologists whose parent's disappeared one day and you meet a young, mute, girl who arrives on your doorstep with a note from your father that states to take care of her and watch after her on that same day..... And an outstanding loan for the expedition they left out on and the foundation that funded them expects you to pay back or they'll reposes your home as collateral. You then go and be a digger/archelogist yourself; going into dungeons and getting artifacts in unexplored areas of these dungeons to sell to pay off the family debt while figuring out where they went and protecting your new girl friend or regular friend, however you perceive it.

Now for the interesting bit's to this game. First off, your main weapon is a fist.... I mean, look at the arm in the box art. That thing punches, throws lightning and all sorts of fun stuff, it's not a sword or an axe, but just a fist.... If you haven't noticed, most traditional RPG's have fisticuffs, swords, hammers, bows and arrows, but a robot fist strapped to your back to punch with... That's kinda awesome. In fact, all of the characters who join your part in this game have their own personalities and energy to them and each of them have a unique weapon or ability to help fend for themselves that your better off just playing to take a closer look at it. The weapons can be modified to be stronger or inflict status effects and you can find these upgrades nearly laying around everywhere in the dungeons. The way the dungeons work in this title? They are randomly generated! Rouge-Like! No 2 floors are the same and the rooms generate treasure's, monsters, anything and everything to help or hinder your progress along with traps and shortcuts to skip a few floors.... at the cost of some health.

As far as gameplay goes; it's a standard RPG with some position based elements, like being close to a sniper enemy, the sniper can't hurt you that much where as aboss monster looking to eat you will do everything in it's power to draw you in. The Spells and abilities your learn each have their own animations which are fun to watch like the 'Mach Punch' where you basically move fast enough that your body bends to light temporarily to punch your opponent at high speeds or your butler getting infront of the enemy and damaging them with insults; which I have no idea how he could do that, but it's kinda fun to see.

If I had to mention any Con's; it's that if you play this game on the Dreamcast, they separated the game into 2 halves like they did with golden sun, there's a Part 1 and Part 2 to the game sold separately and need both disk's to get the full story which is hard to get in on it's own if your a Dreamcast gentleman or woman. Game Cube, however, took a different route and shoved both halves of the game onto the one disk. I recommend hunting the Gamecube version down to get both sides of the game if you intend to play it. If your looking to collect, I recommend hunting down the Dreamcast copies as they will be more difficult to find.... except on Amazon.

If you can find it cheap, I recommend picking it up and giving it a run; you may enjoy it like I did.
 
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

PC​

Lately I've been posting some family friendly-ish content..... HERE'S SOME HORROR BASED CONTENT!

Dusker's is a game that I would love to see either Markplier or Jackscepticeye play for 2 reasons. First of all, while the game has no jump scares, there are horror based elements that can force the player to think twice about their actions and second, what you have to explore and gather in the game to survive.

In Dusker's, your a pilot/hacking gent who has control of 3 drones and your out in a chunk of space that was recently laid bare; in the literal sense too. There are mining platforms and ships all across the first sector your in and when you send your probes in on one to gather resources such as fuel or scrap for parts, you also gather data or personal journals or logs and slowly uncover what happen to the station's and ships that kill all of the humans, set the ships security to kill everything on sight and why this all happened to begin with.

The game does get darker from what I played, but here are a few spiffy notes to this game.

First of all, when you enter a ship, your view is only based on the Drones and what the drones have equipped, if they have a headlight equipped, then they can see walls among other stuff on the ship itself, including precious resources you would have otherwise missed. Your view is based on these drones and loosing even one can put a strain on your ability to survive. The ships are loaded with dangers for each one you probe, you are given your proper tools to avoid those dangers or cloak and sneak past them; but unless you can keep those tools in working order, they will break mid probe or mission and they will look for you.

You can control 1 drone at a time, or you can use the games built in console to send simple commands to all of the drones at once; which is hand when you want to make a hasty retreat to write in the line of code to move all drones back to your ship and take off. This same console is also used to hack the ships you dock with to open doors and use your radar or tools, it's tedious, but you get the hang of it.

