August 2nd just happens to be International Beer Day. Who knew? Hey, hey! Kyra Kyle here. To celebrate this holiday (or observance) that I just found out about, we’ll be breaking down the Top 5 fictional beers in video games.
Quick content warning: We’ve noticed that video games that name fictional beers often travel into crude territory. We tried to tone down the gross-out humor and sexual content, but there may be a few mentions in this post.
After applying the restriction of one fictional beer per video game franchise, I found this list difficult to compile. Numerous video games include beer, but they often give it the generic name “beer” or have a sponsorship with a real-world beer brand. The games that create their own beer brands typically have more than one fictional beer brand, and then there are near beers. Nuka-Cola Dark is the Fallout universe’s favorite soft drink, blended with rum. That’s not exactly a beer. With that said, we were able to find five of the tastiest fictional beers in video games.
5) Ion Bru (Void Bastards)
Void Bastards is a well-received sci-fi first-person shooter inspired by BioShock. If nothing else, I may be finding more video games to put on my to-be-played list. Void Bastards has some interesting game mechanisms I’d like to try. Ion Bru pokes fun at Scotland’s second national beverage (second only to Scotch), Irn-Bru.
Unfortunately, I don’t believe anyone drinks Ion Bru within Void Bastards. The can pictured before this entry is used as an upgrade material. Ion Bru is included in the following recipes: air freshener, colon cleanser, and germspiker. Germspiker and colon cleanser? Are we sure we should be drinking Ion Bru?
4) Mazte (Elder Scrolls Series)
Typically, the Elder Scrolls series calls its beers by a generic name, or it replaces beer with mead. But the Elder Scrolls does have a beer from Morrowind: Mazte. I know. I know. Mazte may be the Dunmer name for beer, but it’s unique enough to make this list. And we’re striking out on beer brands for this list. Ion Bru may not be a drink people consume, matze may not be a brand, and I don’t know about the next entry. I love Morrowind, so mazte takes the fourth spot.
According to its entry in the Morrowind guide, Mazte is a local beer brewed from fermented saltrice. Cheap, plentiful, and invigorating, this beverage is popular, despite its dulling effect of wit and judgement. For the price, folks are willing to feel dumb and weak-willed, so long as they feel strong. Sounds like beer to me, but fermented saltrice? I don’t know about that. It might raise my blood pressure.
3) Pißwasser (Grand Theft Auto Series)
Grand Theft Auto is one of those video game series with plenty of beer brands. Even Sprunk Cola has its own alcohol variant, which may venture into Nuka-Cola Dark territory. So, we decided to go with Pißwasser. I know. I promised tasty fictional beers. Pißwasser may not fit that bill.
Pißwasser (or Pisswasser) made its first appearance in Grand Theft Auto IV and has been a staple in the series ever since. The German import lager is advertised everywhere. You’ll hear about it on the in-game radio and see it on television or billboards (many of which have suggestive themes; I didn’t include one billboard that may show a woman recycling what she drank–ew). The name suggests that Pisswasser doesn’t taste great, but everyone in the GTA universe loves it. You can even purchase stocks of the brand and try to get rich.
You may be in for a good time. Whoops! I butchered the tagline. You’re in for a good time with Pisswasser. Yuck. Just make sure you don’t drink too much, or else you’ll stumble and lose your bearings and maybe worse.
2) Gamma Gulp Beer (Fallout Series)
While Gwinnett has an entire line of beers in Fallout 4, they don’t capture the imagination as much as Gamma Gulp Beer from Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics. This beer hasn’t been seen much in the series since, but that could change. I would love to see an updated Gamma Gulp in Fallout 5 or even Fallout 76. Make it happen, Bethesda.
Just look at the happy ghoul in the picture above. How can you resist a sip of Gamma Gulp? Come to think of it, the Fallout universe must’ve started brewing Gamma Gulp after the bombs fell. That or they predicted ghouls. Interesting.
1) Poseidon Pilsner (BioShock Series)
Poseidon Pilsner had to take the top spot because it inspired a brewery in California of the same name. Poseidon Pilsner made its first appearance in BioShock. Most of Rapture’s bars sports the pils; there are even bars named after the beer.
I like how BioShock layered the above Poseidon poster over an advertisement for 123 Beer, which is another beer that could’ve made this list if we didn’t have our pesky one beer per franchise. Poseidon gets the nod because it’s the only beer on this list–so far–that has inspired a real-world brewery. I’m going to be honest. If a Pisswasser becomes a thing, I may have to try a sip.
That’s our list. Which video game fictional beers would you include on this list? Let us know in the comments. Thank you for reading, and wherever you are, I hope you’re having a great day.
Today is Shark Awareness Day. Geekly’s celebrating by listing the top five sharks that originated in video games. Things are about to get fishy.
Hey, hey! Kyra Kyle here. With today’s list, we won’t include all sharks in video games. These are the sharks that originated in video games. So, we won’t include King Shark, Jeff the Land Shark, or Jaws, because they started in comic books or in the movies and then made their way over into video games. We’re talking straight video game sharks.
Honorable Mention) Sharks from Hungry Shark World
None of the sharks in Hungry Shark World have names, but this game may be one of the highest-rated games where gamers play as sharks. The game features numerous fun maps and 30 species of sharks that players can customize into their own cuddly predator. Hungry Shark World just misses our list because there isn’t one specific shark to feature. Instead, Hungry Shark World pits gamers’ shark creations against unique enemies.
5) Gran Bruce (Viewtiful Joe)
Gran Bruce is one of the many bosses Viewtiful Joe faces. This shark enemy pays homage to the world’s most famous movie shark, Jaws. Steven Spielberg’s crew gave the prop sharks on the set of Jaws the nickname Bruce. Players can even trigger an explosion in Gran Bruce’s mouth, which was how Jaws was defeated at the end of the first film. Gran Bruce may be little more than a dim-witted boss for Joe to slap down in the first game, but he also had a role in the Viewtiful Joe anime, which makes him one of the few gaming sharks to crossover into other media.
4) Megalodon (Battlefield)
What started as a joke in the Battlefield series became a random appearance of a Megalodon shark in the game. The Megalodon is one of the largest creatures to ever prowl the seas, so of course, this ancient beast lurked in one of Battlefield’s maps. It didn’t help that gamers photoshopped a large shark in some of the gameplay. The gag became reality when Battlefield 1 included a Megalodon in its mission “They Shall Not Pass.” The rest is history. Or prehistory.
3) Lurker Shark (Jak and Daxter)
Many video games during the early 2000s would prevent heroes from swimming beyond the limits of the game world with an invisible wall. Jak and Daxter decided to ward off would-be cross-game-world swimmers by having a shark eat them alive. While the Lurker Shark made its biggest impact in the first game of the Jak and Daxter series, it would return in Daxter in a variety of shapes and sizes. It even has a brief cameo in Jak 2.
2) Snacker the Shark (Banjo-Kazooie)
Snacker the Shark serves the same purpose as Lurker Shark in Jak and Daxter. Snacker is a clever way to keep Banjo and Kazooie within the limits of their game world. Snacker makes two appearances in the original Banjo-Kazooie, but he made his debut in the Treasure Trove stage, spouting one-liners and taunting players before he eats them. Like Gran Bruce, Snacker also pays homage to Jaws with his Jaws-inspired theme song. He’s cute even while he devours you.
1) Tiny (Batman: Arkham City)
While investigating the Penguin’s lair, Batman runs into a great white shark ironically named Tiny. This encounter is one of the most blood-pumping moments in Batman: Arkham City. Batman must carefully cross a body of water without being eaten alive by Tiny. Looks like Bats forgot the shark repellent. Never leave home without it. Despite a brief appearance in Batman: Arkham City, Tiny made an impact. The series brought him back with a jump-scare sequence in Batman: Arkham Knight.
