Hi. Anybody still out there? It’s been a minute, eh? Life happens, and suddenly it has been quite some time since the last post.

However, sometimes, just when the world is getting to be too much, a metaphorical hand descends from the clouds with a wonderfully wholesome, addictive puzzle game for you to get lost in for a few days. In this case, that game is Freshly Frosted - a sugar and pastel-filled puzzle game about topping and delivering donuts.

I’ve been sucked into the game recently, and you get to hear all about it.

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Faraday Protocol is a first-person puzzle game centered around an archeologist, Raug Zeekon, from the planet Cunor. Raug has been sent to investigate a mysterious signal. Shortly after arriving at a set of mysterious pyramids - called OPIS - Raug stumbles on the “Bia Tool” - a gun that can absorb and expel energy. He must use this tool to navigate a series of increasingly-complex circuit-based puzzles and to uncover the secrets of the OPIS complex.

I sat down with the Switch version of Faraday Protocol. Read on for my impressions.

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I’ve always had a soft spot for the Sam & Max series - point & click adventure games about a canine detective and his best pal, a megalomaniacal rabbity thing. I played the original, part of the legendary LucasArts lineup of the 90s, over and over again. Then, when Telltale Games brought back the duo as the stars of three “seasons” of episodic games, the episodes became part of a ritual where my future wife and I would sit around a CRT computer screen on Friday nights and play through them. I have really fond memories of playing each episode as they came out.

After Telltale closed down a couple of years back, a group of former developers - under the banner of Skunkape Games - bought the rights to the original games. These developers have been working to release all three seasons on modern systems, with a huge range of improvements to the controls, graphics, and audio. The remastered first season, Sam & Max Save the World, was release last winter - where it made the first winter of lockdown a tiny bit more bearable.

Now, one year later, the second season - Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space - has been released on PC, Xbox, and Switch. I have spent some time with the Switch release. Read on for my impressions.

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We live now in the era of the remaster, where older games are released for new audiences with a fresh coat of paint - often updated to appear sharp on an HD display. Often, this treatment has been applied to games that came out one or two generations ago, bringing early 3D games into the modern era.

Advanced Busterhawk Gleylancer is an interesting outlier in this trend. This 1992 shoot-em-up was originally released in Japan for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, and did not make it into other parts of the world until 2008, when it appeared on the Wii Virtual Console. Even then, the surprisingly-long story scenes were in Japanese.

Now, Ratalaika Games has re-released Gleylancer on basically every modern system - translated into English, and with HD visuals.

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In every medium - movies, books, even games - there are those mad geniuses whose names elicit an immediate reaction. Their works aren’t always good, but they are always damn interesting. You’ve probably heard some of these names - Suda51, Swery65, Hideo Kojima.

Yoshiro Kimura doesn’t quite have the same level of fame. Many of his games, with studio Onion Games, have only made it westward in the past few years. None of his games - Moon, Black Bird, Dandy Dungeon - are world-shatteringly great. However, they are always incredibly interesting.

His newest game, Mon Amour, has just launched on Nintendo Switch and Steam. What is it? It’s kind of like Flappy Bird, but with a lot more kissing. It’s a game that I hated at first, but then couldn’t stop. It’s weird as hell, but has a lot of heart. In other words, it’s certainly a Yoshiro Kimura game.

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Back in the old days - before the NES, before the Game Boy - Nintendo dipped its toes into the home gaming market with the Game & Watch series of handheld systems. Each system contained a single game - possibly with one or two different variants - displayed using the simplest of technologies. Forget high resolution screens. These games had a handful of dots at best. There was no saving a game, no “levels”. Each was something you’d play until you lost, then started over again. 

Many of the Game & Watch games are so simple that they wouldn’t pass muster today, but the systems themselves are cool as heck. They were surprisingly well made, with nice buttons and a great tactile feel. They are bright and fun to look at. They have a certain kind of appeal, even though I’d rather play a Switch game any day. 

The developers at Score Studios understand this appeal. The latest game in their loosely-connected “Piczle” puzzle series is a collection of three games, based on the aesthetics and simplicity - though ratcheted a bit higher in terms of complexity to work as modern games - of the Game & Watch era. 

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I know that this is 2020-brain talking to some extent, but 2006 feels like a lifetime ago. I guess it basically was. My cell phone was just a phone, I had way fewer aches and pains, and Sam & Max Season 1, Episode 1 (later retitled to Sam & Max Save the World) was blasting across my tiny CRT monitor - here to herald in the age of episodic gaming, games presented just like we watched TV!

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