20

Jul

Desktop Explorer: What If I Told You Computers Were Dangerous?

There are plenty of games that ask players to piece together a life once lived by the objects that have been left behind, doing detective work to read between the lines of the information collected in an unusual database. But the efforts to turn research into a game can sometimes come across clunkily, and there isn’t always the most compelling of reasons given to be searching a stranger’s device. Desktop Explorer wisely gets that out of the way immediately, and as a result feels all the more honest and powerful for it.

Shortly after booting up the game and loading the only available user profile, Halibut, your protagonist is able to install the executable DesktopExplorer.exe, and before long you’re speaking with a Clippy-like personal assistant, Pizarro, who explains that the program operates by sorting through a user’s history on that computer and then generating a narrative and set of puzzles from it. Your character is looking for insight into her uncle “Halibut,” but she’s not really browsing her uncle’s desktop so much as she—and you by extension—is interacting with what Desktop Explorer (DE) knows about “Halibut.” Though the game is set in 2012 and plays out on a ’90s era device that nostalgically evokes Windows 97, it’s immediately in modern-day conversation with the idea of interacting with AI facsimiles of the dead.

In making DE a part of the narrative, Desktop Explorer is cleverly gamifying memories (while also questioning whether that’s a good thing). This framework also removes the need for any cruft or red herrings. Every text file, image, and program has a twofold purpose: it gives you clues about the habits, passions, and flaws of the desktop’s former users while also hiding the answers to some increasingly devious puzzles. The result is an engaging, interactive warning about what happens when you let technology—in this case a computer daemon (pun very much intended)—decide what’s best for the user.

Because the game’s detective portions require you to pay such close attention to visual clues, some of which are really well hidden (looking at you, MineSniffer), you can’t help but also read between the lines of how the game’s various user profiles are connected. After all, you can’t really modify the source code of a file if you don’t understand what it currently says and know what you need it to change to. Desktop Explorer doesn’t require you to be on the same level as its users—you won’t need to dive deep into command lines or master the MSPaint-like program Sketch—it just requires you to listen to them and, more importantly, to remember what you’ve learned so that you might apply it in increasingly unusual circumstances. (For instance, an early puzzle is directly solved by resizing a text box’s window; a late-game puzzle indirectly suggests how a series of resized windows can help decipher another clue.)

Desktop Explorer is a smart and efficient puzzler for users of all ages, but it’s especially effective for those who grew up with computers, for as you peel back the layers of each user’s memories, you’ll also be confronting your nostalgia for these interfaces. That familiarity also helps with the game’s lo-fi horror elements, where things that seem familiar end up glitching just enough to create a sense of the uncanny. Renaming files or altering source code can conjure up all sorts of eerie surprises. 

That atmosphere is enhanced by Desktop Explorer’s seemingly inexhaustible bag of tricks and a narrative that’s so tightly woven around them that they never feel like gimmicks. The more you learn about the user behind the Halibut profile, the more it becomes clear why the plot of his puzzles veers so much toward Egyptian mythology, specifically death and guilt. By contrast, for one of the other users, a would-be art-major going by M4x1mus, Desktop Explorer mashes together their SecondLife-y online community, goth sensibilities, and web searches. The result is a terrifyingly empty mall that player avatars can explore, one that gives a physicality to M4x1mus’s fears of abandonment. 

As it happens, maybe the real secret to empathy isn’t walking a mile in another person’s shoes, but being made to solve a bunch of puzzles from their point of view.

Product received for free courtesy of popagenda.