I may have listened to the Jaws theme song while putting together this list. Which video game shark is your favorite? Let us know in the comments. Thank you for reading, and wherever you are, I hope you’re having a great day.
U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! The United States of America celebrated its Independence Day yesterday, so we’re celebrating belatedly by listing our picks of the top 5 video game characters that use a red, white, and blue color palette.
Hey, hey! Kyra Kyle here. We’re doing something a little different with today’s Top 5. It’s no longer the United States’ Independence Day, but who are we kidding? Someone will be lighting fireworks tonight. We can set off a few of our own with these top 5 red, white, and blue video game characters.
5) King Dedede
Video game designers may have ulterior motives when selecting their characters’ color palettes. Nintendo certainly did with King Dedede when they introduced him to the Kirby franchise. Visually, he combines Santa Claus’s outfit, a bald eagle’s beak, and John Henry’s hammer. Personality-wise, King Dedede is a glutton, selfish, and hostile toward the color pink. In short, he’s all American.
Take that, you pesky amoeba. King Dedede won’t be the only video game villain who wears red, white, and blue. ‘Murica!
4) Blinky (a.k.a. Shadow)
Blinky (from 1980’s Pac-Man) may not be the first character you think of when discussing red, white, and blue video game characters, but he is classic. Shadow is the leader of the team of ghosts (they’re actually monsters) who chase Pac-Man. While Pinky (Pink) and Inky (Cyan) attempt to ambush Pac-Man by taking routes the player doesn’t choose, Blinky chases our protagonist and applies pressure.
Shadow is the most aggressive of all the ghosts (monsters) and the most dangerous. When players get caught, they’re usually caught by Blinky. He has true American vigor. He races to chop down Pac-Man like George Washington chopped down a cherry tree.
3) Dr. Wily
Wow! Are there any video game heroes who use a red, white, and blue color scheme? Yes. They’re next on our list, but we have one final video game villain before we reach them: Mega Man’s Dr. Wily. Before Dark Souls, Dr. Wily pushed gamers to “get gud.” I don’t know how many times I attempted a Mega Man level, only to leave my palms sweaty after countless hours. Thank you for making me a better gamer, Dr. Wily. I salute you.
Dr. Wily also happens to have an advanced degree, adding to a long line of PhDs with nefarious plans. You’d think universities would weed out these bad eggs before they graduate. Oh well. If Wily’s university had expelled him, we may not have gotten a killer robot dragon in Mega Man II.
2) Sonic
Sonic is Sega’s mascot. Ever since the speedy hedgehog raced onto game consoles in 1991, he’s worn red and white shoes, white gloves, and he has blue fur. Very patriotic of you, Sonic. Sonic is ubiquitous with Sega. He’s the first character–and possibly only character–one would think of with Sega Games.
It also doesn’t hurt that Americans are an impatient bunch. Sonic’s speed gets you those rings now. Not later. Now! Hot dogs, muscle cars, and Sonic the Hedgehog. Is there anything more American?
1) Mario
Yeah. We couldn’t go with any other video game character than Mario. You probably read this list and already knew the fictional plumber would top this list. Mario has always featured red and blue. Even in his short stint as “Jumpman” in his Donkey Kong debut (1981), he was always pictured on the video game cabinet to be wearing white gloves, even if the hardware at the time couldn’t effectively render those pixels.
You know you’re a big deal if people know you mononymously. If you utter Mario, most people will picture a plump plumber, wearing a red shirt and hat with blue overalls. Since Mario wears red, white, and blue, he tops this list. It also doesn’t hurt that Mario is often seen with stars. Talk about a Star Spangled hero.
Did we get the list right? Which red, white, and blue color palette video game characters should make this list? Let us know in the comments. Thank you for reading, and wherever you are, I hope you’re having a great day.
Another week and another video game review of a game I’ve played a lot. It’ll be difficult to remain objective while discussing Onirim, but I’ll do my best. Usually, I delete Solitaire from my mobile devices and replace it with Onirim. You can find me in line playing a few games of Onirim. Like I said, I play Onirim a ton.
Hey, hey! Kyra Kyle here. At its core, Onirim is a solitaire game, which is why I replace Solitaire with this title. While this video game is a fun twist on classic Solitaire, Onirim remains a solitaire game, a tabletop card game converted to an app. How will it fare with our review criteria? Let’s find out.
Mechanisms: 10/10
Be honest. You saw this coming. Like I said, Onirim is an interesting twist on classic solitaire. The deck has four suits, each suit has four card types, here’s where the theme comes into play. The player is traveling the dream world (hence the name Onirim, a take on oneiric) and needs to safely escape the land of dreams by opening three doors in each suit. If you draw into a suit’s door and have a matching key, you may open the door. If you don’t have a matching key when you draw a suit’s door, you draw another card and shuffle the door back into the deck. This is where the digital version of Onirim trumps the physical version: shuffling.
During a game of Onirim, you’ll often shuffle the deck. Nightmare cards (which don’t belong to any of the four suits) may be drawn. Bad things will happen when a nightmare appears (it’ll be up to the player what happens exactly), and if the player draws extra nightmares in a turn, any nightmares beyond the first also get shuffled back into the deck. There’s a lot of shuffling, and the digital app does all that shuffling for you. Typically, I prefer a physical tabletop game over a digital version of that same game, but Onirim enhances this already stellar game.
Since the player has choices when a nightmare card gets drawn, Onirim provides player agency and adds a layer of strategy. The remaining two card types (in the base game; there are expansions that we won’t discuss here) are suns and moon cards in all four suits. Suns are the most common card type. Moons are less common. And the rest of the game is playing three cards of the same suit but with different symbols, in the top play area. When that happens, the player searches for a door card in that suit, and then reshuffles the deck. Yes. More shuffling. I love playing the Onirim video game.
Above Image from GameDesigning.Org
Gameplay Loop: 10/10
Onirim games play fast, and each game is unique. The simple premise, the colorful twist on solitaire, and the options a player has once a nightmare card is drawn grant Onirim a high gameplay loop score. I don’t mind waiting in line while playing Onirim. And like I said, I replace Solitaire with Onirim. Obviously, this game’s gameplay loop is fantastic.
Narrative and Storytelling : 3/10
We’re combining narrative and storytelling for Onirim because Solitaire doesn’t have any story. Onirim has an intriguing premise. The nightmare cards and doors needed to escape the dream world, hint at a greater story, but I can’t give Onirim top marks in either of these categories. This is partly why I combined the two. But Onirim does just enough to not get below a three.
User Interface: 8/10
Onirim has a clean look. The play area up top is easy to see (the image above includes an expansion, so there’s a card type, the whirlpool, that I haven’t mentioned). Your hand is visible below the play area. Beneath your hand, you’ll find how many nightmare cards remain (the black demon with the red number on the left, and how many cards remain in the deck; you lose if you run out of cards before opening all twelve doors). The filled-in cards let you know which doors have been opened, and the top right corner is where you can access the main menu. Clean. Easy to read.
I lowered Onirim just a hair for the User Interface because of how difficult it can be to navigate all-time statistics. This isn’t a big deal for a lot of players, but if one becomes invested and explores that rabbit hole, one would want an easier set of menus.
Graphics: 6/10
Onirim has amazing graphics for a solitaire game. But it’s still a solitaire game. Onirim does what it can within the confines of a card game, but no matter how good the cards look, they’re still cards. That said, Onirim may be the prettiest card game I’ve seen. It has to get an above-average score.
Audio: 5/10
Onirim is another game I play with the sound off. The soundtrack is atmospheric, but kind of blends into the background. The sound effects could–and probably should–boost this score even more. But I’m going to stay as objective as I can. While the shuffling effect can be satisfying, you’ll hear it a lot, and it can also detract from the experience. There’s so much shuffling.
