It's Giving Cooking Mama

After giving up on two different titles I decided to look for something that veered from that set of failures.  I was scrolling through my Steam Recommendations when I saw a game that definitely was a departure from my normal choices.  Who woulda thunk that I would enjoy a cute little casual cooking game?  I've had a nice time with some other cooking games--namely Cook, Serve, Delicious which I've recommended in the past (and it's supposedly getting a re-mastered first game).

For the longest time I thought this guy had a loaf of bread on his forehead.

What is it?

KuloNiko: Bowl Up! is a casual cooking-themed game that involves running a noodle/meatball restaurant that you inherited from your dearly departed grandmother.  The gameplay consists of running your restaurant, competing in a cooking competition known as the "meatball brawl," and befriending the many denizens of the fictional town of Kuloniko.  It has some STRONG Cooking Mama vibes--your main character is most definitely a descendant of our beloved Mama.

How much playtime can I expect?

I finished the main storyline in a little over 15.5 hours.  You can run your restaurant indefinitely (if that's your jam).  I'm not sure how much more playtime you could eke out.  I didn't unlock all the cosmetic options, but that could definitely add some playtime for someone interested in a fully completionist experience.

How's replayability?

There's not much of a replayability factor with this one, unfortunately.  I suppose if you also wanted to experience every iteration of hangout with each character...maybe that could motivate some longer playtime or more replayability.

The street view outside your restaurant.

Pros:

+ Cute, anime/Wii-style design.  The characters and town all have a fun vibe that will appeal to those aforementioned Cooking Mama fans.

+ Gameplay that is easy to pick up but has enough challenge to make it feel well balanced.  The controls are extremely simple (we're talking clicking at the right time mostly) but the challenge comes from managing the increasingly complex orders from the restaurant patrons.  Patrons can request specific recipes or they can just toss out a random list of items they want you to throw into a bowl.  It gets more complicated as they can also request that their food have a specific flavor or that they don't want specific ingredients.  Each bowl can only hold so many ingredients, so complex orders can feel quite challenging as you try to balance out the requested flavors.  As you progress and unlock new stations in the kitchen patrons can also request side dishes and drinks.  There's a timer for fulfilling orders and it can feel daunting at times.

The gameplay loop involves running your restaurant throughout the week (fulfilling customer orders) and deciding how you want to spend your two free days.  On free days you can either hang out with friends (the cast of characters you meet as part of the story) and do something fun which will increase your friendship meter/level.  Increasing friendship is important because each of your friends has specific perks that can be applied if you opt to choose them to assist you during a meatball brawl (plus, you unlock all those fun cosmetic options--some are themed around a specific character).  You can also opt to participate in meatball brawls during your day off.

+ Meatball brawl throws in some light faux-competition.  At this event you can challenge another chef to create a dish for a specific panel of judges who each have their taste/ingredient preferences.  You earn points (hearts) by adding ingredients that the judges prefer while also paying attention to the challenge ingredients (each brawl has a different set of unique bonus ingredients).  There are also bonus points awarded for performing specific crowd requested actions during one of the three "action" phases--for example, the crowd might want you to do cutting tasks or add a specific flavor.  Winning the competition requires adding in the bonus ingredients and also making sure to take into account the specific taste and ingredient preferences of the judges.  Overall, winning the brawls isn't too difficult.

+ Very forgiving gameplay.  If you mess up an order or take too long your patrons will still pay for their order...they just don't tip as well and you make less money.  If you lose a meatball brawl your restaurant loses some reputation (which can be re-earned through correctly fulfilling orders in your restaurant) and you can re-challenge the chef at a later date.

A beach-themed restaurant.

+ Lots of cosmetic options for creating your own unique restaurant.  You can personalize your kitchen and your main restaurant area with many fun options.  The basic options can be purchased with coins and other options are unlocked through increasing your friendship level with certain characters and purchasing them with vouchers (vouchers can either be won in brawls or during festivals).

+ A silly main storyline with plenty of feel good cheese.  Friendship, yay!  Sometimes it nice just to keep things light.

+ A cute cat companion.  Every game is improved with a cute, cat.  Teto, the cat, will periodically jump on the cashiers counter and have to be nudged out of the way so you can cook and accompanies you to bed each night.  You can also pet him at night after your restaurant shift.