If your up for a space thriller with a good mystery, I recommend checking this one out.
 
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

The Dig
PC​

There is another game genre I've been neglecting mostly because telltale controls the market with 'choose your own adventure set in this popular IP' games and I'm having some trouble trying to find some more mature content than the family friendly stuff than what I have my hands on now.

WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF POINT'N'CLICK GAMES!!! Or rather, the world where the choose your own adventure could lead you to your own death in about roughly 7 minutes if you tried to solve a puzzle the way the puzzle makers didn't intend. The Dig is not one of those types of puzzle games but it does have a good ending and a bad one if your clever enough, but it is a fun play through of Science Fiction an the story is just....well, 'Marvelous' I guess.

The game's story centers around 3 astronauts who are tasked with a mission to fly to an asteroid the size of 'insert country or state here.' This chunk of stone was heading towards earth until it just 'stopped' in mid space. They send a shuttle to blow it it up and hope to move the Asteroid debris out of Earth's flight path, though after the explosives fail, it reveals an alien 'temple' inside. After messing with a few metal plates, the Asteroid turns into a giant glass-light based crystal and leaves earth's orbit to some other unknown chunk of the galaxy with the 3 astronauts inside. You're now on an alien world with technology more advanced than what you understand; Ship's constructed of light, creatures unearthly from what you understand and.... the world or where you land is incredibly barren. None of the aliens that built THAT ship are to be found, not even skeletons; it's almost bizarre. From here, you attempt to explore the world you've landed in and try to understand it's technology so you can create a ship to leave the planet or become victim to what the race had become victim too.

Something else worthy of note is most of the games cut scenes such as the shuttle launch, the arrival among other scene are animated; not in terms of sprite animation, but traditional hand-drawn animation like Dragons Lair or Space Ace. Another small fact I discovered while doing a little research, Steven Spielberg wanted to make a movie based on this game's story based on a TV show he watched called 'Amazing Stories' however the movies production would be incredibly expensive so he had to shelve it until a few developers came along and wanted to make it into a game. The game is up on Steam and it's worth a playthrough if you like puzzle games with a story and some pretty good animation on a distant world far from home.
 
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GAME NUMBER 55!.... After counting the games I and other's have posted along with more to come, there really is some form of market here for these obscure titles and love out there for the ignored.

[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Revolt
PC, Android, iOS, PlayStation, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, Linux​

Alright ladies and gem's, I have a treat for you. Who here is tired of Mario Kart for the N64?.... No? Ok, fair enough; but would you like to play a mario kart game where every driver was an RC car that some how gained sentience to just want to 'RACE' via lightning and have never been seen since?! That's the story of Revolt and you could probably only read that in the manual.

The game has no real story; but this game has a bigger cult follow than Magi-Nation and you could also claim it's roughly on par with Rocket League in terms of Fun Factor.

Int he game, you race as an RC car; any in the library of cars you have access too. You unlock more cars by completing races, earning trophies and so on. No big deal, right? Well, here's the cool part. The game has so many things that either be unlocked or attained through mods that pretty much amps up the fun factor. Example I suppose; in a standard Gran Prix, your facing off roughly about 8-12 other RC cars at once. There is a mode that can be unlocked in the game where you can race as one of the miniature cars from the games main menu and once you unlocked that mode, your racing up to 40 different RC cars all minitaurized.... THAT'S INSANE and a quite humerous race to actually pull off. The race tracks you race on are actually fun and creative; There's a neighborhood with balls being bounced around as if kids we're plaing in the street, houses to race through, obstacles such as buckets and what not to avoid. There's a museum where the starting line is basically a red security laser, your tripping the alarm 3 times while your racing through and so on!

Once your done racing all of the tracks, you can make your own. The game comes with it's own track editor across all platforms with the exception of the Android and iOS devices. You can build your own track's with the track editor, setup the powerups and go have fun on your own.

