Yoshi Juice is the Warden’s personal column about lists of things that you would have never thought were important enough to merit being placed in a list.
Today’s article is about cacti in video games!
Gaming
GAMING: Half Hour Games – The Travels of the Dung Beetle
The Travels of the Dung Beetle is a dung beetle simulator made in Unity by Louie Zong. It was made for the “My First Game Jam!”, a game jam dedicated to people making their very first video game.
In it, you play as a humble scarab trying to find a safe place to bury its dung ball. You roll through four strange, fantastic levels trying to find the perfect place, building up extra pieces of dung along the way.
We’ll roll out our opinion after the jump.
GAMING: Job Lozenge
Job Lozenge is a lo-fi employment simulator released on December 8, 2014 by Taylor Bai-Woo.
Congratulation! You have been hired for the position of CRATE DISPLACER. Due to the large influx of CRATES in the LOCATION, the job of CRATE DISPLACER has become essential. Work hard at your job and do not leave the premisessssseSmOÛ0þ¼þŠ[¤M‚˜ò*×[¡D P±L÷Ú˜%v°X÷ëwNÃËF$çìóÝã»çîøûéõYv;ŸÁEv™ÂüÇišœA´ÃX2˾16ͦ››½x—±ÙU$<œƒ˜M¦$²$Kgâï[tfÖËÙSTRING ERROR
After the jump, we’¼ç׎·¶ur opinion on Job Lozenge FATAL ERROR
GAMING: Half Hour Games – Homesickened
Homesickened is a short story made in Unity about revisiting old memories by Snapman, released on October 30, 2015. Rendered entirely in vintage-style CGA, Homesickened forces you to relive old traumas to dredge up memories that only re-open wounds. Can you survive the greatest horror of them all: your own anxiety?
We’ll give Homesickened a revisit of our own after the jump.
GAMING: A Good Gardener
A Good Gardener is a Unity-made wartime gardening simulator released on April 20, 2015 by Ian Endsley and Carter Lodwick. An undefined war is going on, and you’re assigned a duty to help out: to grow a garden in a derelict lot. Day in and day out, you maintain your burgeoning garden while the war rages on in the background. Your only companionship besides your plants is your mysterious commanding officer who tries his best to keep an emotional distance between you. As the days crawl by, the truth of your war effort creeps to the surface while you learn what got you into this situation in the first place.
We’ll plant the seeds of our opinion after the jump.
Note: A Good Gardener is a game that’s difficult to talk about without spoiling the twist. The rest of this review contains spoilers.
GAMING: Cuttle Scuttle
Cuttle Scuttle is a cuttlefish reproduction simulator by Dan Monceaux, Adam Jenkins, and Julian Shank, released on December 4, 2015.
It is a companion piece to the documentary Cuttlefish Country, a film detailing the modern plight of Australian gulf cuttlefish in their attempt to survive in a human-changed ecosystem. Within Cuttle Scuttle, you play as a female cuttlefish during mating season in the Spencer Gulf. You are tasked with finding virile males to breed with, and to lay your eggs safely so the continued survival of your species is guaranteed. But it’s not easy being a cuttlefish: you’ll soon find humans are making reproduction harder than it needs to be.
Does Cuttle Scuttle successfully make cuttlefish more cuddly? Find out after the jump.
Content warnings: I don’t think any of us ever expected having to write this but there’s, uh, somewhat graphic lo-fi depictions of cephalopod sex.
GAMING: Half Hour Games – Joy Exhibition
Joy Exhibition is an alien art exhibition simulator made in Unity and released on December 16, 2015 by Strangethink. Trapped in a mysterious alien ship, you must communicate with the voiceless species using nothing but the medium of paint on canvas. Equipped with an array of randomly generated spray paint guns, you paint surreal and abstract works of art for them to admire.
We’ll paint a picture of our experience for you after the jump.
GAMING: Hylics
Hylics is a JRPG-style game made by Mason Lindroth and released on August 29, 2015.
The concept of “hylics” is taken from Greek gnosticism, where it was the basest portion of what made up a living person: their physical body. This was the evil portion of a person, the part of them that demanded to eat, to have sex, to do anything that would keep a person away from perfect spiritual enlightenment. Hylics doesn’t portray itself as an evil game, but it is an intimately physical one where the entire world is molded out of malleable, changeable clay.
After the jump, we’ll sculpt our opinion out.
GAMING: Half Hour Games – Frail Shells
Frail Shells is a first-person shooter made by Taylor Bai-Woo with music by Ryan Roth. It was released November 15, 2014 as part of the 7DFPS Jam, a collaborative game design event dedicated to making a first-person shooter in seven days.
War is hell. War has changed. War never changes. War! What is it good for? There’s a lot to be said about a good war. There is a lot to be said about a bad war, as well.
Since the world has an enormous fascination with watching people kill each other, games about war are just as prominent as real wars. Frail Shells is a game about war, but it’s not like other war games. It’s about a much more personal kind of war.
After the jump, we’ll land boots first into our review.
Note: Frail Shells is a game that’s difficult to talk about without spoiling the twist. The rest of this review contains spoilers.
GAMING: Half Hour Games – Dr. Langeskov, the Tiger, and the Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist
Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist is a short whirlwind heist simulator made in Unity and released December 4, 2015 by Crows Crows Crows. In it you play a mysterious cat burglar, whose crime spree has taken them to the fabulous mansion of Dr. Langeskov for one of the greatest heists of the 20th century. Slip past the mansion’s guards, beware of Langeskov’s precious pet tiger, and the emerald may be yours – just watch out for its terrible curse… A truly terrible curse… yeah…
Oh, who are we kidding? We can’t do this. This place is in shambles and we’re not going to waste our time writing a review when we’re not even being paid a living wage. We haven’t gotten paid in two months and they expect us to do a whole review for this game. Well, we’re sick of it. Sick of it. We’re joining the strike. Forget this. You can get someone else to make the jump, you sickos.