Cons:

- Mini-games to learn recipes are basically pointless.  Learning a new recipe makes you play a mini-game that literally consists of clicking.  That's it--there's not even a tiny bit of difficulty built it (like clicking a different button).  It could be improved by making different commands for each recipe...at least make it feel unique.

- Might be too casual for some gamers.  The most challenging part of the gameplay is figuring out particularly complex orders that request specific ingredients and flavor profiles.  Everything else is pretty cake--it's basically impossible to lose at meatball brawl and messing up customer orders generally just results in less reputation/profits.

- Recipes seem pointless at times and you wind up giving a customer a bowl with some garlic and a few random seasonings.  Why even have them request a recipe?  (I get that part of it is you remembering that a customer said no meat)  It just feels sort of non-sensical--although, I suppose that people do order whacky things in real life.

Recommendation:

If you were a fan of Cooking Mama then KuloNiko will be right up your alley.  It's like Cooking Mama with an actual story.  If you're wanting a casual, mostly relaxing type of experience, it's perfect for you.  If you're hoping for something that's moderately challenging...this is not it (give Cook, Serve, Delicious a try).  I had a nice time with it and think it will appeal to a certain type of gamer.

...Know When to Fold 'Em

I'm only halfway through my first official week of summer break and I've already lost track of what day it is (I forgot to post yesterday...my bad for all the AI bots who missed out).  Anyway...I thought I would highlight one of the difficult decisions that we sometimes have to make in gaming--should I stop playing?  For some people, this choice can be tough and we often force ourselves to knuckle through something that we're not enjoying.  It has been one of my personal goals to stop doing that and I've had a bit of minor success this week(ish).

Last week I wrote up my feelings/impressions around Graveyard Keeper.  I was feeling a bit mixed about it but would estimate that I'm probably about 75-80% through the main storyline.  Generally when I'm that far along and struggling with enjoyment I will just grind it out.  This time around though, I decided that I was done.  The gameplay was feeling far too grind-y, like I wasn't making much progress, and I was constantly having to look things up (annoying).  Does that mean it's a bad game?  Not necessarily (although apparently there were a lot of issues when it originally came out--like the fact that the game wasn't ever officially "finished" and things like gamebreaking bugs...but I didn't encounter many issues and just found it a bit cumbersome)--I think there are things to enjoy, but for me personally, I lost patience and interest.  Forcing myself to play felt like clocking in to work...and that's not a great feeling.

Why is it so hard to quit when we aren't enjoying something?  I think part of it is about time and money.  I invested 45.2 hours into the story so felt a bit obligated to see it out to the end.  There's also typically the money factor--if you paid for a game you want to get your moneys worth out of it.  (*Here's where I will remind you that I did not pay for this game and received it free as part of a giveaway)  Those two factors make it tough to simply put something down (...and maybe secretly know that it's going to land firmly into your pile/mountain of shame).

Then I made the curious decision to stumble directly into that pile of shame and try to pick up another (beloved by many) title that I had struggled with in the past.  Shovel Knight is a game that I originally bought a long time ago.  I apparently played it for about 1 hour before uninstalling.  I couldn't really remember what the issue was (and thought that maybe it was just that I forgot about it) and that I should give it another chance.  Well, I did that and discovered that, in the words of the great Taylor Swift, "I'm the problem, it's me."  I am so horrible at Shovel Knight that it is demoralizing--I am constantly dying in sad and pathetic ways.  This time I gave up after about 2 hours.  That's progress!

So here's my advice--if you're not enjoying something, just let it slowly slide back into your library.  Don't force yourself to struggle through something.  You can always go back to it later--and, I suppose there's some kind of chance that you might enjoy it at a different point in your life.  In my case, that didn't really shake out, but I tried.

I've been trying to spend more time outside in the glorious summer weather.  Now's the time to be touching the grass, my gaming folks.  Happy summer to all (and hopefully next week I'll remember what day it is).

Corpse Abuse...for Profits!

I picked up a couple of free games as part of random giveaways and have been spending quite a bit of time with Graveyard Keeper.  It's not a new game and definitely is a product of the post-Stardew Valley craze that saw a glut of pixelated games in that vein.  It's no Stardew and I've been feeling a bit divided with my level of enjoyment.  I haven't completed it yet (and probably will), so this isn't my full review, but just some thoughts.