With the mention of the track editor, here's where things get a bit more interesting. For the PC version, the modding community behind revolt have come up with their own editor and created their own outrageous tracks with parts that the track editor never included such as loop-to-loops, boost pads and just so amny different places they have built. Tracks not your thing? Take it a step further and race in a custom car made by the community, Race as Bender's head from that one futurama episode where he sold his body or as lightning mcqueen from pixar's Cars and have him crash on purpose for the lulz! Or just pick a classic car if your into the old vehicles and race as that instead, you can create your own custom vehicles is the short answer and make them to be anything you want if you know your hand around modeling ok and don't mind editing text files. There are new tracks and cars STILL being produced today!

Tired of Racing, there are battle tracks for the sake of fighting though these games are reserved for the multiplayer end; the developers could never create the AI properly to fight other players.... Still, to add an option, you could argue this is where the developers of Rocket League got inspiration to develop 'Super Sonic Acrobatic Rocket Powered Battle Cars' before the moved onto their next RC project 'Rocket League' which now has it's own E-League of gamers...

Last feature to this I can mention up front is, for some reason; they allow you to change the games physic's based on what platform you play it on.... This is only available for the PC version of what I seen so far; but you can make the physics realistic, based on a games console and so on. It's nothing much, but I can see the appeal to it for more seasoned gamers in games like Mario Kart.

The game's modding community went out of their way to create their own patched EXE so you can run the PC version of Revolt on newer computers.... which is kinda badass in it's own right to show how much love for this classic RC title has.

You can find the game for PC for free here if your up to try it out yourself.
https://www.revoltrace.net/downloads.php

NOW the other note to this game, more related to the Android side and iOS..... I would recommend avoiding them. The control isn't anything worth writing home about and while Revolt's sequels are on these platforms, they're just recycling both tracks AND cars from the first Revolt while adding a couple new cars, which is the easiest thing you can do in the first Revolt; tracks a little harder but if your saying it's a sequel, there needs to be newer content than the cars they added. To top it off; if anyone remembers what I talked about Mobile gaming being nothing more but a pay wall; the newer revolts are just that. You have a battery of 'races' you can do, can only race so many times in the day, once the battery is out, you have to pay to recharge it or get 'good' power ups or better cars... It's developers like this that have soured Revolt for me in the permanent sense that I have avoided the Mobile port to ignore it; it's not worth a moment or even a minute of your time and that's saying a lot.
 
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Never Ending Light
PC
Play the game here!​

Alright; Another form of video games that haven't been touched on; FLASH GAMES!.... Well; THIS flash game in particular. To explain a little to the younger generation: Flash is slowly becoming, if it already isn't, obsolete. Yet with flash, you had the ability to animate, make cool looking effects on websites and of course, create video games. You had thousands of sites that would promote flash games that you would probably play on the schools computer other than learning because learning was boring and even then for most American kids; school never properly taught you how to prepare for life such as how to pay taxes, rent or bills... THAT aside; Flash games we're also mostly easy to create; more easier to create than making games in Game Maker whatever version they promote now and I mean EASY; There we're complicated things in terms of scripting, but it was still an easy process.... Moving on before I get stuck teaching more about old computer history.

There we're a bunch of Flash games that we're actually awesome to play through, such as Bloons before it became a Mobile game on your Iphone and Android tablet or Detective Grimoire before it was remade for computers and I would want to play a sequel to that. There is one game however that I remember, even in my age that left an impact on me for it's pseudo horror elements and music that accompanied it with some minor comedy elements; Never Ending Light.

In the game; you play as a guy who is brought along on a tour into a cave by your girlfriend as a birthday gift. As you enter the depths beneath the earth on an elevator, they do a demonstration where they cut the lights to show how pitch black true darkness can be. (If you go on any Cave Tours, this is sort of to be expected and it can be kinda fun, no matter your age.) The lights go out and your girlfriend makes out with you, when they try to turn the lights back on, they don't come back on. The guide thinks there's a technical difficulty so she grabs her flashlight to lead you back to the elevator though the moment she does, a creature pops out of now where and kills her straight off. Your now trying to escape cave.