2 weeks ago Short URL Comments

Review/Video Game

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13

Jul

The Fun Release I Didn’t Know I Needed: KAZ

Once you stop playing KAZ you don’t stop playing KAZ because the fifteen-second timer is ticking down and in this ambitiously minimalistic twist on whack-a-mole you have keep moving from square to square, maximizing your actions-per-minute (APM) by smashing the highest-value targets while dodging traps and casting spells—and OK, yes, you do get a break between rounds where you can consider which power-up will synergize best with your chosen character’s abilities (or which debuff you can live with if you’ve been carelessly stomping on trap tiles), but this is a game that revels not only in calculating your APM but its effectivity, which is to say, whether you’re always moving toward a target—and so but then anyway, the point is that when you’re moving, you’re really moving, and while it’s neat to see Balatro played a high-level at GDQ, there you’ve got a pre-set strategy and you can plan for the upcoming blinds, and in KAZ you’ve just got to keep reacting (usually poorly) to all the chaos that’s developing around you; and there is a method behind all that madness, because as you continue to complete in-game challenges, you’ll unlock abilities that basically let you hack the whack-a-mole board, from minor conveniences like forcing enemies to spawn more frequently, or closer to your position, to spells that you can cast by pressing a certain series of inputs, like down down down up in order to invert every tile, such that if every square were blank, now every square has an enemy on it—oh, and these abilities are funny, like the way in which Crypto Guy increases the value of every enemy you attack but only up until you hit your first wall, or the way in which the Three Body Problem debuff will obnoxiously display the end-round timer in the middle of the screen, slightly obscuring your vision—and I marvel a bit at how easy KAZ is to interpret even at high speeds, because it really is a classic arcade game with only three enemies (static, moving, shielded), one kind of trap, and the occasional high-valued star to collect (assuming that’s a power-up you’ve chosen), which leaves you safe to try and manage all the power-ups, like a disco ball that turns each stage into Crypt of the Necrodancer, giving extra points for each foe hit while on a lit square, or to remember on what move your chosen weapon is going to activate—and in fact, part of KAZ‘s addictive “one more run” charm (apart from the brevity) stems from all the unique skins you can unlock, such that Rhythm Doctor unsurprisingly earns bonus points from every seventh enemy (all of which look like beats on a heart monitor) while Christophe Galati’s character from Save me Mr Tako can dig an extra tile each round (while stylishly slaying various octopi in black and white)—which is all to say that while not every character or ability seems equally powerful and you’re certainly at the vicissitudes of whether you’re offered enough ways to increase your score before the cap exceeds your APM capabilities, because these are at most five minute mad-dash score rushes with so many striking aesthetics to shift through, KAZ kept surprising me more than irking me and if the game felt unfair it never felt unfun which is really what you’re looking for when you’re just trying to let off some Steam.

Code for this game was provided by Two Frogs in a Trenchcoat.

3 weeks ago Short URL Comments

Review

18

May

Under All the Grime (II), a Platinum Surfaces

On PlayStation alone, I’ve got 478 gold trophies, 1,773 silver ones, 8,572 bronze ones. This isn’t meant as a humble brag—in fact, I’m sure some people would say I’m not really a gamer with such a paltry showing. Until a few days ago, upon fully beating Grime II, I had only 7 platinums, last being for Tales of Kenzera: Zau. Before that, it was Robocop: Rogue City; prior to that, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and earlier, Batman: The Telltale Adventure.

What these share in common is that most or all of their achievements are tied directly to things you already want to be doing in the game, and are generally things that can all be done on a standard difficulty and a single playthrough. In short, there’s no cruft. Yes, Ratchet & Clank makes you use weapons, and yes, Tales of Kenzera: Zau asks you to explore a bit, but that’s sort of the point of those games. Rogue City has optional missions, but why are you playing a Robocop simulator if you’re not interested in fighting all the crime?

But thanks to the all-powerful algorithm and its friends SEO and GEO, the video game industry feels flooded by metrics that define not games, but customers. One day, it’s concurrent player counts. The next, it’s the time players have spent within a single title. Listen to the noise, and you’ll forget that it’s never been about quantity so much as quality—especially in a world where there’s already the overwhelming quantity of the number of games from which to choose. Even if you limited yourself simply to playing titles released in a given year, SteamDB says there were 18,540 on Steam in 2024 and 21,448 in 2025.

