With it being spooky season, I decided to take a break from Cyberpunk 2077 and jumped into a game I’ve been wanting to play for a long while — Alan Wake II (from Remedy Entertainment). I absolutely adored the first Alan Wake, and I was excited to delve into the sequel (which arrived 13 years after the first game) — and I’m having great, if semi-stressful and terrifying, fun so far.
When the game opens, the player takes the perspective of Saga Anderson, an FBI agent sent to investigate a murder in the town of Bright Falls (where author Alan Wake disappeared following the events of the first game), alongside her partner Alex Casey (coincidentally, the name of one of Alan Wake’s characters). As they investigate, they begin to uncover evidence of a cult obsessed with the writings of Wake, who are committing some kind of ritual sacrifice. Along the way, Saga and her partner come face to face with the Taken (people possessed by shadows), revealing that they’re mystery is more supernatural than they first realized.
Saga seems to have a deep connection to her intuition and uses a mind palace — which appears as the hotel room in which they’re stationed — to mentally store and analyze the details in front of her. The player can dip into this mind palace at any time to look at the information and clues uncovered while playing the game, and by analyzing these clues, new elements of the mystery open up, which is quite fun.
Later in the game, the player switches to Alan Wake’s perspective — trapped in in the ocean of darkness that he’s desperately attempting to escape. Represented as a version of New York, the dark place is strange, surreal, and chaotic. It exists on its own terms, but can also be influenced by Wake’s writing. Like Saga, Alan Wake has access to a room, his writing room, where he is attempting to use his skill as a writer to escape the darkness. Gathering more information allows Wake to rewrite scenes and change the reality of the dark place in order to progress — which I love.
One of the things I found most challenging about the first game — the clunky combat — has now become much more polished in the sequel. As with the first game, the player has shine a light on the taken to disperse the shadows (which act like a shield) to then open fire with a gun and destroy them. Fighting the Taken is still difficult at times (especially when there are a lack of bullets and more than one enemy swarming around), but it feels reasonably fair so far. It’s a challenge I can appreciate, instead of being frustrated by.
So, all of that is to say, I’m having a great time with the game, and I’m especially loving all the Easter eggs from the first game and from Control as part of Remedy’s connected universe (and maybe a connection to their other game, Quantum Break, because Shawn Ashmore’s in this, though he seems to be playing a different character, so maybe it’s just shemping (same actor playing multiple characters)). Anyway. creepy good times.
In Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus Games), Charon retires from his role of ferrying the dead to their place in the underworld and he tasks Stella with taking his place. As Stella, the player gathers spirits and helps them to move on by satisfying their needs and final desires. Stella travels between various islands gathering resources and meeting new spirits to help, and she upgrades her boat to make the spirits she is ferrying happy. It’s a delightful cosy management sim, with from what I understand some deep, heartfelt moment (but I haven’t gotten that far yet). Right now, I’m just enjoying the charming characters, the beautiful animation and running around and completing my tasks. It’s a very satisfying and soothing gameplay loop.
June’s Journey (Wooga) is a hidden objects game, a simple puzzle mechanic in which the player must search and find objects in a specific scene. Completing a search earns points, allowing the player to progress the story. The in-game economy is a kind of a loop — completing hidden objects scenes provides coins and other objects that enable the purchase of buildings and plants to decorate the estate, and in turn, decorating the estate supplies flowers that enable the player to open new scenes. There are also side storylines and games that have their own economies and everything kind of feeds into each other.
As with many mobile games, there are timers to slow down the player, and this with the various game economics seems to designed to encourage the player to spend real money using in-app purchases (so it’s not free free) — though it is possible to progress, albeit much more slowly by simply playing the game and waiting for timers to finish (which is basically what I’m doing). There are also optional ads that provide a boost in coins or to hurry up a timer, which in my opinion is the right way to do ads (since they are opt-in).
The story is interesting enough. Set in the 1930s, June travels to her sister’s mansion, where her sister and brother-in-law have been murdered and her niece has been left all alone. Once she arrives, June begins to investigate the murders. In line with the casual gameplay, the storyline also progresses at a casual pace — and I’ve managed to wrap up the main storyline, with a new main story now starting. I’ll continue playing for a while, since I enjoy the gameplay and June as a character.
I also played several tiny browser games, all of which were submitted to Bitsy Jam #84: Petrichor. Each participant was invited to interpret the theme however they liked, and here are some lovely little games I enjoyed:
- “i get it now” by Zhanko – About feeling lost and the desire to escape life into the woods.
- “Feeling things out” by cosmicdeers – About bottling up emotions and the importance of reaching out for help.
- “raindrops” by Wisp – A beautiful art experience, in which the player moves as a raindrop traveling down the survace of windows or other objects.
- “Greg Jones Simulator” by PTC_Andrew – A humorous experience about being a hairdresser.
- “The Road Trip” by bambuloid – Opening levels for a longer game that the dev is still working on, in which the player gathers a bunch of budies for a road trip.
(I also submitted a game to this jam, called “Petrichor,” which I’m hoping to put some more polish on and update soon.)
If you’d also like to know about the books and movies that I enjoyed recently, you can check out my Culture Consumption for October.