So much death.
It's not graphic. There's no blood or gore. But it gets to you. You play for awhile and a dread starts to build.
When will the axe fall? The path branches. Will one way be a dead end? Will the monsters gang up on you, trap you in a corner, and kill you? Every run must end eventually, but is now the time?
The horizon is being pushed back. My lives are getting longer. But it's still the same thing, over and over again. I can delay the inevitable, but I can't put it off forever.
I find myself cultivating a sort of grim determination. Just a cold, implacable fury, not exactly at the game itself, but towards its world. I stab my finger into the reload button and vow to myself that this time I will triumph and collect hundreds of treasure and show all these yetis and water elementals and weird lumberjack things who's boss.
It's almost entirely a performance. I've found the best way to manage these games is to carefully manage your hope. Too little and it becomes a slough of despair, where you resignedly march into death time and time again, becoming a mechanical button-clicker who doesn't care what happens on screen. Too much hope, and your play anger becomes real, as you come to think that success was snatched away from you by an unfair and uncaring world.
I've reached a workable equilibrium for the most part. I care enough about discovering and "solving" new areas that I'm motivated to keep exploring, but I'm numb enough emotionally that my inevitable deaths leave me with only a brief moment of bitterness.
Only five hours to go. I'm confident now that I'll make it, but I can't guarantee that I'll be in any kind of coherent mental state when I do.
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Monday, August 29, 2016
Hyperrogue - 10/20 hours
Roguelike games always make me really existentialist. What's the point of it all, chasing treasure until I inevitably get backed into a corner and die? Why do I bother going on? When it's all over, I'll have nothing to show for it but the memory of my deeds, and even that will fade in time.
It gets awkward trying to keep those thoughts from leaking over into my real life. Luckily, Hyperrogue's geometrical gimmick helps me maintain an effective mental quarantine.
I mean, really, what's the deal with that crazy hyperbolic geometry? I did some supplemental studying to brush up on the subject. the memory drain since college has been pretty bad - I remembered "the angles in a hyperbolic triangle are less than 180 degrees" and "the hyperbolic plane is like the side of a saddle," but pretty much all the rest of it had faded away. The interesting thing about Hyperrogue (for a certain math-nerdy value of "interesting) is that it is not quite set on a hyperbolic plane. Rather, it is set on a projection of the hyperbolic plane.
The distinction is a bit subtle, but basically the hyperbolic plane is most easily visualized by being curved in three dimensions. However, it you want to make a 2-D representation of that plane, you must come up with a geometric function that takes inputs from the curve and maps them to a flat surface. The thing is, this process is never perfect and different functions have different tradeoffs when it comes to accuracy and usability.
A more familiar example might be the translation of a globe into a map. Like the notoriously tricky Mercator Projection, which had the virtue of preserving angles and directions while greatly distorting the size of objects far from the equator. I bring it up because Hyperrogue's Poincare projection map ostensibly has the same problem. However, because your character is always at the center of the map, and given the way distance works in the hyperbolic plane (basically, the circumference of a circle increases exponentially with its radius), the parallax (the change in apparent location of a distant object as you move relative to it) is extreme. If you see an object on the left side of the screen and take a few steps in any direction that is not directly towards the object, you will find that it moves to the bottom of the screen. A couple more steps, and it will be on your right.
I think a different projection might have mitigated the disorientation caused by this wild parallax, but it would have probably had to sacrifice the consistency of shapes in the far field, and I'm not sure that a map where landmarks consistently look different when viewed from a distance would be much of an improvement when it comes to navigation (the Poincare projection has a similar problem, in that tiny objects on the horizon turn out to be huge when they are close up, but they still tend to look more or less the same).
The only conclusion I can reach is that Hyperrogue intends for me to be permanently lost. I hate being lost, but I've been try to accept this with equanimity. It's not like you really need to go back to previous areas once you've cleared out their treasure and while you might be tempted, in a euclidean geometry-based game, to backtrack in order to explore side tracks, it's just as easy to go forwards as backwards in Hypperogue's open map. So, maybe instead of being lost, I'm really just always where I need to be. And if I tend to advance by striking out in a random direction and hoping to get lucky, well maybe that's just the thrill of exploration . . .