Replay Factor: 10/10
Since Onirim is Solitaire with a twist, you’ll find it difficult to play only one game. The app keeps track of your all-time stats, so I end up trying to beat my all-time best, and if that happens, I’ll try raising my overall win percentage or how quickly I typically beat the game. Solitaire with stats. That’s a rabbit hole. It also gives Onirim high marks in replay value.
Platinum trophy hunting (or if you play on X-Box or Steam, achievement hunting) doesn’t appeal to every gamer, but it does to me. My goal is to earn as many platinum PlayStation trophies as my age eventually. I have some work to do. More than I’d care to admit. Easy platinums tend to come from bad games, but some exceptions exist. That made me wonder which good video games have easy and quick platinum trophies.
Hey, hey! Kyra Kyle here. This post has been a long time coming. A video game can’t just have an easy-to-earn platinum trophy. We want quick platinum trophies. This eliminates a heap of video games. I just finished The Survivalists, and while it has an easy-to-earn platinum trophy, it’ll take well over thirty hours. Quick feels more like less than twenty hours. This might still be too long for some, but twenty hours is a dedicated weekend of gaming. We must pick a number.
Most gamers can find twenty hours for an enjoyable experience. That leads us to defining an “easy” platinum trophy. The trophy should be attainable through a single play-through or the game should allow players to play little of a second play-through to make this list. Finally, the game needs to be “good,” but gamers desire different things. Let’s split these games into story and gameplay buckets. I’ll do my best to explain why I included each game or game series. And this leads to the final clarification. I’ll include a game series for story and gameplay and then a few single games. Without further ado, let’s jump into the games.
Game Series
Cat Quest Series
We’ll start with a game series with little story but a fun gameplay loop. Cat Quest doesn’t have much of a story. It’s an excuse to have cute kitties battling beasties in an old-fashioned beat-‘em-up video game. The game has some gameplay alternatives, especially with the sequels, but Cat Quest sticks to a simple but fun formula. Cast magic with magic points. Replenish your magic points by landing weapon attacks.
Cat Quest 2 does a great job of incorporating ranged attacks. The first Cat Quest only offered melee attack weapons. As I’m writing this post, I have yet to play Cat Quest 3. It looks as if it builds off the second game in the series. The first game took me 10 hours to earn the platinum. The second game took around 15 hours. Even if Cat Quest 3 mimics Cat Quest 2 and expands the map and side quests further, it should clock in around 20 hours for the platinum and still be worthy of a spot on this list.
Telltale Games
The Telltale Games studio features story-driven games that take around 15-20 hours to complete. Most of these games were well-received at the time of their release and worth a play if you enjoy the intellectual property the game is set. I have fond memories of 2012’s The Walking Dead. This game announced Telltale Games to the video game community. Many of The Walking Dead’s moments live rent-free in my head. “Did you lick the saltlick, Clementine?” “I don’t know.” Clementine was adorable.
The Wolf Among Us was another hit and well worth a playthrough. This title also illustrates how easy it is to obtain a platinum trophy in a Telltale Game. Most Telltale Games, like The Walking Dead or the Batman series, will grant players a platinum trophy for completing the story. Super easy! Barely an inconvenience. Thank you for that phrase, “Pitch Meeting.” The Wolf Among Us requires players to make a different choice during a chapter to get its platinum trophy, but all you need to do is reload the one chapter in question and pick a different option. Even when Telltale Games makes a platinum trophy more difficult to obtain, they don’t make it that difficult.
Most Telltale Games I’ve played are a good time. I will admit that the company became risk-averse after their hit The Walking Dead. I haven’t played too many of their most recent titles. I may log a few more soon for a platinum or two.
Single Games
Nubla
A child visits an art museum and falls into the paintings. The kid must save the residents of these paintings by solving art-themed puzzles. While dated (Nubla celebrated its tenth-anniversary last year), Nubla has a great aesthetic, above-average graphics for the time, and an intriguing premise. Nubla also happens to be the quickest platinum trophy to obtain on this list, and it’s not even that close. YouTubers have speed-run completing the platinum trophy in twenty minutes. I don’t suggest watching these videos while playing the game. The puzzles aren’t that difficult to solve. I was able to finish the game in under three hours without help. Even so, you could finish Nubla in under an hour if you load a how-to video and all you want is speed.
Nubla 2 was released in late 2022. I have yet to play it. From what I’ve heard, the original cast of characters returns and again, you must rescue citizens of paintings. This may be another game I’ll need to consider, inching me closer to my platinum trophy goal.
Life Is Strange
I like to get lost in Life Is Strange’s world and characters. Set in 1990s Oregon (in the fictional town of Arcadia Bay), Life Is Strange centers on teenagers Max Caulfield and Chloe Price. Life Is Strange has an earnest quality to it that few games have. The two main characters are teenage girls and while the story can dabble in the melodramatic, it works. The world feels lived in. Steeping Arcadia Bay in a nostalgic, autumnal lens is deliberate. Even the story’s supernatural elements are designed as a metaphor for the character’s inner conflicts and there are plenty. The DontNod (design) team consulted experts to tackle difficult subjects like teen suicide.
Like the TellTale Games above, Life Is Strange was released episodically. The story goes astray a little bit toward the end but not enough to tarnish the overall experience. Life Is Strange is worth your time. It takes around 20 hours to complete the game, and you will most likely need to replay a scene or two after you finish to get the platinum trophy, but I can’t recommend the original Life Is Strange enough. And the original Life Is Strange received a remaster a couple of years ago. Yay! I may have another game to replay.
Donut County
Donut County challenges Nubla for the shortest game on this list. Again, you can find YouTube speed-runs that last an hour or two, and again, I suggest you try it on your own first. Donut County is like Katamari Damacy. Players control a hole (or donut) in the world and try to drop things into the hole. With each object that falls inside the hole, the hole gets bigger until nothing remains. Numerous mobile games have copied Donut County after its original 2018 release. It has a fun, addictive gameplay loop, and more importantly for this list, a quick and easy-to-obtain platinum trophy.
If anything, I’m disappointed that Donut County doesn’t have a longer run-time. The trophy was great to achieve, but I wanted more Donut County to play. Perhaps indie game publisher Annapurna Interactive will release a Donut County sequel. Like I need another game to play on this list.
What Remains of Edith Finch
I’ve mentioned What Remains of Edith Finch more than once on Geekly, but until this year, I had only played the demo. What Remains of Edith Finch received a remaster a few years ago and the remastered What Remains of Edith Finch has a platinum trophy. For the most part, you only need to complete the game’s six-hour story to earn the trophy. And What Remains of Edith Finch has an amazing story. What Remains of Edith Finch even manages to weave in unique gameplay elements.
The player character takes a ferry to Orcas Island, Washington carrying the journal of Edith Finch. Edith writes about her experience when she returns to her ancestral home on the island for the first time in seven years. Edith says that she’s the last surviving member of her family. The player then takes the perspective of Edith as she reexplores her family’s home and discovers the circumstances of each relative’s death. I don’t want to spoil anything here, but What Remains of Edith Finch contains innovative gameplay that matches the stories of each Finch family member. What Remains of Edith Finch shows the depth video game storytelling can achieve.
And that’s our list. The games on this list are by no means the only good video games with quick and easy platinum trophies. Let us know which games you’d include. Thank you for reading, and wherever you are, I hope you’re having a great day.
Happy Pride Month, Geekly Gang! Since it’s June, we’ll be celebrating with a list of famous LGBT characters in video games. JK Geekly is about to get a lot more rainbow.
Hey, hey! Kyra Kyle here. We’ll be sticking to our usual format of five items to one of these lists, but make no mistake, countless other LGBT characters from video games could’ve made this list. So let’s take a look at which LGBT video game characters made this colorful list.