I won't go into much more details because this is just a game you need to play for yourself. The elements this game incorporates are woven brilliantly, the aspect and stress to escape can be felt as your trying to find your way around in the darkness and play through this tale. It's just something that we really just an experience to play through. There's very little wrong to give this game a con about with the exception of the graphics a little bit. Though to be fair, this game released back in 2009 and Flash was still on it's rise before it's decent so some exceptions can be given. Especially since this was roughly the idea of an Independent title.

If you decide to play this game; there's something I want to mention. You'll notice at the title page for the game, it's "1 of 3." The developers behind this game never released a 2 of 3 or anything else. Even the gentlemen behind the game never came back to even work or produce a sequel. To this day, there are mentions about this game over forums, reddit posts and even a WIKIA page devoted to this game where fans of the first title played this and asked about the game and wanted to know what would be in the sequel. There have been people offering to do voice work all the way up to now for those who tracked down the original creator to offer it up and yet he still doesn't want to make it.

This is just a game similar to Half-Life 3 except the reasons of why it's not made are different. Galf Life 3 isn't being made because Steam makes enough money as is. This isn't being made because the developer just simply doesn't want too. Don't get me wrong if there are any who find information that the guy wants to make it and so on, this game is reaching the age of 9 and it's running on an obsolete platform that you still need to pay royalties too to just even animate with the software... And even then, it's questionable if your newer browser will still run it. My point being is; if there hasn't been an update for this long nor even concept work and the reply from the developer is 'I'll think about it.' Then he's given up.

This then becomes another game in obscurity; and I wanted to bring some 'light' to it. No pun intended.
 
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[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon
PC​

Alright dear readers of the obscure, I want to talk about another small, personal favorite of mine in terms of obscure video games. 'Treasure Planet: Battle at the Procyon.'
Before I get any groans from anyone on movie video games either being good or not good; I want to say up front, I completely agree with you mostly because when the game is developed, the developers either have seen the movie or don't see the movie and try to build a video game around it. Either they have to invent story to expand on the movie some because; though the movie was about 1-2 hours of media content, you could probably breeze through that in about roughly 50 minutes and ask what else is there? Other times, the developers do this for a quick buck; if you watched AVGN episodes and his constant war path with LJN games, then you know what I mean. Heck, the Treasure Planet for the PS2, the 3D platformed was nothing more but a clone of another popular game for the PS2, JAK.... Just done poorly.

However, this is a game based on a movie Disney pretty much didn't want nothing to do with. This title's story takes place AFTER the events of the treasure planet movie. Jim Hawking, now an admiral captain on board his own ship, leading his own crew after recently graduating and is given an assignment to investigate a group of pirates attacking and raiding local ports and villages. From here, you see Iron clad ships that have appeared from nowhere while able to fly/sail through the nebula where solar sail ships are rendered useless and start attacking and raiding everyone and the whole game's plot evolves from here.

The majority of the game is nothing more but ship battles, not a platformer. You get your own ship, you have to buy and upgrade your own weapons with your own load out. Recruit your crew from gunners to helmsman to engine operations, you have the ability to set courses and locations to attack, you setup your ships speed and just compete in old-fashion naval battles and so on. To be blunt; the game isn't even complicated being a naval/pirate aged game; in fact, the controls are easy to grasp and while it takes some time to understand how to make the tight turns and how ship combat works, the whole game is actually an enjoyable experience. You see what happens to Jim, where his choices take him and if he see's Silver again. You learn a little or rather a mentioning about the race who built the tech used for treasure planet; the whole game is for lack of a better word, a sequel to one of the Disney underrated film's Treasure Planet. For a movie game; this is actually playable.

The multiplayer is also... Roughly function-able. Disney shut-down the multiplayer server for this title years ago; though there have been work around's to play the game over LAN and via Tunngle or Hamachi.

You can actually pick up this Disney title over Steam for about $10 if your interested if you search for it.
 
I do apologize for this post for no new title into this list and quick reviews of games that either deserve some form of last hurrah or credit; I have some more spare time to ask that if I went on to make Youtube video's on these abandoned beauties; would anyone be willing to watch them? It may even help generate and expand the search of other games to track down.