This game is a nightmare.
It gets awkward trying to keep those thoughts from leaking over into my real life. Luckily, Hyperrogue's geometrical gimmick helps me maintain an effective mental quarantine.
I mean, really, what's the deal with that crazy hyperbolic geometry? I did some supplemental studying to brush up on the subject. the memory drain since college has been pretty bad - I remembered "the angles in a hyperbolic triangle are less than 180 degrees" and "the hyperbolic plane is like the side of a saddle," but pretty much all the rest of it had faded away. The interesting thing about Hyperrogue (for a certain math-nerdy value of "interesting) is that it is not quite set on a hyperbolic plane. Rather, it is set on a projection of the hyperbolic plane.
The distinction is a bit subtle, but basically the hyperbolic plane is most easily visualized by being curved in three dimensions. However, it you want to make a 2-D representation of that plane, you must come up with a geometric function that takes inputs from the curve and maps them to a flat surface. The thing is, this process is never perfect and different functions have different tradeoffs when it comes to accuracy and usability.
A more familiar example might be the translation of a globe into a map. Like the notoriously tricky Mercator Projection, which had the virtue of preserving angles and directions while greatly distorting the size of objects far from the equator. I bring it up because Hyperrogue's Poincare projection map ostensibly has the same problem. However, because your character is always at the center of the map, and given the way distance works in the hyperbolic plane (basically, the circumference of a circle increases exponentially with its radius), the parallax (the change in apparent location of a distant object as you move relative to it) is extreme. If you see an object on the left side of the screen and take a few steps in any direction that is not directly towards the object, you will find that it moves to the bottom of the screen. A couple more steps, and it will be on your right.
I think a different projection might have mitigated the disorientation caused by this wild parallax, but it would have probably had to sacrifice the consistency of shapes in the far field, and I'm not sure that a map where landmarks consistently look different when viewed from a distance would be much of an improvement when it comes to navigation (the Poincare projection has a similar problem, in that tiny objects on the horizon turn out to be huge when they are close up, but they still tend to look more or less the same).
The only conclusion I can reach is that Hyperrogue intends for me to be permanently lost. I hate being lost, but I've been try to accept this with equanimity. It's not like you really need to go back to previous areas once you've cleared out their treasure and while you might be tempted, in a euclidean geometry-based game, to backtrack in order to explore side tracks, it's just as easy to go forwards as backwards in Hypperogue's open map. So, maybe instead of being lost, I'm really just always where I need to be. And if I tend to advance by striking out in a random direction and hoping to get lucky, well maybe that's just the thrill of exploration . . .
This game is a nightmare.
Saturday, August 27, 2016
Hyperrogue - 5/20 hours
Click. Click. Click. That's what I'm going to remember about this game, the relentless clicking. I did a quick calculation and I'm averaging about 5600 turns per hour. Since each turn is a single click, I've got roughly 84,000 clicks to go before I'm done. Maybe that's not so much, compared to the controller inputs and button presses I'd do with other games, but it seems like a lot.
It's probably an unfairly superficial way to look at the game. No doubt, high level play rewards having a sophisticated strategy. However, I've not yet gained the ability to play the game consciously. It's still all "move towards shiny, move away from pointy" for me. I've probably gained skill in both those things, seeing as how my average score per run is intermittently trending upwards. Nonetheless, I'm still a long way from having an actual strategy.
Hyperrogue isn't turning out as bad as I feared, though. The compulsive clicking leaves my mind free to wander to other things. It's easy to listen to a podcast or brainstorm a tabletop game while charging through these simple geometrical worlds. That may sound like damning with faint praise, but it can be nice to have a casual game that doesn't require too much concentration (although, now that I write it out, maybe that's why I haven't advanced that much - perhaps my next podcast will be about non-euclidean geometry).