Likes:

+ Easy to pick up.  There's a bit of tutorial but it's pretty basic--you gather materials, you build various crafting objects, you craft items, and you try to complete tasks to further the main storyline.

My growing graveyard.

+ Like the name suggests, a big part of your tasks is to maintain/improve the local graveyard.  A communist-leaning talking donkey periodically delivers new corpses for burial.  Each body has a sort of (unexplained...) quality level and you can decide if you want to alter that level by performing some....unlicensed surgery.  With a bit of training (via a sort of talent point-like system) you can remove various parts such as bones, blood, or skin.  These parts are used in various other applications but will change the quality of the body/grave when buried.  The quality of a grave is determined by the quality of the body and the decorations you place on the grave.  Part of the storyline hinges on improving the quality of the graveyard to a certain level.  You can opt to invest talent points in burial skills (such as embalming) and in crafting fancier grave decorations.  Oh, and you can also carve off some chunks of flesh to sell as "meat" to the proprietor of the local tavern.  There's a meat shortage and he'll buy any "meat" as long as it has the royal stamp (something that you can purchase/obtain from both legitimate or shady sources).

+ If you want to be busy, there's about a million different things going on at a time.  This is both good and bad.  The main storyline branches out into having to complete tasks for a number of different characters.  Plus, you have to keep dealing with graveyard matters--those bodies keep rolling in (at least for awhile--then that punk donkey starts demanding pay in the form of carrots or else he won't deliver any more bodies).

+ Zombie workers!  You can unlock technology that allows you to turn bodies into zombies.  Once you've also unlocked and constructed the requisite work location and porter stations you can set up a nice network or zombies who will gather basic materials for you.  No one in town seems to notice this ominous behavior.

Dislikes:

- My biggest gripe has been the number of totally unexplained parts of the game.  For example, each body has a quality level based on a number of red or white skulls displayed.  The best corpses have none or few red skulls (this can be altered through embalming/application of fluids or removing specific parts) and they're the ones you want to keep in your graveyard.  Other than reading descriptions of talents this aspect of the game is not explained.  There's also an alchemy crafting system that is highly reliant on experimentation--basically you have to combine random stuff until you stumble upon the correct combo.  When you do stumble onto a workable combo it's not saved anywhere.  It would be nice to have a journal/logbook where this info gets saved.

- There's tons to do, but that can feel a bit overwhelming.  I have found that it's best to try to focus on one task at a time (like improving the church/graveyard or specific character tasks).

I'm about 30+ hours in and feeling pretty mixed about my experience.  I'm still entertained enough that I'll probably finish it (especially with summer break looming in my near future), but I've had moments of putting it down and playing something else.  We'll see.

If you're a teacher--wishing you a great summer break!  I get done on Wednesday and it has been a trying school year so I'm very much looking forward to less stress and more relaxation.  If you're not done yet, keep holding on--you're getting closer (I know there are some places that don't get out until the end of June).  Happy summer and happy gaming!

Semi-Unexpected Surprise

I tend to ignore a lot of the internet related gaming rumors--especially the ones that seem a bit unbelievable.  Even though I kept seeing some reports that there was new content for the now 11-year old The Witcher 3 in the works, it seemed downright goofy.  Who makes new content for an 11-year old game?!?  (*Okay, there are obviously some exceptions like games that have multi-player/online content like GTA V or maybe the oddity that is No Man's Sky).  It turns out that these rumors were true--The Witcher 3 will be getting new content as part of the "Songs of the Past" expansion that currently has a very vague 2027 release date.

The Witcher 3 is definitely one of my all time favorites, so yeah, I'm definitely going to play anything related to it.  So far the details about the new content have been very sparse and a bit cryptic.  They released a graphic promoting the new content that shows Geralt (in his very traditional gear) holding an interesting new sword with a giant, crazy tentacled monster lurking in the background (*included below in case you haven't seen it in a billion other places).

What details can we glean from this image--honestly, not much.  We can safely assume (based on previous DLC) that there will be new gear and some sort of big, bad monster that Geralt will ultimately face off against.  The title also hints that it might take place in the past OR potentially involve some sort of event from Geralt's past that has come back.  I'm curious if there will be some sort of tie-in with the upcoming The Witcher 4.  It sounds more likely though that it will reference the OG The Witcher since it is being co-developed between CD Projekt and the devs of the upcoming Witcher remaster.  I had completely forgotten about that project because there has been so little news about it.