Unsurprisingly, data-driven Microsoft was the first to really popularize mass achievements, syncing up its Gamerscore to the Xbox 360. It’s hard not to see a direct throughline from this to the most toxic GamerTM behaviors, heating up the console wars by giving players a reason to commit to a single console even for multiplatform games, and giving players the same (bad) reason to fight against accessibility as has been employed against social services: if others can succeed, my status will be diminished. “Git gud” isn’t the rallying cry of a person who plays and enjoys games: it’s the smug put-down of a person who cares only about the value a game has toward defining their identity.

Sony only compounded this issue across platforms, as it distinguished itself by categorizing trophies not by point scores but by valuable metals, with the rarest trophies given only to players who gained every achievement for a game, an extrinsic Platinum carrot, if you will, to get people playing games far beyond simple completion. The manipulation becomes even clearer when you consider that Sony doesn’t allow just any game to have a Platinum trophy—as Kojima disclosed back in 2014 for Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, they at the very least they had to be a full-price game. I can respect that Sony doesn’t allow its storefront to be filled with Platinum shovelware, as there are achievement hunters out there who would seek stuff like that out (see, for instance, the list of videos and guides to the “easiest Platinums,” as if that’s a good reason to play a game). But when games like The Exit 8 and Overcooked also go Platinum-less (presumably because of length), I find myself concerned about intent.

On a personal level, I’m not bothered by any of this. I’m confident enough in my convictions (and increasingly limited enough in time) to play games however I want to play them. There are plenty of games that I completed 90% of more of the achievements for, and probably could have gotten a Platinum on, but I didn’t feel I’d missed anything by not getting all the “mastery” in Chorus or missing an outfit or two in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy.

Which brings me back to my latest “acquisition”—Grime II. This is not a short game by any means, nor an easy one, but if you’re enjoying it as much as I was, you’re probably going to get the platinum. Exploring this twisted world is fun in of itself, and doing so nets you more than enough currency to buy all the armor and weapons you need. Its achievements operate like a Table of Contents, indicating that there are big objectives yet to complete—bosses and breathcrown-possessing prey—as opposed to what happened in the last great Metroidvania I played, MIO: Memories in Orbit, which was more of an index of meaningless activities, or Constance, which was a grueling series of unwanted speedrunning challenges, including to beat the game in under three hours, and to 100% it in under 8 hours. In Grime II, I could see on the map (or through the markers I’d left) where there were areas I hadn’t explored; with MIO, I had no idea where the coatings, cores, or modifiers that I was missing were, which turned a fun act of naturally filling in the map into a frustrating task of scouring it.

To be clear, that doesn’t take anything away from MIO or Constance: my whole point is that achievements are external, secondary, and a game is not itself any less good because it has a missable trophy or time-consumingly effortful achievement to collect. But because achievements are so front and center (or upper-lefter on the PlayStation), I can’t avoid thinking about them. I can’t fully ignore, much as I’d like to, the FOMO of seeing that I didn’t accomplish everything in a game upon beating it, and that leads me inevitably to browse the trophy list, to see if there’s anything yet worth accomplishing.

I hope that developers think long and hard not just about what to include, but why they’re including it. After all, those who want to speedrun a game will do so, just like those who want to set brutal challenges for themselves (like not getting hit by a boss). I’ll always appreciate the fourth-wall-breaking The Stanley Parable for mocking the very nature of its own achievements, as much as I’ll despite the people who, missing the point completely, reset their internal clocks to earn “Go outside” (Don’t play The Stanley Parable for five years), tweaked their set-ups to get “Commitment” (Play The Stanley Parable for the entire duration of a Tuesday), or just broke into the developer console or configuration files to get “Unachievable” (It is impossible to get this achievement).

In the meantime, here’s the achievement I’ll be chasing: the one where you ignore all the other achievements and all the spoiler-y checklists of what exactly to do (and where exactly to go) to earn the achievements, and just play through the game itself. I’m pretty sure that’s a Platinum worth earning.

3 months ago Short URL Comments

Video Games

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13

Apr

Dosa Divas Prepares the Right Ingredients the Wrong Way

For a too-long period after college, I didn’t cook. I was working two essentially full-time jobs, barely waking up in time to run to a 9–6 office job that didn’t have a refrigerator to a theater-reviewing gig, and when I got home, I’d generally be trying to get ahead of deadlines and filing copy before going to sleep somewhere around 2 AM. So I understand the dangerous convenience that lies at the center of Dosa Divas, where pre-packaged, convenient LinaMeals have replaced the idea of having to do your own cooking, damn the consequences.