It's probably an unfairly superficial way to look at the game. No doubt, high level play rewards having a sophisticated strategy. However, I've not yet gained the ability to play the game consciously. It's still all "move towards shiny, move away from pointy" for me. I've probably gained skill in both those things, seeing as how my average score per run is intermittently trending upwards. Nonetheless, I'm still a long way from having an actual strategy.
Hyperrogue isn't turning out as bad as I feared, though. The compulsive clicking leaves my mind free to wander to other things. It's easy to listen to a podcast or brainstorm a tabletop game while charging through these simple geometrical worlds. That may sound like damning with faint praise, but it can be nice to have a casual game that doesn't require too much concentration (although, now that I write it out, maybe that's why I haven't advanced that much - perhaps my next podcast will be about non-euclidean geometry).
Friday, August 26, 2016
Hyperrogue - 2/20 hours
I can already tell that this is going to be a tough one. My first impression of Hyperrogue is that it is visually arresting with simple yet challenging board-game style gameplay. Which seems easy enough to cope with, once you get used to its level of abstraction. Unfortunately, Hyperrogue also appears to be one of those games that goes out of its way to antagonize its players.
The hyperbolic map appears to serve no other purpose but to confound the player's spatial intuition. I have a degree in pure mathematics, so I have an idea about what's going on with it (though non-euclidean geometry wasn't any kind of specialty of mine), but even with that starting advantage, it's hard to get my abstract mathematical knowledge to override decades of experience navigating a more-or-less euclidean frame of reference (I mean, technically, we live on the surface of a sphere, which is its own form of non-euclidean geometry, but unless you're piloting an intercontinental jet plane, the scale of the sphere is so large that any non-euclidean effects would be smaller than the rounding error). The practical upshot is that it's really easy to get lost.
I already hate getting lost. Combine that with a roguelike's ethos of easy death and lack of cumulative progress and you get a game seemingly calculated to wear down my spirit.
Though it does have some strong points. Outmaneuvering enemies board-game style to clear out a long train of harassers is very satisfying. And the different biomes each have their own characteristic challenges that make give your longer runs some much needed variety in what could easily have been a compulsive click-fest.
It's still to early to reach a final verdict about this game. It's possible that increased experience with the game will make it inot a light and breezy casual game. It's almost equally probable that I will get sick to death of it after hour 5 and will just take up bashing the keyboard senselessly in an attempt to kill time as efficiently as possible.
The hyperbolic map appears to serve no other purpose but to confound the player's spatial intuition. I have a degree in pure mathematics, so I have an idea about what's going on with it (though non-euclidean geometry wasn't any kind of specialty of mine), but even with that starting advantage, it's hard to get my abstract mathematical knowledge to override decades of experience navigating a more-or-less euclidean frame of reference (I mean, technically, we live on the surface of a sphere, which is its own form of non-euclidean geometry, but unless you're piloting an intercontinental jet plane, the scale of the sphere is so large that any non-euclidean effects would be smaller than the rounding error). The practical upshot is that it's really easy to get lost.
I already hate getting lost. Combine that with a roguelike's ethos of easy death and lack of cumulative progress and you get a game seemingly calculated to wear down my spirit.
Though it does have some strong points. Outmaneuvering enemies board-game style to clear out a long train of harassers is very satisfying. And the different biomes each have their own characteristic challenges that make give your longer runs some much needed variety in what could easily have been a compulsive click-fest.
It's still to early to reach a final verdict about this game. It's possible that increased experience with the game will make it inot a light and breezy casual game. It's almost equally probable that I will get sick to death of it after hour 5 and will just take up bashing the keyboard senselessly in an attempt to kill time as efficiently as possible.
Thursday, August 25, 2016
Hyperrogue - Initial Thoughts
About The Game (From the Steam Store Page)
You are a lone adventurer in a strange, non-Euclidean world. Gather as much treasure as you can before the nasty monsters get you. Explore several different worlds, each with its own unique treasures, enemies, and terrain obstacles. Your quest is to find the legendary treasure, the Orbs of Yendor. Collect one of them to win! Or just ignore your quest and collect smaller treasures.