There are a few confirmed details--CD Projekt made it a point to emphasize that "Songs of the Past" isn't a DLC but a full expansion similar to "Hearts of Stone" and "Blood and Wine."  Based on that, we'll likely see a new zone, new enemy types, new abilities, and maybe even some new gwent cards!  In a video yesterday they also dropped some hints that there are clues in a graphic related to the in-game holiday known as Belleteyn.  (See below)

So we have Geralt hanging out with the same sword that we see in the other image and Dandelion strumming his lute in the midst of a fun belleteyn celebration.  There's apparently also a poem that accompanies this image:

On Belleteyn night, when tall fires rise,
Whispered wishes go through the quiet skies.
A lion cub’s fate is penned in the stars,
And lilac and gooseberries are never too far.
Tonight, there are no monsters to kill, no roads to roam,
Just quiet thoughts and wishes that try to find a home.
The White Wolf sits still, mesmerized by the dancing flame,
While Dandelion strums his lute and hums Geralt’s name.

The poem hints at Ciri (the lion cub) and Yennefer (good ol' lilac and gooseberries), so there's probably a good chance we'll see involvement or a storyline involving them.  Oh, and Dandelion too.  But other than that, there's not much to glean--a party atmosphere?  Maybe some magical nonsense related to the festival of Belleteyn itself?

I felt like "Blood and Wine" ended in such a great way that I'm a bit surprised at this new content.  Geralt has just settled into Corvo Bianco and he's venturing out again?  I guess he's not actually retired...maybe he has one more adventure in him.

I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for more news related to "Songs of the Past."  Happy gaming!

Leave it to the Beavers--Timberborn

I recently spent a bit of time trying to master my city building skills.  Now, I'm absolutely not an expert in city building, but I can usually do decently.  The city builder in question doesn't involve your typical human cities, instead, it's based on a civilization of advanced beavers.

What is it?

A city-builder with a few unique twists that include the aforementioned society of beavers.

How much playtime can I expect?

Honestly...potentially infinite.  Your city can exist as long as you can keep it functioning and survive gradually lengthening periods of crisis (I will explain soon).

Pros:

+ Mostly helpful tutorial that allows you to get a grasp on the basics.  More advanced features do require some searching.

The industrial area of my town.

+ Beavers!  Humans are boring...but beavers are cute, great engineers, and love to socialize.  Beavers have the same basic survival needs as humans--they need food and water--but keeping them truly happy requires making sure that they have a variety of their favorite foods to choose from (there are multiple buildings where you can prepare a wide ranging menu) and plenty of options for ways that they can spend their free time.  Since beavers are very social creatures they like to have cozy places to gather with others--this includes a nice campfire, a rooftop terrace, or a grand amphitheater where they can discuss their favorite task--logging.  They also like to cut loose and have a good time, so building a carousel and a dance hall is a must.  A unique need for the beavers--wet fur.  Building special showers or a lido deck allows your beaver pals to take a quick dip.  They also love an aesthetically pleasant area with plenty of decorations.  Keeping your community of beavers happy will boost their efficiency.

+ Controls are easy to use and understand.  You can easily rotate buildings and place them where you want.

+ Two different factions of beavers with specific perks.  You start off as the Folktails, a faction that specializes in farming and can build beehives that help crops to grow more quickly.  Once you've played the Folktails faction to a certain level you unlock the Iron Teeth.  The Iron Teeth are more focused on technological skills.  Each faction has its own unique buildings, so it's fun to experiment with their strengths and weaknesses.

The beaver fun zone--a carousel and dance hall.

+ Elements of survival.  The game functions on a calendar made up of cycles.  Each cycle is made up of a certain number of days where everything works as normal and then a period of drought or badtide.  During a drought all water on the map stops flowing.  This means that unless you create a reservoir to store water your crops will all dry up and you'll be totally reliant on your stored water supply.  Drought is the lesser of the two evils though, badtide is more challenging to deal with.  A badtide is an event where all the water on the map is replaced by water that is polluted with high levels of radiation.  It cannot be used for farming and will cause corruption to spread to any areas that are close to water.  Corruption will cause any living things it touches to die (this includes trees, crops, and berry bushes).  Learning how to deal with these disasters is a must as your civilization can only last as long as your supplies do.