5) Alexios and Kassandra (Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey)
Alexios and Kassandra are the two main protagonists of Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. Alexios is male, while Kassandra is female. Both are siblings, and you can choose to play as either of them. Assassin’s Creed chose to use gender neutral terms for both characters (calling them the Greek word for mercenary), and both characters may romance any of 14 characters (male or female), but Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey goes deeper than that. Players don’t need to romance anyone. You may choose to shoot down all advances and claim that you’re aromantic or asexual, which is rare for video games that include romantic options.
Yep. We’re starting this list off strong with a seldom-represented group within the larger LGBT community. Everyone is valid.
4) Krem (Dragon Age: Inquisition)
Even though Krem was a minor character in Dragon Age: Inquisition, he received significant media coverage from gaming journalists and LGBT-centric media for his positive depiction of a transgender character in a AAA video game, and for good reason. He’s a proud member of Iron Bull’s team, named the Bull’s Chargers. Krem’s teammates accept him for who he is, and Iron Bull himself treats him like an equal.
Dragon Age creator Trick Weekes received repeated requests from fans for a respectful representation of transgender and/or genderqueer characters, without resorting to stereotypes or tokenism. Krem is the best kind of transgender representation. Honest.
3) Bloodhound (Apex Legends)
I bathe in the bloth. That’s the line Bloodhound utters every time they enter “Beast of the Hunt,” tracking down as many enemies and dispatching them as quickly as they can. Bloodhound is one of the first and few non-binary video game characters. Note: Apex Legends characters could overrun this list with Valkyrie (lesbian), Loba (bisexual), Gibraltar (gay), and Catalyst (trans woman), to name a few, so we’ll limit this list to one Apex Legends character. Apex Legends does a great job of giving its characters layers and respecting their identities.
Apex doesn’t miss a beat when referring to Bloodhound in gender neutral terms. The game normalizes it. Even when Bloodhound is young, during one of the trailers, Boone refers to them as “child.” Great representation.
2) Birdo or Birdetta (Super Mario Bros. Series)
Our penultimate entry on this list is none other than the first transgender character in video game history, Birdo. The only concrete link to Birdo’s gender comes from the original Super Mario Bros. 2 guidebook that states “he thinks he’s a girl” and “he’d rather be called ‘Birdetta'” with the implication that Birdo is a mocking term (either dead-naming her or an insult that she isn’t girly enough to pull off the name Birdetta). Let’s do this queen a solid and call her Birdetta.
As you can see, there may have been some confusion as to who Birdetta was. The characters known as Birdo and Ostro became fused into one character well after Super Mario Bros. 2’s original release. After Birdetta’s write-up in the Super Mario Bros. 2 guidebook was rediscovered, she became a trans icon. Put some respect on Birdetta’s name.
1) Ellie Williams (The Last of Us)
Ellie is synonymous with The Last of Us. Whether she’s voiced by Ashley Johnson in the video games or by Bella Ramsey in the television show, Ellie Williams exudes strength against tremendous odds. Slay, queen. Slay!
While other characters on this list may have hit the video game scene far sooner than Ellie, there’s no doubt she’s made an impact. A scene in which Ellie and Riley kiss in Left Behind (The Last of Us’ prequel) drew social commentary and was commended as a leap for LGBT representation in video games. You love to see it. Johnson’s performance in Part II was praised for her vulnerability and suffering. The same can be said of Ramsey’s portrayal in the Max television show. Ellie is a fantastic character. The community needed some great representation, and they got it with Ellie. I can wait to see which barriers this character will shatter.
That’s our list of five famous LGBT characters in video games. There are plenty more that could make their own list. Let us know some of your favorites in the comments. Thank you for reading, and wherever you are, I hope you’re having a great day.
Stacklands merges a survival/civilization game with the skeleton of a collectible card game, and the results are interesting. Developed by indie designer Sokpop Collective, Stacklands takes these disparate themes and mechanisms and makes sense of them. Prepare to drag cards on a board and stack them on top of each other for numerous interactions.
Hey, hey! Kyra Kyle here. Today, I’m reviewing a quirky video game I’ve meant to cover for a while. Full disclosure: I’ve played a heap of Stacklands on Steam. I purchased all the DLC–we’ll only touch on some of the bonus content–and spent countless hours watching my card-sharped citizens build an empire. But how does Stacklands stack up against our review criteria? Let’s find out.
Game Mechanisms: 10/10
Quirky indie video games tend to sport fresh game mechanisms, and Stacklands is no different. Stacklands combines a collectible card game and a civ builder into a cohesive whole. The experience is a great loop of exploration and optimization for your villagers. I’ve never had this much fun stacking one card on top of another card and getting something in return. One chicken on top of another chicken yields an egg. Place that egg card on a campfire and produce a cooked egg. Sounds simple, but a multitude of these actions may occur at once. Players must manage the timers for each interaction and generate enough food at the end of the day to feed their civilians. Any items you don’t use or can’t use may be sold for coins that are used to purchase new card packs. Card packs contain new items and ideas.
The gameplay loop and exploration (of what I can put together to make something exciting and new) are addictive. Earlier versions of Stacklands proved difficult to manage some of these elements, but later patches fixed many of these issues. I have as much fun optimizing my little village as I do discovering new ideas. If you were to construct a hotpot, you could place food into the pot that you wish for your villagers to eat first. This way, you can keep more valuable food items. Small upgrades like this add strategy.
And Stacklands is full of small and large upgrades ready to make your village strong enough to fight off invaders. Yes. There will be invaders who will randomly attack your village, but usually after the first five or six moons (or days). Enemy cards are indicated by red backgrounds. You may choose to fight these enemies unarmed (like the picture below) or upgrade your Villagers with weapons that will change their job title from Villager to something fancier, like Warrior or Swordsman.
Stacklands also has a knack for ramping up the difficulty. Most difficulty spikes happen organically; you won’t face a stronger creature unless you spend money to buy a more expensive pack that may contain the stronger creature. The largest of these difficulty spikes is at the player’s discretion. I don’t know how many times. I’ve accidentally summoned a demon and watched in horror as the demon decimated my villagers.
But I was the one who summoned the Demon. I’ll know for next time not to do the thing that summoned the Demon until after I’m prepared to defeat an enemy with 300 health. Like many survival games, you’ll need to restart your Stacklands village when you have no more living Villagers, but when you do restart your village, you don’t need to relearn skills and ideas. I don’t mind this. It lessens the danger, and often, I’ll have a better item I’ve unlocked and can outfit my villagers with better gear or a more optimized village. Heck. I’ve let a larger enemy torpedo my village, so I could start over.
Above Image from GameDesigning.Org
Gameplay Loop: 10/10
I’ve already mentioned Stacklands’ gameplay loop. Combining collectible card packets with building a civilization of card villagers is fantastic. Stacklands also manages its difficulty spikes well. Players have more control over what they’ll face. Buying more expensive packs could mean stronger enemies appear, but you’ll want to unlock every card in each packet type and as quickly as possible.
Collecting cards like Pokémon mixed with exploration is a potent combination. And since Stacklands has so many hidden tech trees (the game doesn’t spell out its tech trees in a diagram), you’ll find hours of enjoyment reverse engineering a recipe. How do I get a gold bar? I need a smelter and gold ore. How do I make a smelter, and which booster pack contains gold ore? Stacklands has so many rabbit holes to explore.
Narrative: 6/10
Stacklands has a few side stories that make up a somewhat larger narrative, but it doesn’t have a traditional storyline. There’s the demon I mentioned earlier. The demon isn’t too difficult to defeat if you have the proper equipment and a large enough army. You’ll also have to challenge a witch who summons monsters from a strange portal. Defeating the witch is the closest thing the base Stacklands game has to a larger story.