Of course, the consequence of eating so many fast-food, microwavable, or otherwise thoughtlessly prepared meals is that I grew up having no connection to them: I didn’t enjoy meals, and I rarely shared them with others. I got through them as quickly as possible so that I could get on to the next thing, which Dosa Divas very bleakly (and ironically) represents as the harvesting of the materials for LinaMeals. That time saved on cooking actually came full circle to consume me, whether that’s the wage slavery of Dosa Divas or just, you know, the depression of days being lived for nothing more.

So yeah, Dosa Divas absolutely has the right recipe, and their previous turn-based RPG release Thirsty Suitors proves that they know how to cook, too. Unfortunately, not only does everything get in the way of the strong character dynamics between three estranged sisters and the staff they once ran a family restaurant with, but the plot of Dosa Divas is often diegetically (or should I say digestically) at odds with its own messaging. The story details a food revolution, in both senses, as you fight back against the mercenary reduction of food (and the memories it can carry) to a bland, effortless paste, and suggests that the work that goes into cooking is what provides real nourishment, not just of the body, but the soul. But the game’s work—running through the same three biomes to scavenge ingredients and fight corporate goons—gets in the way of the wholesome plot.

Where the game struggles most is in its QTE-“enhanced” turn-based battles. The first few combat encounters in each area tend to be a blast. Lina’s legal team throws paper work at you before hitting you with a low blow, the security enforcers come at you hard and fast with their “non-lethal” riot gear, and the tech-bro developers have a lot of flashy moves before they try to sneak a hit or two. But where games of this Super Mario RPG style might throw in new enemies or moves, Dosa Divas just increases the HP of existing enemies until ever battle is just a matter of spamming the two moves that most effectively hammer an opponent’s weakness until they’re “stuffed” (or “broken,” ala Octopath Traveler).

This is most noticeable in the game’s second act, where you have to revisit all three locations. While the people have new things to say, nothing else has really changed, and if grinding additional HP didn’t seem so necessary to survive a missed or unblockable attack, I would have skipped as many encounters as possible. The game keeps introducing new recipes for you to cook, and there’s unique art for each finished dish, but the ways in which you gather recipes, prepare the meals, and face your foes is stagnant. It’s like living in a giant metropolis, filled with cuisine from all over the world, and choosing to eat at the same two or three restaurants every night. That’s a gastronightmare!

You can see, at every turn, how the ingredients of Dosa Divas have been rationed out, stretched to last a certain amount of time when the tastier solution would have been to add more ingredients and different flavors to the mix. Though Lina’s food empire is said to span 40+ identically processed and named towns, there are only three places to explore in food-punning Meyndish: Buroth Village, Canopea, and Port Zest. In each of those areas, you only really have to learn three types of enemy attack patterns before facing one of the game’s robotic DiVA (Divine Automaton) bosses. And when cooking meals to aid in combat or save villagers, you’re just doing the same five types of mini-games (with a few modifiers here and there). These empty calories are the opposite of nourishing: they filled me up with so much slop that I found it hard to continue on with the story.

Perhaps Dosa Diva‘s flaws are most apparent because it is a game about food. People seem to be more fooled by ambiance, service, presentation, etc., when it comes to a video game than when it comes to eating at a restaurant where, at the end of the day, something either tastes good or it doesn’t. Games can obfuscate a lot more, making you think there’s something substantial under all the razzle-dazzle (see all the current discourse about Crimson Desert). But because Dosa Diva keeps reminding you to look under the hood, it’s hard to ignore that there’s just not that much there.

This game was reviewed with a code provided by the publicist.

