#62 - PEAK

Hey, it's been a minute! I took a break from gaming for a bit; partly voluntary, partly because some jerk destroyed the Internet cable in my yard and it took forever to get someone to come fix it. But I'm back! And just in time to play a really fun co-op game that just dropped last month.

PEAK is a climbing game where you can either solo the various mountain regions, or climb with up to four players. I highly recommend playing with others, as you can help each other out on your journey. As you can see from the first screenshot above, my good friend Victor McKnight is offering a hand to help lift me up a ledge.

The game starts in an airport, where your team of scouts is preparing for a flight. You can pull out a passport and customize your character's appearance at this point. More outfits and facial features will unlock as you gain achievements in the game.

Notice that your achievements in the game will appear as badges on the scout sash you wear across your chest. They'll fill out both the front and back of the sash.

When your team is ready to depart, someone will select the game mode from the terminal gate. You can play "Peak," which is the game's standard difficulty, or "Tenderfoot," which makes climbing a little easier, requires less food to stave off hunger, and grants unlimited time to explore each area.

After departure, you find yourself waking up on a beach near the ruins of a plane. Your flight has crashed and you and your scout team need to climb to the highest peak to signal for help.

There is one backpack nearby and a couple luggage cases on the ground. You can hold 3 items in your inventory, one in your hands, and up to four items in the backpack. One of your team members can equip the backpack and everyone else just packs as many supplies as they can in their inventory. You will find more luggage scattered all over each region, so there are plenty more supplies to pick up along the way. Keep your hands free for climbing!

You have five regions to climb before you get to the highest peak (and thus, the end of the game):

1.) SHORE: Rocky, sandy bluffs

2.) TROPICS: Lush vine-covered jungle cliffs with slippery rainfall

3.) ALPINE: Frozen snowy alps with piercing cold wind storms

4.) CALDERA: A lava pit with hot rocks and fire tornadoes

5.) KILN: The inside of the volcano.

The regions are always the same, but their layout is procedurally generated daily, so you never have the same climb from day to day. That forces you to be creative and learn good skills instead of just memorizing a certain path up the mountains.

You can rest at a campfire at the top of each region, which will recover all your ailments. You'll also find marshmallows to roast over the fire. I recommend cooking them twice for the best stats boost. Perfectly golden brown. You'll also get a new backpack at each campfire, which lets another scout carry additional supplies.

You'll notice that your green stamina bar is quickly filled up by weight. So don't carry too many heavy items or else you won't have enough stamina to climb!

Also, as your hunger grows, it will fill part of your stamina bar. Remember to eat to give yourself more stamina. Everything takes up space in your stamina bar. Poison, cold, heat, injuries... if you run out of space for stamina, you will pass out.

If you pass out, you have a very limited time where a fellow scout can revive you. Or if they don't have anything to revive you with, they can carry you on their back in place of a backpack. So don't leave your scouts behind!

If you're passed out too long without aid or being carried, you will die and turn into a ghost. Ghosts are tied to another teammate and can switch between living teammates to watch and call out assistance. As you can see below, I was the last hope for my team and I passed out. Oops.

At the end of each climb, you can revive your fallen scouts at a statue. If everyone is still alive, the statue will instead give a random beneficial item. Like this Bugle of Friendship, which will give unlimited stamina to nearby teammates while it's being played. If everyone dies, the game is over and you have to start over at the very beginning.

If you're playing with "Peak" difficulty, you will have fog that slowly encroaches on you from behind. If the fog envelopes you, you will quickly freeze to death. Make sure you out-climb that fog! Here's my buddy Victor confidently giving himself to the fog as the rest of our dead team watches on.

Just a heads up, this game is about teamwork so don't leave your teammates behind. I found out the hard way that if you climb on your own and get too far ahead of your teammates, the Scoutmaster will come for you. If he catches you, he'll attempt to throw you off the mountain. And he's absolutely terrifying to encounter, running at you on all fours like a nightmare skeleton creature or something. (Although you get an achievement and a costume item if you summon him)

Little tip: If you carry the bugle from the airplane, you can serenade some capybaras in a hot spring in the Alpine region. This is also an achievement. Don't forget to eat the apples on their head. They'll fill you up and give you a stat boost.