Players must construct a stable portal so they can enter the witch’s realm and fight her seemingly endless army of baddies. The army the player sends may choose to return home after each level of witch minions. Defeat the final level and then the witch. Players will receive a “you completed the game” notification, but that’s not the end. You may continue playing Stacklands and its DLC. The only location you can access without buying DLC is the island. This has a “story” similar to the witch on the mainland, but it’s the paid DLC that has fleshed out stories. I’m not including the DLC in this review, but if I did, this score would rise a point or two.
Storytelling: 5/10
Stacklands‘ storytelling is no better than average. I promised I wouldn’t include the paid DLC (which only costs a few dollars) in this score. The base game’s story is okay. The DLC ventures into some interesting territory. I talk briefly about them. One alternate plane deals with waste; you’ll need to optimize your village so you won’t produce too much pollution. Another plane centers around death. A third pivots hard into combat and rage. Stacklands‘ DLC is well worth the price (if you like the base game), but it’s the base game’s storytelling we’re grading here, so it’s average.
User Interface: 9/10
While Stacklands has a lot going on at once, it does a good job of presenting these options to the player. In the top left, you’ll find tabs for Quests and Ideas. The quests are self-explanatory. If you don’t know what to do next, check out your active quests.
Ideas are the recipes you know. Stacklands does a great job of grouping similar recipes into tabs. You may expand these tabs to see individual recipes or collapse them if you’re not looking for that recipe type.
In the far right corner, you’ll find out which day (moon) you’re on, and the symbol on the right of this box lets you dictate how fast time moves. To the left of the moon, you’ll find your village’s vitals (food, coin, and how many cards you may have in your village–booster packs don’t count toward this total). The image above may be from Moon 5, so there aren’t as many cards in play, but Stacklands has so many ways to optimize your village that you can build one that minimizes your number of cards and is almost automatic.
Once you find a consistent source of food, you’ll be able to focus on other things Stacklands offers, and there are plenty of choices. Stacklands rewards trial and error. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes.
Graphics: 6/10
While I enjoy Stacklands‘ graphics, they are minimal. Stacklands chooses legibility over style. Even though that’s the right choice for a game like this, I can’t tell you that Stacklands has amazing graphics. The game’s graphics are crisp, at times adorable, and most importantly, functional.
Audio: 7/10
You like lo-fi chill jams, don’t you? Who am I kidding? Of course you do. Stacklands’ soundtrack makes great background music. To be honest, I hardly notice it while I’m playing. Where this score gets a bump is when considering Stacklands’ sound effects: card shuffling, ripping open a booster pack, the little bloopy combat noises, and adorable animal calls. Sokpop Collective took time and care with Stacklands’ sound effects, and it shows.
Replay Factor: 9/10
Stacklands has plenty of DLC, and that DLC has its own puzzles for you to solve. The DLC adds a good ten to twenty gameplay hours. But the base game has tons of replay value in its own right. Even if you defeat the witch and the demon, you may want to beat the time it took you to defeat the witch and the demon. I’ve also discovered numerous recipes after beating these two, which then prompted another playthrough. Sure, I beat the game, but I figured out how to make a resource magnet. That would optimize my village to the fullest.
Again, I may be biased. I put a heap of time into Stacklands, but it has a fair amount of replay value. Each new play can lead to a different path to success.
Potion Craft by indie game developer niceplay games created a craft system you want to play. Visuals inspired by medieval manuscripts blend with unique gameplay for concocting potions to form a singular video game experience.
Hey, hey! Kyra Kyle here. We’ll get back to another free-to-play game soon enough, but in the meantime, let’s cover another paid game. You can get a good deal on the game through sites like Steam or the PlayStation store (PS4/PS5). Usually, Potion Craft sells for around $20, even without a sale. Potion Craft’s unique graphics drew me in, but its stellar gameplay kept me engaged for hours. Let’s see how well Potion Craft stands up to our rating system.
Mechanisms: 10/10
Potion Craft innovates on the tried and tired crafting game. The video game scene has seen an influx of alchemist simulator games in the last few years. Most of these alchemist simulators would have players accruing ingredients through exploration (through a dungeon mechanism separate from alchemy) and learning new potions through trial and error. Potion Craft streamlines this process. Players explore a perilous map by adding ingredients to their alchemy pot. Ingredients (that players obtain through farming or purchasing from vendors) move the player’s cursor on the map north, south, east, or west. But these ingredients seldom allow for traveling in a straight line. Spiral and zig-zag movements reign supreme. Once the bottle-shaped cursor reaches an ability, players can stoke the fire and boil their potion, so the potion gains that ability.
This simple, yet ingenious, twist puts the focus on alchemy. I waited for a second gameplay type where I played as my character dungeon diving for ingredients. That gameplay never came, and Potion Craft is the better for it. At times the gameplay can feel puzzly, but with the focus on what I put in my alchemy pot almost all the time, I felt more like an alchemist in Potion Craft than I’ve ever felt in any other video game of this ilk. And I’ve played a handful of alchemist simulators. If an alchemist simulator sounds intriguing to you, you owe it to yourself to play Potion Craft.
Gameplay Loop: 9/10
Pick ingredients from your alchemical garden. Then, tend to your garden. Serve your customers by guessing which potion would best fix their problem. You may haggle with the price if you want. Finally, explore the alchemy map to find new potion types or find better (more efficient) ways to produce potions.
Potion Craft is one of those notorious games for “just one more turn.” Everything seems as if it’s just one day (turn) or two away. Even when you know how to make a potion and save the potion’s recipe, you can create the potion, using fewer ingredients, so that you spend fewer future ingredients. That’s another great feature of Potion Craft. The ingredients you used when creating a potion recipe you saved will be used whenever you make potions from that saved recipe. There’s a reason to make the same potion twice. Let’s say that it took you three Waterblooms to make an Ice potion. But you unlocked Tangleweed and began farming that and it only takes you one of those to make an Ice potion. This can save you time, resources, and money in the long run. Brilliant!
Frequently, I’ll make a less-than-desirable recipe for a potion type just to have a means of making that potion. When I unlock the means to make that same potion on the cheap, I take it. And it feels good exploring the map through alchemy, even when I’ve already unlocked the ability I’m heading towards. Each day, experience boosts (in the form of alchemy books) reset, and players can collect them again. This allows you to level up your alchemy skills, and the skill tree, while basic, does a good job of giving players choices. Do you want to focus on selling potions, exploring the map, or farming? The choice is yours.
And then there are the customers. This dovetails into the Storytelling section (and less so for Narrative) but I’ll begin discussing the customers here. Customers often don’t tell you exactly what they want. Even when they do, there are often multiple ways to fix a problem. Light spoiler: a customer may say that they locked themselves out of their house; you can choose to give them an explosive potion or acid. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen Season pick a means of fixing a problem that didn’t cross my mind. And she’s said the same for ways that I’ve solved the occasional problem.
But the core element is map traversal through alchemy. I didn’t expect to like the map movement that much, but Potion Craft nails the explorative nature of throwing things in a pot and seeing what happens.
Narrative: 5/10
Potion Craft doesn’t have much in the way of a narrative, but I gave it a five because of its implied customer backstories. Sure, some customers have generic “my stomach hurts, do you have a potion for that?” But others have more sinister motives should you get to know them better. Others still have bizarre stories like why does a scuba diver exist in medieval times? Players will have to piece together scraps of story to make one that makes sense, but Potion Craft does have a loose-knit story.
Storytelling: 7/10
Like Papers, Please, which we covered last month, Potion Craft tells its story in the game’s negative space. Hidden within the string of customers who stop by for potions rests a deeper narrative for those characters and the town in which they live. I won’t spoil some of those stories here, but Potion Craft builds its world and its story through the people who stop by for magical potions. And I love this world.
