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I’ve recently completed Faerie Solitaire and wrote the sort of review I usually write when I’m done with the game. To put it bluntly, I was harsh. Now that I got back to reading it, I was way too harsh. This is why I would like to give it another shot.

The only real flaw I see with Faerie Solitaire is that it’s not at all deep. To call this a flaw is completely subjective, though. The story, for me, was basic and sort of predictable, but for what the game is supposed to be, it’s up to snuff. As for the gameplay, I find it a bit too random, but still fun enough that I invested 10 hours into it and got to the end. Yeah, I believe it would be way more fun if the pets did something, but that doesn’t mean the pets are a bad mechanic and should go away, that’s just me thinking about how I would enjoy it more.

As far as the good parts go, everything else I can only praise. The graphics of Faerie Solitaire are beautifully and professionally drawn, the sounds are enjoyable and as a time waster, it’s great choice. The pets are also nicely drawn and described, and the extra bonuses you can buy are an interesting mechanic that makes you play for a while longer.

Also, and I have to mention this, the developers, called Subsoap, are an awesome bunch of people. I got this game for free on Steamgifts, when they gave away 25 thousand copies! They also gave away a whole bunch on reddit, and more importantly, Brian, one of the guys from Subsoap actually replied to my last Faerie Solitaire article, which really shows how much they care about their work and how it’s received. This makes me care to, because, as few readers as I might have, I don’t want them to get the idea I think this game is crap.

I don’t think Faerie Solitaire is crap, far from it. Too many other games deserve that description. It’s a good game. It’s just not the type of game I usually play, that’s all. If you like solitaire and wan’t a fun casual game, go for it. I need depth in my games and Faerie Solitaire doesn’t have it. It’s not supposed to have it, that’s not what it’s about.

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Critical Mass is another bundle game I got ages ago. I’m a bit tired of adventure games, so I decided to give puzzles a chance and this was the one I picked to play through next.

I’m happy with my decision. Critical Mass is a very fun puzzle game. The goal is to combine cubes in 3D space in groups of four or more. The higher the amount you manage to combine, the more points you get. Cubes are dropped on a central shape with a certain amount of cubes already there. This central shape has a constantly increasing mass, which makes it grow and approach the screen as you progress. The destruction that happens after you combine cubes causes it to recede and gives you more time to destroy them all. If you’re too slow, the mass reaches critical levels and you lose, forced to start back at the beginning.

Critical Mass - Meditation Mode

Meditation is a no-pressure, strategic play mode.

This means there’s a decision you’re constantly making – just combine as fast as possible to push the blocks back a bit, or hold out to get bigger combos, which pushes the blocks back more and fills up your bonus abilities. I have to admit, it was a bit disorienting at first, hard to determine where exactly I’ll be dropping the block and what colour I’m currently dropping, but once you get used to the interface, you realize the game tries very hard to help you see everything clearly and then it becomes much easier. The bonus abilities are also there to help. There are three of those and they unlock progressively, as you accumulate more and more points. The next one is always the more powerful one, so that’s another decision you have to make – use the currently available ability, or take the risk and wait for the one that’s more powerful and more helpful.

There are four modes in the game. I’ve played through all of them, but the classical mode is where the level progression is at. As far as I can remember, there are nine or ten total levels, which I completed in much less than an hour. You earn points and based on the total amount you get, you are ranked, globally. There’s also Survival, where you have to stay afloat for as long as possible. For every group of blocks you destroy, more random blocks are added to the field, so you are eventually forced to create longer combos just as fast as you would usually create basic combos, just to stay alive. Every minute, the critical mass resets, which helps a bit, but eventually isn’t enough to keep you alive by itself.

The last two modes are Rush and Meditation. In Rush, you just have to clear a single level as fast as possible. You lose points for ever second spent, so the amount left is your final score. Mediation has not time pressure of any kind. You get a limited amount of blocks which you need to place around the central grey cube. You have to use these limited blocks to get as many points as you can by arranging them into the longest possible combos.

As I said, I’ve played through all of the modes and enjoyed all of them as well. The thing I like the most is the global ranking system, which is based on the skill points you accumulate. The thing is, the skill points aren’t something you just get more and more off. If you do worse in one of the modes, compared to how you did previously, you actually lose these points, meaning that, apart from playing against the world, you’re also sort of playing against yourself.

In short, Critical Mass is a pretty good puzzle game, with a system in place that makes you go back to it every once in a while. I’ve completed the Classic mode, which has levels, so I’m counting it as completed on my list. I’ve also completed all the other modes at least once, but as far as achievements go, they’re designed in a way that discourages a rush to get them, so I won’t aim for 100% completion any time soon. I’ll keep the game on my hard drive, though, just so I can return to it every now and then, and perhaps get an achievement or two that way.

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Gemini Rue is another adventure game by Wadjet, the same guys that made the Blackwell series. Since I greatly enjoyed the Blackwell games, and I had Gemini Rue in my library for just as long, I decided to give that one a shot to.