Victor and I got real close to beating the game. We were so close to making it out of the volcano!

Then his game froze and his character fell to his death. I tried to finish solo, but without his help, I ran out of stamina and fell too. It's practically impossible to finish that final climb without some climbing gear to help you! Oh well, we'll clear the summit one day.

#61 - The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog

Sheesh, Amy, don't look so happy that Sonic's dead...

Hey all! It was my birthday last week, so to celebrate, I wanted to play a game themed around a birthday party. And since I'm a huge Sonic the Hedgehog nerd, I decided to play the murder mystery game, The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog! As usual, there will be no spoilers in this post, so read on for details!

The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog randomly dropped for April Fools Day in 2023, with the announcement that SEGA has decided to just kill off Sonic. This was a free game to play and turned out to be pretty fun! (It's still free on Steam, if you want to check it out.) It's a point-and-click visual novel, where you get to help Tails and Amy solve the death of Sonic the Hedgehog.

But he's not really dead... is he?

The game starts with Barry the Quokka, a timid and insecure character, beginning his first shift aboard the Mirage Express. This is a passenger train designed to host parties and events. You play as "Barry," although you can give him whatever (respectful) name you want. For simplicity's sake, I stuck with his canon name. I'm not one to mess with the canon.

In the dining car, Barry meets the conductor, who is one day away from retirement. That always goes smoothly in murder/mystery stories, right? He coaches Barry on his roles and responsibilities and offers to assist him in greeting the guests and collecting their tickets, before disappearing to the conductor car to run the train.

By the way, the conductor's mention of 32 years as conductor was a reference to the 32 years since the first Sonic game released in 1991.

The guests show up, dressed in unusual attire. It's Amy Rose's birthday and she's rented the train for a murder mystery party!

You and the conductor collect tickets from the party members, giving you a chance to chat with everyone and get to know their personalities a bit.

Vector has misplaced his ticket, which gives you a quick warm-up mystery to solve. It's mostly to ensure you're observant of the rooms you're in. You'll need to find various things to click on in every room throughout the game, in order to solve each mystery. Don't worry, clickable items are highlighted in neon green when you hover over them; you can't miss them.

When it's time to collect Amy's ticket, the conductor hands her a key that opens every door on the train. She's the birthday girl; it's the rules.

You may notice the robot hand giving her the key. The train itself is sentient, responding to the needs of all its guests. Barry, despite being hired to work on this train, is basically a glorified microwave expert, as the train handles everything except heating up food for guests. You'll see robot hands working in every car of the train.

Amy gathers the party together to announce the rules of the murder mystery party. One person has been designated as the murderer and they have an hour to mingle amongst the guests and pick one person to murder, which must be done in-person. The rest of the guests have to collect evidence and interrogate everyone else to determine who the murderer is.

Everyone has a role and a car they are stationed in:

• Sonic is the ship captain and is stationed in the conductor's car.
• Tails is the detective and stationed in the dining car.
• Knuckles is the sheriff and stationed in the saloon car.
• Vector is the butcher and Espio is the poet, and both are stationed in the library car.
• Rouge is a business tycoon and Blaze is a titan of industry, and both are stationed in the casino car.
• Shadow is the locksmith, stationed in the lounge car.
• And finally, Amy Rose is the journalist reporter, with freedom to roam around all the cars.

The detective and journalist are the only two who CAN'T be the murderer, as they're trying to solve the crime.

Everyone disperses and Barry hangs back in the dining car with Amy and Tails. After chatting for a while, the train suddenly jolts forward at an incredible pace! Tails, Amy, and Barry are knocked into the dining car's closet. Upon awakening, they find themselves trapped! Amy is acting suspicious and ignoring direct questions about their predicament. Tails jumps into detective mode! He asks Barry to help him figure out what's actually going on.

You can scan the room for various things to click on, which will give dialogue between you and Tails. Anything that seems like a clue, Barry will keep in his inventory for later.

Tails and Barry can then interrogate Amy and try to solve the mystery! While trying to formulate a reasonable argument, Tails encourages Barry to close his eyes and think... what would Sonic do? Barry follows this advice, which spawns a mini-game to play. This mini-game will appear every time Barry is attempting to resolve a mystery, and it only gets more challenging as the game goes on.

