Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Impostor Factory is Another Emotional (and Sometimes Creepy) Entry in the Series

 Video games  3 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Nov 032021
 

Among our long list of exciting games that came out this year is Impostor Factory, the third main entry in the To the Moon series.

I played Impostor Factory immediately after it came out, but since that was right ahead of October, its review got put off all this time!

Now, I honestly considered making it the first “spooky” game review of this October. Impostor Factory begins with a man named Quincy arriving at a mansion to attend a party, and it isn’t long before strange things start happening. Creepy things.

Yet despite the creepiness in certain parts of the game, I decided it was too much of a stretch to include it. So, it’s finally time to talk about Impostor Factory.

Unlike To the Moon and Finding Paradise, Impostor Factory doesn’t begin with Neil and Eva visiting someone’s memories to fulfill their wish. It feels unrelated at first, but don’t misunderstand, it is definitely a main entry in the series rather than a spin-off, and the reasons for that become clear as you play.

It soon becomes another emotional story through a character’s life. The format might be different, but the feelings are the same, and there’s a plot twist partway through that makes everything mean so much more.

I’m not sure I can give any specific details without brushing on spoilers, so I’ll just say that while you shouldn’t expect this to be a conclusion to the overarching story, I think you’ll enjoy Impostor Factory if you liked the previous two (although it seems like it’s a somewhat controversial one among fans). For me, I’d rank this second in the series – it didn’t quite hit the emotional highs of To the Moon for me, but I enjoyed it more than Finding Paradise.

So if you haven’t played Impostor Factory yet, be sure to get it. I just hope we won’t have to wait too long before getting a fourth main game in the series!

A Different Month of Horror With NaNoWriMo 2021

 My Stories, Writing  4 Responses »  Tagged with:
Nov 012021
 

Original image by brands amon from Pixabay

November is here, this year’s celebration of horror games is over, and the contest winners are being contacted!

We’ve got a lot of things to talk about, including a couple of games I finished in October that didn’t quite fit the spooky theme.

Before all that, however, NaNoWriMo has begun!

NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is a yearly challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November.

I got started at midnight, and so far I have 5,300 words written of a new supernatural horror novel. So even though our focused look on horror in video games is at an end for this year, I have another horror-themed month ahead for me in my writing. This year’s novel is partly inspired by Silent Hill 4, so I’m looking forward to getting into it!

Are you participating in NaNoWriMo this year? If so, what sort of project are you working on?

And this was the first year that the Celebrating All Things Spooky contest had slightly different rules, so if you have any thoughts on that, please share those in the comments as well.

Here’s to a fun and productive November!

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Pony Island

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games  3 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Oct 292021
 

Pony Island is not really a game about playing the endless runner called Pony Island. It’s a game about being trapped in limbo, forced to play the Devil’s badly-made games.

(This is not a spoiler. Pony Island makes no pretense of actually being a cheerful pony game and reveals Lucifer pretty quickly.)

In theory, you’ll be stuck playing Pony Island forever, possibly with the option of giving the Devil your soul. However, it’s a simple matter to exploit the game’s flaws and hack into it in search of a way to escape.

Pony Island is… bizarre. I’d call it a puzzle game first and foremost, since you’ll frequently search for clues of how to proceed and play “hacking” mini-games that involve rearranging tiles to redirect a key down the path you want. There are also some endless runner sections, though, and a few other parts that switch up the gameplay even further.

It’s an entertaining experience. The game is both creepy and funny, and it also has one of the best fourth wall breaking tricks I’ve seen in any game.

Click for Pony Island spoilers
One of the bosses requires you to keep your eyes on him, so you lose if you pause, minimize, open the Steam overlay, etc. At one point in this section, the game mimics you receiving Steam messages from one of your actual Steam friends.

I don’t know how the game chooses which friend to mimic, but for me it picked someone who had actually sent me a real message right ahead of the fight, which made the trick even more effective.

Now, the narrative falls a little short for me. I expected it to do more with its premise, and there are also some inconsistencies due to its different aspects – you’ve got an in-game desktop with multiple programs and games, but it’s also an arcade machine? Okay, maybe nitpicking the logistics of the Devil’s gaming machine isn’t important, but then there’s the fact that much of it is designed so that you, the player, are the main character, yet you can learn more about the main character’s identity and past.

Those are just a couple of minor things that made the game less effective than it could have been, but enough of the things it did were clever enough that I don’t mind.

So if you want a puzzle game that’s creepy, funny, and overall a bizarre experience, check out Pony Island.

 Older Entries  Newer Entries