Citizens solve mundane problems with magic. Why not? If magic is plentiful, why wouldn’t you solve any minor inconvenience with alchemy? Potion Craft runs with this premise. You can solve people’s issues at lower difficulty settings through multiple means. You may need a specific potion with multiple effects if you raise the difficulty. Unlocking abilities to converse with customers may yield even more backstory. And that’s where Potion Craft’s story lies: the characters’ backstories.
User Interface: 8/10
Potion Craft does a great job of showing players where their alchemical ingredients will lead them on the map. The locations are easy to navigate. The goals are easy to find and understand. In short, Potion Craft does a great job of showing its players how to play the game. But at the same time, it still gives players the freedom to come up with unique solutions to problems.
Like I said before, there’s more than one way to fix an issue, and Potion Craft gives players the time and space to explore those options. Potion Craft’s setup isn’t the hectic DMV hellscape as Papers, Please. It organizes things in a way for players to thrive. Potion Craft is a layback and chill game instead of a tense, don’t make a single mistake game like Papers, Please. While the two user interfaces work for the games that use them, I prefer Potion Craft’s interface. I’d rather a game show me exactly what I can do. Potion Craft does this better than most.
Graphics: 9/10
Potion Craft uses medieval documents and medical books as the basis for its graphics. While simplistic, the art amplifies Potion Craft’s subject matter. I don’t know if any other graphics would’ve worked for this game. You can tell that Potion Craft is a labor of love for the designers. The user interface and graphics merge intuitively. Part of the reason why the user interface works as well as it does is because the graphics feed into the user interface and the theme. I feel as if I’m grinding leaves, flowers, berries, and roots with a mortar and pestle. There were times when I swore, I could smell the herbs.
Audio: 6/10
I’m not going to lie. I played Potion Craft while muted most of the time, but when I did have the sound on, it worked well. I wouldn’t say that Potion Craft has the most memorable soundtrack. Its soundtrack is serviceable. Potion Craft’s sound effects are what give it an above-average audio rating. You can hear the crunch of leaves and fruit. Heating your potion is satisfying. Pouring water into your solution to thin your potion is visceral. Seriously, I had to go to the restroom after hearing pouring water on more than one occasion. Potion Craft amplifies its tactile gameplay with sound effects.
Replay Factor: 8/10
This is a difficult section to grade. Potion Craft may not offer much in terms of replays through different games. You can get by beating each difficulty setting once. As of this write-up, there are four different difficulties. This still gives you well over 100 hours of gameplay. I’m giving Potion Craft a higher replay factor score because of the replays during your initial play.
I mentioned before that you may want to optimize your potion recipes. That leads to numerous hours of gameplay. But Potion Craft has a sneaky other reason why you might play. Your alchemy shop has a reputation score. You could play an evil alchemist and only sell potions to people who have nefarious plans. I didn’t know who would order a Necromancy potion with my first play. Switching to an evil alchemist showed me who would order a Necromancy potion. It doesn’t look like it, but Potion Craft is a sandbox game.
Aggregated Score: 7.8
I enjoyed my multiple playthroughs of Potion Craft. It’s the preeminent alchemist simulator game. If you have any interest in an alchemist simulator game, give Potion Craft a try. With Potion Craft’s quirky graphics, I didn’t know what to expect. The streamlined nature of Potion Craft’s gameplay is a revelation. Developer niceplay games and publisher tinyBuild are on my radar. I can’t wait to see what this studio has planned for next.
Today’s video game cult classic is a pet simulator. Something like Nintendogs may come to mind when you think about pet simulators. Fighting pet simulators? Pokémon dominates fighting pet simulators, but I’m thinking about a lesser-known fighting pet simulator. That’s right. Monster Rancher is making an appearance on this month’s Video Game Cult Classics.
Hoppy Easter, everyone! Season here. We’ve got another video game series that spawned an anime and, coincidentally, came out in the ‘90s. Don’t worry. I’ll branch out. Monster Rancher (or Monster Farm in Japan) is a game that allows the player (rancher) to raise one monster at a time from a baby to an adult. Monster Rancher is like a cross between a Tamagotchi and Pokémon (later iterations incorporate more Pokémon like features). Like the last cult classic we covered (Culdcept), for a video game to make this series, we’ll consider its reception, relevance, and accessibility. Prepare your monsters for battle, and let’s delve into gameplay.
Gameplay Overview
Quick note: most of the gameplay you’ll see comes from Monster Rancher and Monster Rancher 2. I’m most familiar with these two games, and they embody the series’ core concepts. There are a few offshoot games I’ll mention in the accessibility section, but they won’t be the focus.
Monster Rancher has gameplay that’s easy enough to pick up on, but has a learning curve for those interested in getting the most out of their monsters. In Monster Rancher and Monster Rancher 2, players assume the role of a rancher and work with an assistant. Monster Rancher 2 has a quiz for players to take at the beginning of the game, but it doesn’t affect the gameplay.
Once players get their assistant (Holly in Monster Rancher and Colt in Monster Rancher 2), they’re ready for their monster. Players can either go to the Market or the Shrine to acquire a monster. Players can also obtain new monsters at the Lab, but they’ll need to have two frozen monsters (that they can combine) to birth a new one.
Monsters in the Market are seasonal. These monsters will be base species with not-so-great battle stats. Pictured above, we have a baseline Dino, Tiger, and Suezo. These monsters are good options for players who don’t have many CDs/PS1 game discs, or if you want something simple for a starter monster.
Players may also give up a monster to the Market if they no longer wish to keep the one they currently have. Personally, I never do this because I get attached to my virtual pets. If this happens on accident, there’s no need to worry. Autosave won’t screw anyone over.
The Shrine is where the magic happens. At least, that’s where it happened for me when I played as a kid. Who am I kidding? It still happens. At the Shrine, players can select a CD/PS1 disc to put into their system to get a random monster. After the game reads the disc, it generates a monster based on the disc data. The same monster will be generated from each disc. In other words, if the player remembers which monster was generated from a specific disc, they’ll get the same monster with the same stats every time.
If the same monster gets generated from a different disc (it happens a lot), the monster will likely have different stats. Make sure to remember the discs that have the stats you want to keep.
Players can visit the Lab at the start of the game, but there’s no need to unless they want to generate two different monsters and try to get something different at the Lab. The Lab is more useful after a player has fully raised at least two monsters who have learned many fighting techniques (we’ll get to those later). The following images for the Lab section are taken from Monster Rancher 2.
At the Lab, players have the option to combine monsters to get a new monster, freeze the monster they have with them, revive a frozen monster, delete a frozen monster, or analyze the monster they have with them. Analyzing a monster gives the player insight into how to raise their current monster and its personality.
I froze my monster.
It costs 500G to combine monsters. 500G is a hefty sum at the start of the game; it’s not so bad later on, once a player’s monsters compete in tournaments and win money. Players will select two of their frozen monsters to combine (players may have up to twenty frozen monsters at a time).
The item Disc Chips is a secret seasoning.
In Monster Rancher 2, once the two monsters are selected, the game will ask if the player wants to use an item as a secret seasoning. Secret seasonings (such as Disc Chips) can offer the player other options for monsters. In this case, even though I used Disc Chips, Dragon isn’t offered as an option. This is because the monsters I chose can’t be combined into a Centaur with a Beaclon as a sub-species and vise-versa. Since they’re not compatible anyway, adding Disc Chips from another monster won’t grant me additional outcomes. They also don’t have many matching stats (the stat levels don’t match per monster).
There are a total of six stats, so to get the best possible outcome, the two chosen monsters must have all six stats at matching levels. The levels here are shown next to each stat.
Here’s a quick rundown of each stat: Life (Lif) is a monster’s hit points. Power (Pow) is how strong a monster’s Power-type attacks are. Intelligence (Int) measures how strong a monster’s Intelligence-type attacks hit. Note: Power and Intelligence are interchangeable, depending on the monster’s technique types. Skill (Ski), also called Accuracy (Acc) in later games, is the likelihood of how often your monster’s attacks hit. Speed (Spd) affects your monster’s ability to avoid attacks. Defense (Def) determines how much damage your monster receives.