These periods of disaster throw some additional challenge into the traditional city-builder genre.  They also lengthen/happen more frequently the longer you play.  I managed to get my civilization to cycle 50 but had one very close brush with disaster when I got hit by back-to-back badtides (the type of disaster you experience is random) and didn't have enough time to store up enough water.  Luckily my few surviving beavers managed to chug along and bounce back.

(*I'm also fairly certain that you can turn off disasters if you're looking for a totally chill experience)

+ Advanced features for the leet.  You can unlock a wide variety of switches that allow you to automate exactly how/when certain parts of your city function.  These switches include logic switches (something that exceeds my abilities) but also a number of other types that trigger based off of things like weather or time of day.  I lack the skills to get into this, but if you're the type of person who likes to tinker with all the fancy stuff...it's there for you.

+ A nice soundtrack.  It's mostly piano-based music but it changes based on the weather.  It's slightly more ominous during droughts and badtides.

+ Monuments to build.  Like many other city-builders the ultimate achievement is gathering a massive amount of materials and building an awe inspiring monument in your civilization.  There are several to choose from and also faction specific monuments.  Most of them are beaver themed, which is definitely fun.

+ Speed controls to play at the pace you want.  

+ Many starting maps to choose from with their own unique challenges.

+ Mod support.

Cons:

- More advanced gameplay mechanics do require some research.  That's not terribly abnormal, but I found the tutorial to be unhelpful beyond the basics.  Just expect that there will likely be aspects of gameplay that you'll need to look up.

Recommendation:

If you're looking for a city-build that mostly fits into the shape of the genre, Timberborn will be right up your alley.  The additional survival challenge (and the ability to toggle it on or off) makes the game more fun.  The infinite playability plus features for all skill levels of gamers means that it's great for basically everyone.

Artistically Gifted

The most recent DLC for Two Point Museum, "Arty-Facts," recently was released.  Being a big Two Point fan, I snapped it right up and returned to the zany world of museum management.  But how does the new DLC stack up?

What is it?

DLC for Two Point Museum that adds in a new art themed vibe.  You get a new museum with its own storyline to run and lots of new items to discover on expedition as well new decorative themes.  It is priced at $10.99.

How much playtime can I expect?

To play your new museum to the four-star/story completion level (because you can keep playing to accomplish additional, more generic goals to get more stars) I would estimate ~10-12 hours.  I completed the story goals and also made it a point to unlock all the new expedition art exhibits, so I played a little bit beyond the story.  Playtime can vary based on your playstyle and goals, of course.

Pros:

The art studio--where masterpieces are made (eventually).

+ Your new art experts don't just go on expeditions, but can create their own unique works of art.  You can build an art studio and direct them to create a variety of artworks.  Similar to expeditions, creating art costs a certain amount and you can specify if you want your artists to spend more time to create a higher quality product.  A higher quality work of art costs more money and means your artist will be busy for a longer period of time, but also yields a perk.

+ Multiple kinds of art talents that can be trained.  All artists can create paintings, but you can also train (or hire) the ability to create 3D art (statues and sculptures) as well as performing arts. 

+ You can also train your artists in emotional intelligence which allows the to learn new emotions that can be added into their artworks.  Emotions impact guest feelings and there are certain guest bonuses related to the emotions that they experience.

+ Lots of fun new art themed decorative items to give your art museum the perfect vibe.

A performance artist puts on a dramatic play.

+ Building a stage allows you to employ performance artists who can put on performances that guests will pay additional money to watch.  You can unlock additional performance styles on expedition and they include themes like miming, martial arts, and music.  Like artworks, the type of performance your expert can put on depends on the emotional range that they are trained in.

+ Tons of funny famous artworks to discover on expedition.  Many are silly mockups of actual famous artwork or have a Two Point twist.

Some of the famous artworks--Cheesy Gothic & the Stinker.

+ New interactive activities to keep guests entertained.  There's an art stations for the kiddies, a fun sketch stage, and a full-body art/catapult activity.

+ To keep your security on their toes, there's also a new guild of thieves to contend with.  These art thieves will steal your valuable work and replace it with a valueless, silly forgery.