Next game I post will be a ways off the radar and deal with Samurai's.
 
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Samurai Legend Musashi
PS2
Developed by Square Enix​

Going old school in terms of Samurai combat; this was a game that was reviewed and punished hard over it's Camera and Graphic style used while others in terms of reviewers either praised combat or felt it was too easy... I then say 'hold my beer,' go fetch a video by Dunkey where he rants at people who do game reviews for a living and how much garbage each of them have caused to hinder a games progress in the market, keeping it from finding a home or at least a place to be played.

Going into the game when you start out, your a slightly nude kid falling out of the sky like a comet crashing towards Earth with an old weapon clenched in your hand. With no memory of who you are, you are raised and trained by a kung-fu cat.... or Weapon Master Cat until you spot a girl being taken against her will and you give chase after her and the rest of the game evolves from here where you rescue her and include more anime tropes than you can shake a stick at.

The games presentation is actually incredibly awesome, the art style is something you would see out of a traditional manga from the thick outlines over the characters you fight down to the word bubbles you see in any traditional manga. The combat works incredibly well with your standard hack and slash mechanics and being able to run around jump about as if you we're in a platformer; There are even Combos like you would see in a fighting game, each with their own effects and uses that you can either buy OR steal by learning from your opponents..... I'm not kidding about that last tidbit. From what I've played, each enemy in this title has some combo or skill individually you can learn from them if you can time your actions while focusing on them alone, which to actually survive this game, you'll need to learn some stuff from these things from your opponents. Some combos you learn from them are handy to deal a lot of damage while other combos can help you dodge and get behind your opponent.

If I had any real major complaints; I have to agree with the reviews from sites such as Game Spy or Gamespot at the time when they said the game's Camera is terrible.... And I agree with them. The Camera when your in the outdoors is great, you can see what's around you and have the ability to dodge your death being handed to you. When you get into an enclosed space such as a cave or a tunnel, then your Camera is just..... bad. It's hard to get a grasp of your bearings and combat is a little more difficult; still it doesn't take away from the game's overall charm and still has some replay ability to this day; If you can stomach some of the hokey Anime-Manga Acting from the early 2000's.

If you can move past those flaws; you have a rough gem in the same artistic Vein as Okami... Where Okami's art style is in literal use of a scroll, ink and brush; this game is in pen and ink with comic-manga tones and shading. For an attempt at a platformer from Square Enix, this is actually kind of impressive and I recommend giving it a playthrough at least once or rather give it a chance. It really is fun.
 
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[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Wonder Boy
in
Monster World
Sega Genisis, Sega Master System​

This is a series that isn't that very well known; granted, you have people who look at Wonder Boy: Dragon's Curse and probably have played it on their current consoles and PC's with those updated hand drawn graphics... Which is kinda awesome; even giving you the ability to use your password from the original game to pick up your place, that's a whole other level of backwards compatibility in of itself!

But for those who have played Dragon's Curse, beat it and wonder if that's it or if there was more?.... In that same style?.. SADLY NO! But; I do want to shed light on what helped spark Dragon's Trap, because if you googled it, Dragons Trap was Wonder Boy 3. Wonder Boy started in Monster World.

Wonder Boy in Monster World is, I guess for lack of a better term, is a better version of Zelda 2: Link's Adventure on the NES... For those who can get by Zelda 2 and consider that a classic; awesome, I just didn't have much fun having my hands and other body part's handed to me on an 8-bit platter every 30 minutes, even after going to towns, healing and coming back to 'git gud.' You begin the game as a kid who just wants to fight monster's and kill the source that's plaguing the land with them... You then pick up a sword and go on an adventure; that's pretty much it. You get your first spell, you learn you can only cast it so many times per day until you rest at an Inn, you learn you can get bigger weapons, earn cash from creatures you beat up and have to learn how to get close and back off in battles when you learn to fight. You find allies who will hang around you until you die or rest at the inn, buy potions to recover your health mid fight- I could go on, but I would rather the player or reader find out everything themselves. The game's graphics are colorful, there are a wide variety of enemies with different behaviors you have to watch and figure out where they'll move next, where they spawn, there are towns you can rest in and gear you can purchase as you explore the massive world without a map to save your World from the Monster's t hat cause it's chaos...