The twist is the unique, unusual geometry of the world: it is one of just few games which takes place on the hyperbolic plane. Witness a grid composed of hexagons and heptagons, straight lines which seem to be parallel, but then they diverge and never cross, triangles whose angles add up to less than 180 degrees, how extremely unlikely is it to reach the same place twice, and how the world seems to be rotated when you do return. All this matters for the gameplay. The game is inspired by the roguelike genre (although in a very minimalist way), works of M. C. Escher, and by puzzle games such as Deadly Rooms of Death.
Previous Playtime
0 hours
Expectations and Prior Experience
First of all, thanks to PAS for this game, it looks like a real head-trip. Seriously, the screenshots are all these intense abstract geometrical patterns that kind of look like dungeons and kind of look like the sort of nightmares you'd get after you spent all day looking through a kaleidoscope. The unique art direction alone makes me eager to give this game a try.
In fact, it's almost enough to make me forget that it's a roguelike, a genre I've had issues with in the past. I'm anticipating a lot of frustration with Hyperrogue's basic gameplay. A lot of dying and then going back to square one and sweating over reaching absolute perfection in a randomly-generated map so that I can be allowed to advance and see the next iteration of the game's freaky geometry.
Unless the game is unexpectedly easy, it's all going to come down to my ability to maintain a detached attitude. Luckily, I'm feeling pretty chill right now, so I've got high hopes.
You are a lone adventurer in a strange, non-Euclidean world. Gather as much treasure as you can before the nasty monsters get you. Explore several different worlds, each with its own unique treasures, enemies, and terrain obstacles. Your quest is to find the legendary treasure, the Orbs of Yendor. Collect one of them to win! Or just ignore your quest and collect smaller treasures.
The twist is the unique, unusual geometry of the world: it is one of just few games which takes place on the hyperbolic plane. Witness a grid composed of hexagons and heptagons, straight lines which seem to be parallel, but then they diverge and never cross, triangles whose angles add up to less than 180 degrees, how extremely unlikely is it to reach the same place twice, and how the world seems to be rotated when you do return. All this matters for the gameplay. The game is inspired by the roguelike genre (although in a very minimalist way), works of M. C. Escher, and by puzzle games such as Deadly Rooms of Death.
Previous Playtime
0 hours
Expectations and Prior Experience
First of all, thanks to PAS for this game, it looks like a real head-trip. Seriously, the screenshots are all these intense abstract geometrical patterns that kind of look like dungeons and kind of look like the sort of nightmares you'd get after you spent all day looking through a kaleidoscope. The unique art direction alone makes me eager to give this game a try.
In fact, it's almost enough to make me forget that it's a roguelike, a genre I've had issues with in the past. I'm anticipating a lot of frustration with Hyperrogue's basic gameplay. A lot of dying and then going back to square one and sweating over reaching absolute perfection in a randomly-generated map so that I can be allowed to advance and see the next iteration of the game's freaky geometry.
Unless the game is unexpectedly easy, it's all going to come down to my ability to maintain a detached attitude. Luckily, I'm feeling pretty chill right now, so I've got high hopes.
Half-Minute Hero: The Second Coming - 20/20 hours
I had to play the game for an extra 20 minutes or so to finish the main story, but I managed to make it. My overall opinion of the game is that it is very uneven. Some parts were hilarious and then in others it seemed to drag on with a by-the-numbers rpg plot. I caught several cute references to some classic jrpgs (at one point you have to rescue a chained-up general who was questioning the wisdom of the antagonist empire - just like in Final Fantasy VI, at another, your goofy technician friend rebuilds a scavenged robot in a clear callback to Chrono Trigger), but none of these rose to the level of parody. They tended to tread the uncomfortable line between homage and the shameless recycling of some of the genre's most memorable scenes.
I think the best summary of my feelings for this game is that I really liked the characters, but couldn't care less about the plot. My favorite missions were in the early parts of the various chapters, where they're still establishing the characters' quirks and relationships and which feature minor, eccentric villains to give them something to do without advancing the plot too much. Once the story got enough confidence to shorthand the characters' personalities, it tended to get lost up its own ass with earth-shaking events that are actually kind of blandly predictable.