I started playing yesterday, soon after writing my last article, and completed it today. Sadly, I didn’t get all the achievements in my first playthrough, missing Space Cowboy, which requires me to find four cameo characters from Cowboy Bebop at random locations in the game, as well as Memento, which requires finding four hidden notes in one of the game’s areas, Center 7. Since I already knew how to go through the game, and I had fast movement enabled, I decided to go for these two achievements soon after I’ve seen the ending. I finally got these last two achievements in about half an hour after starting a new game. I’m not sure how I even missed these things on my first run.

Gemini Rue Screenshot

I should watch Blade Runner

There are a few annoying puzzles, but for the most part, it’s logical and straightforward, with very little pixel searching needed to complete the main story. There’s plenty of pixel searching for achievements, of course, but that shouldn’t matter, in my opinion. There are issues, though, mostly related to the engine the game uses. Adventure Game Studio is buggy on my system, extremely so. Every time I reload a save, the graphics get messed up, I can’t alt-tab properly and sometimes I get stuck in the escape menu for no apparent reason. I also had a couple of crashes during my sessions.The game is excellent, by the way. The story is deep, interesting and much more developed than in the Blackwell series. Since I already praised the story of Blackwell, this should say something about how good the story of Gemini Rue actually is.

Still, as flawed as the engine is, it’s a great game and one of the better adventure games I’ve played. However, after completing five adventure games in two days, I think I’ve got enough of them for now. My next game will be something different.

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I went through with it, and the second game in the Blackwell series is now cleared of all achievements. It was pretty tough to.

First, I went for the Trying to Cut Down achievement. I thought it would be simple and all I had to do was be careful, but I was wrong. On my second playthrough, I counted all the cigarettes and got 13 on my side, but I didn’t get the achievement. At this point, I thought the game is bugged or something, because I was sure I wasn’t even close to 20. I tried to force the game to detect it in several different ways and nothing worked, so I decided to do a second attempt, with a third playthrough. This time, I decided to work on both cases simultaneously, which helped me save some time and I finally got it.

Blackwell Unbound - Map Screen

This is the map screen in Blackwell Unbound

With that out of the way, I went for the Chain Smoker achievement. This one, unlike the previous one, does have bug issues. The most straightforward way to get the achievement would be to just light a cigarette manually, and then handle the TV, phone or radio to put it off and repeat this. The problem is, it often happens that the lighter and the cigarettes become unusable. On the cases that this doesn’t happen, a second bug occurs, where Lauren is constantly claiming she already has a lit cigarette, even though that obviously wasn’t the case.

What I did in the end was that I loaded a save game from the moment after the second case is done and the balcony scene is over. Then I parked Lauren on the balcony and switched to Joey. I left her idle like this for about 45 minutes and then completed the game for the fourth time. I ended up with 111 cigarettes and finally unlocked the last achievement.

In any case, I’m done with the Blackwell series on Steam now. There are a few other adventure games I haven’t completed yet, though, so I might try those, since most are pretty short if they don’t drag you along with bad puzzles.

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I did it. The final game of the first Blackwell Trilogy is completed. Even better, it’s completed with all the achievements done to, meaning I can add it to my 100% completed list.

Blackwell Convergence brings us back to the present, and you follow Rosangela Blackwell, the character from the first game. Her ghost saving business is advancing and you finally get acquainted with the Countess from Blackwell Unbound. Her story is explained, her spirit set free and everything is fixed, but the game makes it obvious that we’ve only scratched the surface and there’s a lot more to come.

Blackwell Convergence - Start

I love cinematic starts!

You get to switch control between Joey and the Protagonist again, just as it was possible in the second game, but I find the game an improvement overall. The puzzles are a lot more straightforward and clearer, the control switching doesn’t complicate things and makes more sense, and the “you should search for this term on your computer” parts are more heavily hinted, so you don’t have to guess. All in all, it was a more polished adventure experience.

Now that the third game is completed, I have the fourth one left, but I don’t have it on Steam, so it’s probably time to play something else. The thing is, since I got all the achievements in both Blackwell Legacy and Blackwell Convergence, I’m kind of feeling like getting the final two achievements in Blackwell Unbound also, just so I could them all on the 100% done list.

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Well, since I was already on a roll, I decided to do another one.

Blackwell Unbound is the second game of the Blackwell series and it didn’t suffer from the issue of the first game – the bad ending. It’s a prequel of sorts, following Lauren Blackwell, who is, I believe, the aunt of the character from the first game, during two of her cases in the seventies.

Blackwell Unbound - Different Dimension

The area “between the worlds” received an upgrade.

The overall story is expanded in Blackwell Unbound, and I’m actually starting to be interested in what will happen next. In this game, you often have to switch control between Joey and the Protagonist, in order to get by some puzzles, which is an interesting change, but not one I really like. I mean, I don’t mind it, but I prefer to keep adventure games simple.

I didn’t get all the achievements this time. The two I have left are one that asks me to finish the game with less than 20 cigarettes smoked, and one where I have to smoke more than 100. I guess the second one can be done by reloading a save and idling for a while, but the first one will take replaying the game. With the knowledge I have now, I should be able to complete it fast enough not to smoke to much. However, I won’t do that next.The second of four games is done now and, since I also have the third on Steam, I’ll definitely tackle that one next.