The "Dream Gear" and the overall design of the handheld device is a loose parody of the SEGA Game Gear, which was SEGA's first portable gaming system.

The objective of this mini-game is to collect enough rings to pass the level. If you succeed, Barry puts together a logical and reasonable argument to help solve the current mystery. If you fail, it will just restart the level. There's no way to actually lose unless you give up playing.

After solving the first real mystery and escaping the closet, the team finds the dining car trashed... and Sonic dead on the floor! (See first screenshot) Amy is excited that the murder mystery has started and runs off on her own to solve the case! Barry has some reservations, though...

Barry and Tails move on to the saloon car to begin interrogating the guests. Be sure to click on everything you can to find clues! Tails will tell you when you've collected enough clues and when it's time to interrogate the guests.

The "Birthday Girl" has decided to solve the mystery on her own, so she runs ahead. All the doors are mysteriously locked, but she has the Birthday Key, so she can help herself to each car. The guests have their own keys to their cars, which they lend to Tails and Barry so they can move on when they're ready.

In the library car, Amy is already wrapping up her investigation with Vector and Espio and leaves Tails and Barry behind once again.

The clues are pretty simple, and if you're struggling to figure it out, Tails will basically hold your hand through the game. If you say or do the wrong thing, he'll usually tell you to try again until you get it right, so it's not a particularly difficult game.

If you're not familiar with Sonic lore, Tails is essentially a genius with a 400 IQ, so he mostly sits back and lets Barry solve the mysteries, giving him a guiding nudge if he's off-course.

When Tails and Barry get to the casino car, they get roped into a heist mission with Rouge and Blaze. As usual, Rouge is more concerned with looting valuables than playing the murder mystery game.

In the lounge car, you catch up with Amy, already throwing accusations at Shadow! It's up to you to do some quick deductions that will either support or refute her claims against him.

Finally, you end up in the conductor's car, where signs of a struggle are visible. This was where Sonic was stationed, after all. After a quick assessment of the room, you're ready to solve the murder! Amy calls all attendees to the conductor's car to hear the results. Who do you think did it?

For a simple, free game, this was actually quite enjoyable! I think I beat the whole thing in roughly 2.5 hours of gameplay. It's mostly linear; you have some places where you can choose multiple options for dialogue, but it's mostly inconsequential. If you get too far off the plot, Tails will assist you in the right direction.

Despite being a straight-forward plot, there were a few surprises and twists along the way. They managed to keep it interesting so you're not just spending 2 hours clicking through the same dialogue options with everyone. And it doesn't end the way you'd expect... Go play it to find out what happens!

By the way, Sonic says something in this game that's really excellent life advice. I'd share the screenshots, but the background might be a bit spoilery, so here's just the dialogue: "I get it, the road's getting tough. It's easy to question the decisions that got you here. But when negative thoughts hit you, let it pass, and keep on living." There's a reason Sonic is my #1 favorite character!

#60 - inKonbini: One Store. Many Stories (demo)

Today I'm going to be looking at the demo for an upcoming narrative-driven simulation game that looks like a lot of fun! It's called inKonbini: One Store. Many Stories. This demo is free on Steam, so feel free to check it out for yourself.

"Konbini" (コンビニ) is the Japanese word for convenience store. It's a borrowed word from English, but the Japanese don't have a "v" sound in their language, so "b" is the standard replacement consonant for "v" in words. And of course, the Japanese have abbreviated the English word to make it easier to say.

inKonbini takes place on a rainy night in Japan, in late August of 1993. I actually spent 3 years living in Japan in the early 2000s, so this game felt very familiar and nostalgic for me.

You play as Makoto, a college student who is just starting work at her aunt's konbini, called Honki Ponki, while between school semesters.

Aunt Hina recommends all her employees keep notebooks on them for taking notes. She specifically asked Makoto to journal her experiences each night. She calls to check up on Makoto, since it's her first night shift.

Aunt Hina has already taken notes for Makoto in the journal, so you have a general idea of what to do if you get lost. However, you can call her anytime to receive more advice.

Looking around the office, there are several things you can click on and Makoto will comment on them. One is a postcard about to fall off a shelf. It's an unsent card from Aunt Hina, to a mysterious stranger.