If you into a new challenge and want to give the earliest game in the series a shot; it's available on Steam and there's the ability to add mods to this old Title; Sega Re-vamped their Mega Drive collection and the features for it by... Well, a lot. They've given you a massive 3D space with a Sega Genesis and a CRT TV with a wood shelf to contain all the Sega Games you bought from Steam along with a clock on the wall where you can manipulate the time the room is in; Crack of dawn 6AM or 8PM evening with the crickets outside chirping for ambience. If you head over to the wood shelf, there is an option to play the games with your favorite Rom Hack and there exists a Steam Workshop for game mods; to give more idea on the kind of mods available, someone went ahead and made a mod to play the original Cave Story on the Sega Genesis.... And a Smash Bros. Rip-off, which isn't that good, but it's still a good effort. XD

Sega really deserves some love. Even after the Dreamcast failed, Sega support's it's fans through and through. Gathering the top programmers who developed fan games to come together and develop Sonic Mania and one fan working on the Spartan Console Project; which is suppose to be Dreamcast 2 or whatever they name it. They're developing a new IP even to promote out here in the west; it shows some news they're getting on their feet somehow. Let's hope they get there all the way.
 
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Touch Detective
Andriod, iOS, DS, 3DS​

A personal favorite among the point and click game's I've come across and this title is second to my top personal favorite.... Well, this series; Touch Detective. This is a DS title that has probably been heard about from a Nintendo Power or game informer, but noone probably never bothered picking it up to really play or ask what it was about... since a large chunk of the DS library we're Point and Click's or at least a handful of them, good ones too like Time Hollow or Hotel Dusk.... Actually, those are barely touched on today; I should probably get back to those at some point as their own po- MOVING ON.

In touch Detective, you play as a young girl who works as a detective in an attempt to get noticed by the detective society to earn more work as a detective and gain more fame to your family's name. How you get the name touch detective... I'd rather the player figure out for themselves other than using their touch screen to 'touch' things. There are a couple things about this title that sort of give it; it's own charm and it's own tale or feel; first off being the setting of where the little girl lives. The whole town; including her parental guardian butler are just off the wall 'strange.' The butler who works for you is an inventor who uses an 'Iron Maiden' as his bed, you best friend has a disturbing love of banana's, Ghost's run the haunted house as a tourist attraction, the landlord of the local apartments is a bird who appears to be the most sane out of everyone and your main villain is a cornstalk.... Not literally, just some guy who dresses up as a stalk of corn and considers you his rival... I mean, come on... The surreal nature of this town and it's characters are one of the defining aspects to the game and you as the observer observing it; it's hard to not know what goes through everyones head.

Your probably also going to ask me, ok; everyone is weird, so what? Does that mean because everyone has some form of fault that the cases are also easier to solve because you know what they are?... Not entirely. The cases you deal with in the game are just as bizarre as your citizens, a handful are straight forward though still in their own little world, but they are also down to earth to grasp.... I guess for example, one of the cases you are dealt in the second game is that your best friend had her 'noodles' or pasta stolen and replaced with white one's... It's a bizarre case in the sense why would the thief go out of their way to steal noodles only to replace them? You don't know who it is, or why they have done it so you go to investigate why. Another case being that your best friend had her dream stolen from her; you have to go on a quest to figure out how that dream got stolen and who did it... So on and so forth.

Which leads the the next to last element of what make's this game enjoyable to play through; the puzzles.... Which are incredibly annoying over their difficulty. Understand that in any point and click, most puzzles are pretty straight forward while you have others you need to think about or require the aide of a guide. This game might require the aide of a guide because most of the puzzles can't be solved or done unless you hit a switch in-game. Not a switch you can move or touch, but an event... Such as; you go to a door and see a complicated lock but the character doesn't know how to open it. You have to go find a character in game to tell you how to solve the lock before you can go back and unlock the thing yourself.... Same thing goes for a handful of the puzzles in this series that's hard to grasp on; If you can solve the game without a guide and somehow caught onto it's humor, then your more brilliant than I am and I tip my skull hat in my Avatar to you.