As we can see, I ended up with a terrible outcome. That’s not bad in the Pow. and Def. department, though. Looks like I’ll have to specialize in Power-type attacks.
Back to the first Monster Rancher. Once the player returns to their Ranch, there are options for their monster. Monster Rancher operates in a week-by-week system, so players may select one thing for their monster to do each week. During Week 1 of every month, players must feed their monsters. In Monster Rancher 2, players may check the monster’s data to see what the monster likes and dislikes. Usually, food will be listed as a like or a dislike, but there are exceptions. If a player feeds the monster food it doesn’t like, it’ll be less likely to perform well.
We’ll skip over Schedule for now since it’s going to be lengthier and lead into battles. Starting with the Item option, this will allow players to either buy/sell items from the shop or give an item to their monster. Be careful which item you select as monsters can only accept one item per week.
The Data option allows players to view their monster’s stats, history, and techniques. It also shows the players’ information about themselves through Breeder, such as their rancher grade, the number of monsters they’ve raised (including species), and what their monsters’ final ranks were before they either pass away or get frozen.
The Book subsection shows the player information about monsters at the market and monsters they’ve raised with some flavor text. Players may also view the monsters in action, as well as their species.
The Schedule option on the menu lets players either train monsters, battle in a tournament, or rest for one week.
The Work option (or Drill in Monster Rancher 2) is for one week and allows the monster to train in one or two stats at a time. For Training (Errantry in Monster Rancher 2) allows the player to select a location to send their monster for one month. This will normally cost the player 2,000G, but will sometimes be at a discount for 1,000G. In Monster Rancher 2, this allows monsters to learn new techniques. In Monster Rancher, monsters must be old enough and have high enough stats to learn new techniques with a trainer in town (through the Adventure option).
The Battle option allows players to send their monster into a tournament to win some cash and, occasionally, an item. Before any battle, the player can ask Holly about their opponent (usually their highest stat), how to execute a technique, and how to move their monster. Holly will ask if the player wants to give instructions to their monster. If the player selects no, the monster will battle by itself. If the player selects yes, they control their monster during battle.
Each battle starts by showing stats for both monsters. Arthro has more Intelligence-type techniques, so I’ll prioritize Intelligence during its training.
During battle, monsters have four zones (depending on their distance from their opponent) in which they may attack. Not all zones will be occupied by techniques, but that may change after a monster learns new techniques. Monsters execute techniques depending on how much Will they have (Guts in future Monster Rancher games). Techniques require a certain amount of Will, which gradually regenerates during battle, so choose techniques carefully.
Each technique also has a hit percentage, which will tell the player how likely that technique is to hit the opponent. Flame has a 62% chance to hit my opponent here and costs 21 Will. Also, what Byoon is doing in this picture is called “Foolery” (not listening to their rancher). This frequently happens when monsters don’t have much loyalty to their rancher.
Tournament battles last for sixty seconds. When time is up, the winner is determined by who has the most Life remaining. If a monster gets knocked out, a battle can end sooner. Yay! Arthro won!
When a tournament ends, prize money is doled out based on the monster’s rank, determined by the monster’s wins. Players also receive bonus money for battles won. Here, I got second place. Notice the monster also has Fame. Fame goes up the higher a monster places in a tournament, which can lead to things as the judges awarding a player’s monster a win during a close battle and increased prize money. In Monster Rancher 2, Fame allows monsters to go on adventures and discover items necessary to unlock new monster species.
I’ll touch briefly on official tournaments. Monsters can be ranked from E (lowest) to S (highest). Every baby monster starts out at E rank. Official tournaments allow monsters to raise their rank. These tournaments occur at the end of every quarter. They include more opponents but offer less prize money. Official tournaments are essential for monsters to compete at more prestigious tournaments and to unlock more species of monsters. Since Artho is a baby, it’s an E rank.
The lifespan of a monster depends on the monster’s species and how it’s raised. Their lifespan also affects when each monster reaches their prime, which is the point in a monster’s life when training gives them the most stat boosts.
Reception
Monster Rancher has fifteen games spanning from 1997-2022. The original Monster Rancher sold over one million copies before 2000. It was a popular game that capitalized on people collecting discs. It filled a niche that exploited the success of Tamagotchi and disc collection. In later Monster Rancher games, such as Monster Rancher EVO, people could use DVDs in addition to CDs and PS1/PS2 discs. There were some other strange releases, like the platformer Monster Rancher Hop-A-Bout that played similarly to Super Mario Bros. Honestly, I’m not sure what they were thinking with that one.
During the height of Monster Rancher’s popularity, an anime series was produced from 1999-2000. The series consists of seventy-three episodes over two seasons. It follows a boy named Genki Sakura and Holly, the assistant from the original Monster Rancher.
Relevance
Monster Rancher lost steam during the transition from people collecting discs to streaming and became irrelevant. People no longer collect discs. Okay. We have a bookshelf full of discs at my house, but that’s an anomaly. Monster Rancher jumped on the Tamagotchi bandwagon, raked in the cash, and then faded. It’s still popular inside Japan, and Koei Tecmo Games keeps Monster Rancher relevant by catering to their Japanese audience.
Accessibility
Monster Rancher’s original producer, Tecmo, merged with Koei to create Koei Tecmo Games in 2009. The Tecmo part of Koei Tecmo was dissolved in 2010. The company used the Tecmo name until 2016. This may have contributed to the direction of the Monster Rancher franchise.
If one were to look online or in their local game store for a copy of Monster Rancher, it’s slim pickings. These games are available for purchase online, but at an increased price. Original copies cost the same as a new video game. Despite this, Monster Rancher and Monster Rancher 2 are accessible to the public through Steam. That’s right. All of the screenshots I’ve taken for this article are from Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX on Steam.
These ports differ slightly from the original games (such as monster lifespans), but they’re so similar to the originals that it feels nostalgic. The Steam ports also have an option to search their database for discs to read, so there are hundreds of options that wouldn’t be available to someone who doesn’t collect discs.
Other games in the Monster Rancher franchise are less accessible. Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher is the most recent entry. Players raise kaiju monsters the same way they would monsters from the original games. I’ve never heard of this game before conducting research, but it’s available to download from the Nintendo e-shop. As of the time of this posting, it’s on sale until April 28, 2025.
As of this post, a Monster Rancher mobile game will release in Japan only later this year. This game will be available on the popular East Asian messaging platform, LINE. I’m unsure of this game’s inner workings, but it seems like players will be able to interact with their monsters directly. Maybe it has some sort of AR model like Pokémon Go.
Monster Rancher is a franchise I grew up with, and it’s one of my favorite pet simulation games. It’s great for casual and hardcore players. There’s a science behind raising these monsters that players can learn. It can get tedious, especially when you get a new monster and must start the raising process again. It takes time to unlock new content. There are always new mysteries to solve in Monster Rancher, and every monster is unique.
Do you have a preferred breed/species of monster? What’s your favorite monster you’ve raised in Monster Rancher? If there are any cult classics you’d like to see covered in future posts, let us know in the comments. Thanks for reading and have an amazing rest of your day.
Papers, Please by indie game developer Lucas Pope has received widespread acclaim. Who knew that working as an immigration officer in a fictional Eastern Bloc country named Arstotzka would strike a chord with so many people? I’m not sure if any empathy game (a type of role-playing game that asks players to inhabit someone else’s emotional world) has ever received this much attention.