I think, by virtue of being the second game in the series, Half-Minute Hero: The Second Coming simply could not be as audacious or inventive as its predecessor. Which is entirely to be expected, but unfortunately, it failed to do what the best video game sequels usually manage to do - it did not refine or expand the central idea that made the first game promising enough to develop a sequel. In the original Half-Minute Hero, the time-rewinding and fast-leveling mechanics were the vehicle for an outrageous hypothetical - what if you could cram an entire jrpg into 30 seconds? In the sequel, they're just how things are done. It's fun, because the quests still retain that time-management puzzle quality that makes them a blast to try and solve, but it's completely lost its capacity to surprise and delight.
I enjoyed myself immensely playing this game. I didn't just resolve to get to the end of the story missions and quit. I did a lot of grinding, exploring the optional sidequests and hidden dungeons (though the so-called "global dungeons" were not a timer and thus lacked the game's single biggest source of fun). I must have spent an hour at the casino, pulling the slot machine lever hundreds of times to get enough tokens for the ultimate sword. If I wasn't especially impressed with the game, neither was I disappointed with it. It was a scaled-down, simplified jrpg with a familiar plot and appealing cast of characters. It didn't need to be much more than that to earn a permanent place in my affections, even if I never do play it again.
I think the best summary of my feelings for this game is that I really liked the characters, but couldn't care less about the plot. My favorite missions were in the early parts of the various chapters, where they're still establishing the characters' quirks and relationships and which feature minor, eccentric villains to give them something to do without advancing the plot too much. Once the story got enough confidence to shorthand the characters' personalities, it tended to get lost up its own ass with earth-shaking events that are actually kind of blandly predictable.
I think, by virtue of being the second game in the series, Half-Minute Hero: The Second Coming simply could not be as audacious or inventive as its predecessor. Which is entirely to be expected, but unfortunately, it failed to do what the best video game sequels usually manage to do - it did not refine or expand the central idea that made the first game promising enough to develop a sequel. In the original Half-Minute Hero, the time-rewinding and fast-leveling mechanics were the vehicle for an outrageous hypothetical - what if you could cram an entire jrpg into 30 seconds? In the sequel, they're just how things are done. It's fun, because the quests still retain that time-management puzzle quality that makes them a blast to try and solve, but it's completely lost its capacity to surprise and delight.
I enjoyed myself immensely playing this game. I didn't just resolve to get to the end of the story missions and quit. I did a lot of grinding, exploring the optional sidequests and hidden dungeons (though the so-called "global dungeons" were not a timer and thus lacked the game's single biggest source of fun). I must have spent an hour at the casino, pulling the slot machine lever hundreds of times to get enough tokens for the ultimate sword. If I wasn't especially impressed with the game, neither was I disappointed with it. It was a scaled-down, simplified jrpg with a familiar plot and appealing cast of characters. It didn't need to be much more than that to earn a permanent place in my affections, even if I never do play it again.
Tuesday, August 23, 2016
Half-Minute Hero: The Second Coming - 10/20 hours
The third act of this game is a much welcome return to form. After the main character, Yusha, finishes his revenge quest and then scampers off into the sunset. Some time later, possibly after several centuries have passed, we take control of his descendant, Princess Yushia. The new main character's reckless thirst for adventure and limited understanding of the world outside the castle walls makes for some effective comedy.
Though the real comedy MVPs of any Half-Minute Hero game are the villains. And while the overall plot of chapter 3 is still a little too serious for my tastes and the main villain has a typical rpg agenda, the sub-bosses are generally sillier (like, one of them is a robotic sunfish who you arrange to strand on land and then casually dispatch). It's finally starting to feel like the game I wanted since the very beginning.
Let's hope they can keep it up.
Though the real comedy MVPs of any Half-Minute Hero game are the villains. And while the overall plot of chapter 3 is still a little too serious for my tastes and the main villain has a typical rpg agenda, the sub-bosses are generally sillier (like, one of them is a robotic sunfish who you arrange to strand on land and then casually dispatch). It's finally starting to feel like the game I wanted since the very beginning.
Let's hope they can keep it up.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)