Once your done solving all of the game's cases, there is another mode you can play through naturally where you can walk about the game outside of normal game play and interact with the denizens of the game's world. Some have mini quests where you need to use you detective skills to beat a couple kids at Hide and Seek or talk to people who you've helped before after the case finished and see what happens to them afterwards. So there's a little more in the game to go through with a little more extra content on the side, sort of like the mash potatoes to a steak dinner or rice to your hibachi meal.

If the game sounds good and interesting to you, you may ask why has it not gotten much attention in the USA? If your like me in my early years, you looked at Touch Detective, thought it was another type of game that wouldn't fulfill whatever money I spent on it and was focused on getting the next pokemon game or the new Metroid Hunters that was coming out.... More or less, I don't think it sold very well in the USA to spark or warrant a sequel to be published out here.... OVER IN JAPAN however, the game has multiple sequels, the cartridge case above the post should prove it; 2-3 different arcade like games for the DS and 3DS and probably has it's own anime series.... It kinda makes me sad, I want to play these games and see what kind of zany cases the Heroine takes on.

Well readers, maybe we can still try to help spark SOME interest. If you want, the game is up on Android and iOS and you can pick them both up for free and play through the first case or 2 for free. If you like the game and it's Zany nature, there's a pay wall where you can purchase both cases at once or one at a time and beat the rest of it on your own terms..... I'm normally against pay walls; but for a title like this, I recommend it.
 
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[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Our Darker Purpose
PC​

Folk's who read about obscure games, and I still hope to hear from multiple people about other games tossed out of the light, I want to talk about a game I have searched for ages so much that I joined OnePlay in an attempt to track it down.... only to be treated with the middle finger of not getting the previous account from Indie Royale back so I had to attempt other measures and discovered I also picked it up over humble bundle. Understand that when I say 'searched' I spent over several hours looking for this game, in the back of my mind, I remember the premise and the story, I even played it, but I could NEVER remember the title. Like Consuming Shadow, this is another title that's easy to forget and this is a game lost to time nearly that I want to give a little credit to. INTO THE BREACH AND OFF THE RADAR~ I introduce you to 'Our Darker Purpose.'
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Our Darker Purpose center's around a little girl, growing up in a home for 'lost children' or an orphanage. Your living basic life, eating gruel until one day, the head of the place or care taker disappears. She goes missing for weeks in fact and the children start getting hungry and a bit more primal; loud and tougher kids become the high end of the food chain as the start resorting to cannibalism and end up killing most of the younger, weaker and more timid children with the exception of you. Facing death, something within you 'unlocks' and you can suddenly use Pyrokinesis and spew balls of fire from your finger tips at will. You then start searching the home for the care taker while disposing of the other children who would want to kill you for various reasons.

The game itself is like a title out of a Tim Burton Film if he wanted to switch from developing movies to developing video games. Each of the levels are randomly generated, thus earning their moniker for rouge-like and each game is always different. There are barely any similar levels, though I do want to point out that this game is incredibly hard. It's hard along the vein of 'The Binding of Issac,' and while there are 'level up' mechanics for each enemy you fight, they only give so much of a boost; everything else, you have to have some constant practice, patience and the skill developed for a game like this to survive later floors or later levels. I never could get to the end of this game, either because I lacked the skill or I lacked the luck to get the proper buffs in between levels and lacked the strategy to pull it off.

After some more digging, I started looking up and discovered the game got greenlit over on steam before Steam Greenlight bit the dust.
You can find the original site here: https://www.ourdarkerpurpose.com/wp/
You can also find the Steam Page here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/262790/Our_Darker_Purpose/

... Next Time, I'm posting something from survival games. Or at least something from a certain series.
 
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