Note: Most of the Japanese characters on this card seems to be flipped backwards, and some of the characters are even flipped upside-down! I also noticed this throughout the store. I have no idea why.

Calling the phone number from the postcard gets you the answering machine for Chief Matsuda's Treasures. Hmm...

Whelp, time to go straighten out the store so you can open for the night!

There are several things to do besides just stocking shelves. Look around for anything that needs reorganizing or adjusting. You have to be detail-oriented; I'm neurotic about details and took several laps around the store to check everything, and even I missed a few things!

I found a notebook from one of the other employees. In it, he mentions that Aunt Hina threatened to change his nametag to read "Charlie" if he didn't stop making mistakes, so customers would think he's a foreigner and be more forgiving. Considering he's only known as Charlie, looks like Aunt Hina followed through on the threat.

Once the place was straightened up, I started restocking shelves. There are some limited supplies in the back office, both on the shelves and in the large fridge and freezer. I packed as much as I could on the shelves, even reorganizing some products to make them all fit.

All done! Time to flip the sign on the door and start taking customers.

The first (and only) customer of the night was an old man, braving the ongoing rainstorm to pick up some supplies.

He almost immediately noticed a mistake I missed. Someone stocked bread in the wrong place!

You can go and chat with him, where he'll reveal he knows your aunt very well. Although they're not on speaking terms at the moment. You'll quickly deduce that he's Chief Matsuda! The plot thickens...

There are several multiple-choice options during conversations, so there are several ways to play out each scene. I only played through once, so I'll be showing the general direction my game took. I'm not sure if it would be dramatically different if you chose other options, though. You can definitely experiment and see what happens.

I also forgot to stock a brand of ramen that Chief Matsuda always eats. He takes this as a sign that it's time to make some changes in his life and he asked me for a recommendation on a new brand of ramen.

Chief Matsuda heads over to the pet food section and asks for further assistance. His cat has been avoiding him and acting strange. Someone recommended he try a hypoallergenic cat food, but he can't read the labels very well.

If you inspect the cans, you'll get more details to read. Eventually, I found the right brand for him.

When he's done shopping, he'll meet you at the register and you'll have to scan the barcode on everything in his basket.

Then of course, you'll accept his money and make change. Fortunately, the register keeps track of what you owe the customer and deducts each time you pull bills or coins from the till.

Random trivia: In Japan, it's considered rude for an employee to take money directly from a customer's hands, so they have a small (usually blue) rectangle dish that the customer puts their money in, then the employee makes change and puts it back in the dish for the customer to take. That way, no one is directly handing money to the other.

More trivia: Japan's smallest bill today is 1,000 yen (roughly 7 US dollars). They used to have a ¥50, ¥100, and ¥500 bill back in the '50s, but they were mostly phased out by the '60s and turned into coins. Considering this game takes place in 1993, these bills are not accurate to real life.  They also have never had a ¥25 coin; the next denomination after ¥10 is ¥50.

Chief Matsuda is still feeling depressed and may vent a bit about some of his bad luck to you at this point. I got a choice in how to respond:

I chose to cheer him up, and it seemed to do the trick.

He stands outside to admire the rising sun as the rain lets up. If you join him, you get a little more dialog with him before the demo ends.

Overall, it was a fun little game to play and I'm excited for the full release! I enjoy simulator games, and this one was very relaxed and story-heavy. Unlike other store simulators I've played, where you spend a whole shift desperately running around, managing a bunch of customers and store inventory as fast as you can. Working a night shift means a slower pace to the game, so you can have one-on-one conversations with the customers and really enjoy the atmosphere.

There's also no clock in the game, so you can take all the time you want to do everything. I probably spent over an hour just wandering around the store, clicking on everything and getting to know where everything was. I was expecting an influx of customers, so I wanted to be prepared for the busy rush, but I ended up with a single customer who was chill and fun to chat with.

Note: I haven't been paid to advertise this upcoming game. As I've mentioned in the past, I'm very anti-advertisement, so I will never accept money or favors to advertise anyone's game. This is just a personal creative writing hobby of mine; if I'm writing about a game, it's one that I personally enjoyed and wanted to discuss.