+ Making money is a cinch thanks to Snoteby's auctions (love the name).  These monthly auctions seek out specific kinds of artworks (usually a combination of a type of artwork with a specific emotion--statues that express joy, for example) that you can mark for auction.  The amount you get depends on the quality of the artwork.  Auctions are a good option to get rid of lower-quality works, but are a bit of a roll of the dice because the type of art and emotion changes each month.  Creating a range of new artworks is a good way to get your experts some experience but to also make sure you have a range of works to auction.

Interactive art!

+ There's no researching required!  Each famous or created artwork comes with a full amount of knowledge.  This eliminates the need to go on the same expeditions multiple times which can be a bit annoying.

Cons:

- It can be difficult to keep track of the emotions of each artwork and I wish they would add in a special layer on the view option to see emotions.  Instead, you have to click onto each one and find the emotion.  It's a minor annoyance when trying to auction off artwork.

Recommendation:

If you enjoy Two Point Museum you'll want to check out this DLC.  I think I actually liked it better than the wildlife DLC.  I like the ability to have your artists create unique artwork and to make money by auctioning them off.   Having different kinds of artists also adds in some variety--it's not just about paintings.  Give it a whirl!

Finding all the Kitties

I recently stumbled upon a very cute series of hidden object games during Steam's Hidden Object Fest sales event.  If you're a lover of felines and casual, hidden object games, you'll definitely want to check out An Arcade Full of Cats (and potentially the rest of the ...Full of Cats series).  Sometimes it's nice to just kick back with something where there's no pressure and the goal is to just find a bunch of hidden cats.

What is it?

An Arcade Full of Cats is a hidden object game that challenges you to find a specific number of silly felines hidden among the various nooks and crannies of arcades from various periods of gaming history.  As an added challenge there are also extra-hidden cats who are squirrelled away in various cat-friendly nooks on each level.  Aaaaand, there are usually special cats who will ask you to find other objects as well (in a sort of side quest way).  The best part--it's free to play!

How much playtime can you expect?

In the base, free-to-play version of the game you're probably looking 1-1.5 hours-ish (depending on how good you are at finding the cats or how much you want to use hints).  It's not a lot, but it is free.

Pros:

+ Detailed, clever level design.  Each "level" has you finding cats scattered throughout various golden era's of arcade gaming starting with the 1980's and going through the 2020's.  There are tons of era-specific references that have been given a clever feline twist--they have a fun, feline specific title or feature a cat as the protagonist.  There are posters with references to pop culture from the era that feature cats rather than the human stars and all the little details will give you a nostalgic chuckle.

An example of one of the levels (from the DLC).

+ It's made by Devcats who have a very pro-cat message.  They've included fun information about how cat owners can "catify" their living spaces that make it more enjoyable for our feline friends.  They also have a very positive "adopt don't shop" message to encourage pet rescue.  The game features the cats of all the developers.

+ Fun, arcade themed hidden object challenges from different periods of history.  There is a hidden cat coin on each level that unlocks a hidden-object arcade game level where you must find different hidden things (it could be bugs, weird fish, newspapers, etc.).  The 90's themed game is a feline-filled riff on Paperboy.

+ If you get stuck you can get a hint.  There's a bit of a cooldown (so you can't just spam it), but it's handy for when you just can't find the last few cats/objects.

+ Great music that matches each era.

+ The era specific references are very clever and fun.  The feline specific twists on games and pop culture references add to the nostalgia and silliness.

 + Once you've finished all the base levels there is a timed challenge where you cannot use hints.

+ It's free-to-play!

Cons:

- It's hard to say anything negative about something that's free-to-play.  I suppose one gripe would be that the ultimate goal of the free-to-play portion is to ultimately get you to pay for the DLC.  The good news though is that the DLC is priced at a mere $2.99 and you can decide whether or not you want to make a purchase.

I did opt to purchase the DLC and enjoyed finding even more cats scattered throughout history.  I wanted to give the dev(cats)'s some money because I enjoyed the game and their positive feline message.  It's definitely worth the meager $2.99.

Recommendation:

If you like cats, gaming, and finding hidden objects, An Arcade Full of Cats should be right up your alley.  Since it's free-to-play you can give it a try with no strings attached to see if you're going to like it.  If you do like it, there's a whole series of hidden object games by the Devcats under the "full of cats" premise.