Hey, hey! Kyra Kyle here. Today’s post returns to a much older review I did for a now-defunct website. Unlike most of the video games I cover on Geekly, Papers, Please is a paid game. You can get a good deal on the game through sites like Steam or GOG (Good Old Games). Usually, Papers, Please sells for around $10, even without a sale. I’m reuploading my almost six-year-old review of Papers, Please to Geekly with a few tweaks to tighten the review and match our criteria. Six years is a long time. Let’s see how well Papers, Please stands the test of time.
Mechanisms: 10/10
I have never seen a game as immersive and nerve-racking than Papers, Please. It wasn’t just Papers, Please’s ethical choices. There were plenty of those that made me nervous. The frenetic pace of checking people and their documentation as they crossed Arstotzka’s border took a lot out of a person.
If one divorces its setting (good luck with that), players gain an appreciation for the long lines one may encounter at an airport or the DMV. Papers, Please functions as an “empathy game,” or as Papers, Please’s designer Lucas Pope would say, an “other people simulator.” There aren’t too many games that ask players to inhabit another person’s life.
Papers, Please is one of those games. There’s a reason why Papers, Please is cited as a video game that suggests that the medium be treated as an art form.
It doesn’t matter how well Papers, Please embodies government paperwork, it’s gameplay centers around government paperwork. “I wish someone would make DMV: The Video Game,” said no one ever. You know, I might just play DMV: The Video Game. Don’t @ me. The tedium of checking passports and other supporting documents is mind-numbing at times. Fortunately, there’s the threat of death and supporting one’s family to spice up the act of checking IDs.
The choices the player makes between each day are a large part (if not the largest part) of Papers, Please’s narrative, and by extension its gameplay. The inspector may be given choices like adopting his niece, but his family goes without food or heat for one day. Do you help EZIC and risk being found out by the government? Do you do what you’re told and uphold Arstotzkian law? Glory to Arstotzka! But these are overarching choices, Papers, Please also gives the player plenty of choices and moral dilemmas within their job and daily routine.
An immigrant could ask to be let into the country so they can reunite with their children, but any violation of protocol results in a citation. Too many citations and the player character could be charged fines and possibly thrown in jail—or even executed. The choice to grant leniency to someone could negatively impact the player or the player’s family and that creates plenty of tension with which choices the player makes.
Narrative: 8/10
Whew. There’s a lot going on with Papers, Please’s gameplay and I may have covered some narrative structure in the previous section because gameplay and narrative are so intrinsically linked in Papers, Please. But narrative is where this game shines like an eagle, or some other mixed, cliched metaphor.
Papers, Please paints its narrative in the game’s blank space. Sure, there’s the tedium of checking government documents (and much of the game is centered around that), but the story of the inspector and his family comes in between the inspector’s daily chores. Do you uncheck the expenses for “food” or “heat” to purchase something else, knowing that your family will suffer? Do you confiscate passports, accruing warnings, or even financial penalties, so that you can doctor those passports for your family and escape? Do you keep your head down out of fear of being caught? All of these are valid choices. All these choices, or illusion of choices, puts the player in the role of the inspector.
Much like the gameplay, I can’t tell where the “story” for Papers, Please ends and the storytelling begins. It’s difficult to separate the two and that’s a wonderful thing. So many games we cover on Geekly are easy enough to separately grade a game’s narrative and storytelling. I’m still going to try to separate the two.
Papers, Please has a compelling story because its premise is compelling. But the game’s storytelling is where it truly shines.
Storytelling: 10/10
I mentioned earlier about Papers, Please telling its story in the game’s blank space. I’ve never seen a video game do this is such dramatic fashion. Papers, Please doesn’t just go for large moments and big decisions. It sprinkles in some nice character moments like after the first time the inspector tranquilizes a terrorist and his son hands him a drawing with the text “Arstotzka’s Hero.” Papers, Please’s character building and story come out in ways that only a video game could tell a story or build characters and that’s why it’s received several awards.
I don’t want to get too far into Papers, Please’s storylines, wading deep in spoiler waters, I may have said too much already, but Papers, Please not only challenges preconceived notions of right and wrong and what someone may or may not do if put in an untenable situation, but it also challenges video games to branch out with new forms of storytelling.
Sure, there are some moments where characters feed the player exposition and some of the world-building comes from newspaper headlines or clippings, but they aren’t used in excess. Papers, Please does a good job of showing instead of telling. It does an even better job of immersing players in its world, so much so that an indie film based on the game exists.
It’s difficult to separate Papers, Please’s narrative form from how it builds its characters, world, and story, but that may be the point. It receives high storytelling marks if only with innovation.
User Interface: 5/10
While Papers, Please takes things slowly and raises the temperature of its difficulty a little over time, it doesn’t hand-feed players. The inspection booth can be difficult to navigate at times and chat rooms and question-and-answer sites are littered with places where gamers get stuck. Papers, Please could use more of a tutorial, especially in later rounds of the game. The rulebook does point out changes to the ruleset, but it’s too easy to mess up and restart over a day or two or thirty.
Graphics: 8/10
Papers, Please mirrors the era in which its narrative is set: the early 1980s. Its 8-bit sprites add to the overall vibe of the game, but the gameplay suffers at times as a result.
Pixelated portraits can make cross-referencing passport photos, and other supporting documents, to a person a chore. On the other hand, the graphics amplify the game’s difficulty and provide a double dose of meta-gaming. Government documents often get damaged and become illegible, even for people whose job it is to deal with them, so the graphics are in keeping with the era and the simulation it’s trying to achieve.
The cruder graphics also grant Papers, Please a touch of abstraction. Sometimes players must fill in the gaps when something awful befalls a would-be immigrant. Other times the player is spared a gruesome scene. Either way, the player is actively engaged in this world and anything one creates in their imagination is worse than what a visual medium can show. Horror films have known this for decades.
Still, I must dock Papers, Please a couple of points for its graphics. That’s her face? She looks nothing like that, and I just wasted a few seconds clicking buttons and waiting for results. There are limits to the copious number of times I erroneously scanned people’s faces.
Audio: 7/10
Papers, Please doesn’t use that much music, but the music it employs drives home the point that Arstotzka is an Eastern Bloc country. The main theme, which plays at the beginning of each day, feels like the protagonist inspector is high stepping his way to work each morning.
That’s fantastic. I can, and have, listened to that song on a loop. That’s not a good sign, but at least I didn’t dance the Mamushka, “the dance of brotherly love.” Mamushka!
While the rest of the music is mostly forgettable, character voices and other sound effects come from public sources—one could download midis or wave files from sites like Soundcloud and create one’s own government document thriller—but Papers, Please’s usage of these sound clips is well done. Garbled voices conjure the idea that what immigrants or superiors or peers say to the protagonist doesn’t matter like much adult dialogue in a Peanuts television special. Heck, even what the protagonist says doesn’t matter to him. He’s going through the motions.
The main theme elevates the rest of the soundtrack, but I’m counting off a few points here. Papers, Please’s soundtrack is largely functional.
Replay Factor: 8/10
This is a difficult category to grade. On one hand, Papers, Please has plenty of replay value and even demands players to repay it at least a handful of times. But once one achieves a dozen or so of Papers, Please’s twenty possible endings, I’m not sure if there’s a lot of replay value after doing so. Lucas Pope included an endless mode once a player finished the game at least once, but the game loses something with that game mode.
With twenty endings there’s still plenty of replay value. One can finish Papers, Please in under an hour. Heck, one could deliberately fail as an inspector and end the game in less than five minutes. I put in over 20 hours for this review and still found avenues I could navigate the story.
Aggregated Score: 8
Even after reexamining Papers, Please, I ended up with the same score of eight. I wasn’t anticipating that. I said that I tweaked the scoring criteria to match our modern reviews, but I revisited the game, trying to see if I spotted anything different. Our new scoring criteria could’ve changed Papers, Please overall score, but it didn’t. Papers, Please is the best game (to date) of the ones we’ve covered on JK Geekly. Even after a decade past its original release, Papers, Please is worth your time.
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