4 months ago Short URL Comments

Review

03

Apr

The Wrong Kind of Struggle: Super Meat Boy 3D

Creativity is under attack right now. Automation makes it increasingly easy to make more, prettier content. And the cost of that can be seen in Super Meat Boy 3D. It is not a thoughtless game, because its obstacle courses are well-constructed nightmares that only seem impossible, but compared to the original, and to many of its peers, it is a less thoughtful game. And I cannot help but think that this is perhaps because the developers haven’t struggled as much. I’m not saying that it should be torturous to make a game: sometimes the ideas just flow.

But I worry that as some games become easier to create, there’s less thought put into the choices that define them. Super Meat Boy 3D, like the worst sequels out there (or the Assassin’s Creed franchise at maximum bloat), has such a specific formula that it feels meaningless, or to put it in modern terms, it feels as if it could have been put together by an AI trained on platformers. All the right ideas are there, but they’re the easy, obvious ones.

That’s a disappointment, given that struggle is the pulsating, fleshy core of Super Meat Boy, which differentiated itself from 2D platformer like Super Mario Bros. by focusing not on wonder, but on horror, descending into hell one fiendishly difficult level at a time. I understand the appeal of the “no pleasure without pain” mentality of a good masocore game, but there’s a whole spectrum of emotions out there, and it’s unimaginative to craft something exclusively along one axis.

Take, for instance, Celeste. Madeline isn’t just climbing that mountain; she’s working through stuff in her own life. Her meditative pauses between regions of the mountains are just as critical to the game as the platforming. They’re where the game breathes. And without those moments of reflection, it’s just a game. Or consider Undertale. At any time, you can make things considerably easier for yourself. It’s the act of constantly committing to pacifism that elevates it beyond simply being a game. Super Meat Boy 3D isn’t interested in points or choices. Meat Boy begins and ends as a blank patty, which makes his struggle meaningless.

Maybe this was OK with the original Super Meat Boy. The idea of chasing Dr. Fetus from biome to biome to rescue the kidnapped Bandage Girl was a grimdark take on Mario Bros. That’s wasn’t a particularly deep idea, but it felt sharp at the time, particularly in the way it encouraged failure with hyper-fast reloads and infinite lives. But Mario grew up, and just about every new entry has introduced some mechanically different twist, from Odyssey‘s Cappy to World‘s multiple exits, to Island‘s egg-shooting.

Super Meat Boy 3D isn’t based on Super Mario 64 (though its very first hidden level is). It isn’t even really based on Super Mario Bros. 3D World, save for the use of an even more fixed camera. Every level remains a linear obstacle course of sawblades and missiles, conveyor belts and fans, acids and spikes. It has gained a dimension, but lost whatever soul it has; worse, it has mistaken enhanced graphics as a gameplay innovation. The last two titles, Super Meat Boy Forever and Dr. Fetus’s Mean Meat Machine, at least toyed with the autorunner and Puyo-Puyo match-4 genres. It’s just Super Meat Boy, but in 3D.

The overwhelming sense of dissonance I felt while playing Super Meat Boy 3D stems from a simple metric: I feel like the player is being asked to put way more into the game than the developer did. If you want to assign a numeric value to a game—a rating, if you will—you must also perhaps consider scoring the work the player has to do to extract that value, and also the work the developer had to do to create that value. Perhaps this is just a matter of personal perception, but I never minded struggling with a David Foster Wallace book because I knew that he, too, was struggling to write them. I trusted that his work would embody that struggle, and that it would be worthwhile for me to in turn struggle through them. It would be folly to compare Super Meat Boy 3D to Infinite Jest, but I get the despairing feeling that it doesn’t struggle with anything.

The internet made it easier to share one’s opinion, to self-publish (this blog is an example of that). You can see how that has affected the quality of writing (again, this in-need-of-an-editor screed included). In most cases, though, you can tell where someone has spent considerably more time working on something—not just rushing to create content for content’s sake, however much capitalism might demand it. Just look at the rich layers of Blue Prince and Mewgenics, original games which took eight and twelve years to develop. I can vividly recall Level 1-1 of Super Mario Bros. I can remember parts of Super Meat Boy. I finished Super Meat Boy 3D last night, and I’ve already forgotten it.

4 months ago Short URL Comments

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