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The Blackwell Legacy was another quick one. I started playing it this morning and completed it in a couple of hours. It’s a never adventure game, but with a classic look. The looks seem outdated, but they have a certain charm which I greatly enjoyed. It’s a good, fun adventure game, but there were a few flaws.

Blackwell Legacy Screenshot Bridge

The game is graphically ancient, but it holds a certain charm.

I also managed to get all of the achievements in this one, meaning I can mark it as 100% completed. It can all be done in a single playthrough to. The important part is to enable all commentaries in the options menu before starting and to talk to Joey constantly, but only in your apartment room, not anywhere else. Everything else is easily doable. Once the game was finished, I still didn’t get the Family History achievement, but reloading at the autosave, examining all of my photos and then exhausting all the conversation options with Joey was enough to get it.First of all, while the voice acting was fine, the voice quality could use some work. I guess that’s how it is with lower budget indie games, so I can’t take that as a significant flaw, but still, it takes away from the game a bit. Secondly, the ending was cheesy and not at all in the tone of the rest of the game. I won’t reveal to much about it, but it basically ended too abruptly and with a completely unimaginative twist. It could’ve been done better.

All in all, The Blackwell Legacy is a quality adventure game, which any fan should play. There’s four more games in the series, but I only have the next two on Steam. I’ll probably tackle those next. The next one is Blackwell Unbound.

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Since the last post, I’ve been a bit busy, completing two extremely short games. Well, for the most part, they feel like tech demos more than anything, but they’re in my Steam library, and now I’ve been able to put them in my “Completed” category.

Half Life 2: Lost Coast

This really, literally is a tech demo. To be more precise, it’s a tech demo for using HDR in the source engine. I played through it with commentary on and cleared it in under half an hour. There really is nothing to it. They explain a bit on how they design games, what technology is involved and that’s it. You kill a few enemies, fight a helicopter and get invited to dinner by a fisherman.

Lume Screenshot

Lume is a beautiful game, but it’s much too short.

Lume

This one isn’t a tech demo, calling itself a full-fledged game, but it sure feels like a tech demo. It’s a pretty, but extremely short adventure game. You play as a girl who visits her inventor grandfather. Unfortunately, he had to go to the nearby village to fix their power generator, so while you wait for him, you have to fix the generator at his house. That’s it, nothing else to the game. It was fun, but it was short, taking me about 40 minutes to complete. Still, my backlog is getting smaller. It’s still huge, but it’s getting smaller.

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It took me ten hours of playing in total, but today, I finally managed to complete the last stage and end the game. I have no idea what compelled me to play this utterly dull and not at all engaging game, but I did it, and now I can play something else.

Faerie Solitaire - In Game

I had to run the game one last time to get an actual game screenshot.

With the game over, I’ve collected 26 out of 30 achievements in total. Getting the last four doesn’t really sound like a fun activity, though:The last few levels weren’t any different than the previous levels. I think that’s my main issue with the game. Past the first few levels, there is absolutely nothing new that happens. It’s just a single, monotonous activity you do from start to end. The pets could’ve been something to help with this, but they do nothing to the game. They’re basically just stamps you collect. If only each pet had something like a passive bonus to you as a player, it would all be so much more engaging.

  • Elite Skills: Complete all challenges.
  • Hatch’em All: Collect the baby form of each pet.
  • Millionaire: Earn $1,000,000.
  • All Grown Up: Collect each pet’s adult form.

Elite Skills is doable. The challenge levels seem only slightly harder than the later adventure levels. The only real difficulty is filling the purple bar in less than 1 minute on each level. It’s not impossible, but it requires luck. Then again, pretty much anything in this game requires luck. Millionaire is close enough already. I’d probably get it by the time I get Elite Skills, since I’m already at around $800,000 right now.

Faerie Solitaire - Endinge

The game ends with a cliffhanger, since a sequel is planned.

Hatch’em All and All Grown Up are the annoying achievements. The way I understand it, you get eggs at random when you clear a single column of cards, just like with gold and materials. Throughout my ten hours of playing, I didn’t even get half of them. As far as I know, there is no faster way to get them, meaning I’d probably have to play for at least as much as I did already. In addition to that, for a pet to evolve, you have to play long enough with that pet set as active. This means even more time is needed, and nothing else other than the time.

Suffice to say, there is no chance in hell I’m doing this.

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Faerie Solitaire is not a very fun game, but for some reason, I feel compelled to complete it. I’ve already put close to ten hours into it and I’m slowly reaching the end. Today, I managed to complete stage 7, meaning there’s only one last stage left.

Faerie Solitaire - Cut Scene

The game has good narration, but the story isn’t very compelling.

As for the achievements, I got a bunch of them, but some of the ones I haven’t unlocked yet seem to be even more grindy. One of them actually requires me to get all the pets and evolve them. The pet’s drop at random, so it takes nothing but time to get them, and they evolve after a set amount of time spent playing the game, meaning even more of a time requirement.

Basically, I don’t think I’ll be completing those. Still, I could try the challenges, at least, and skip the time hogs.