With Indie World comes a lot of game announcements and a lot of demos. In the last week or so, I downloaded a whopping five demos to try out, some being for games I've been looking forward to for a while, and others being out of pure curiosity.
Antonblast: With Penny's Big Breakaway, Pepper Grinder, and Freedom Planet 2 out, my new most anticipated game of 2024 is probably Antonblast, an indie game inspired by Wario Land 4. Peppino may not be coming to Switch, but at least Anton's got my back. The Switch demo of Antonblast is pretty much just the Dynamite Demo that has already existed for PC owners to play, but I've never gotten to play it so this is entirely new for me.
As I mentioned, Antonblast is primarily inspired by Wario Land 4. You play as a beefy and very angry dude named Anton who wields a giant mallet he can swing around as an attack. He can dash, dive and bounce off the ground, roll down slopes, very similar to Wario's moveset in that game. There's four switches to hit that open paths like the four jewel pieces in WL4, you can hop into the background ala VB Wario Land, and of course, the level ends with you hitting a switch and booking it for the end. All of this stuff was fun in Wario Land, and it's just as fun in Antonblast. Anton feels great to control, the pacing of exploration is spot-on, and the whole game feels so crunchy and satisfying. What really surprised me, though, is just how much is also inspired by the Crash Bandicoot games. There are boxes you can bounce off, nitro crates to avoid, and you can charge your dash ala the drift in Crash Team Racing, which is very satisfying to pull off.
Antonblast is a really dense game. The demo is around 20-30 minutes, but there's so much to talk about. Both levels are a ton of fun and are packed to the gills with secret areas, branching paths, opportunities to increase your score, and hidden collectibles that are so well-hidden I only found a single one across both levels. The game's tough too. Wario Land has a reputation for being pretty easy, but some of Antonblast's platforming has more of a DKC cadence to it. The GBA-inspired visuals also look absolutely fantastic, they have a very sketchy, anarchic, and crunchy feel to them and there's a ton of hidden details in the background and foreground. I really need to emphasize crunchy because that's easily the best description for how Antonblast feels. Each box you break explodes into a bunch of pieces, using your hammer causes the world to shake, I don't think I've ever played a game that made my Switch rumble this much. The soundtrack is also pretty great too from what I've heard, it's very jazzy and catchy, though a bit drowned out by all the constant explosions and sound effects.
So yeah, Antonblast is looking and feeling great so far. I want to wait until the game comes out to really dive into it since I'm 100% getting it when it comes out, but the demo made a very good impression on me.
Umbraclaw: Umbraclaw was a game I had my eye on for quite a while solely for its interesting premise. It's an original action platformer by Inti Creates where you play as a cat. You got nine lives, and every time you die, you gain a new skill, so you need to weigh your options between purposefully dying to make things easier for you or stick with a limited moveset to give yourself more room for error. It also goes for a unique papercraft-inspired artstyle that looks unlike anything Inti Creates has ever made, and let me just say, the trailers do not do it justice. Umbraclaw looks even more striking and vivid in motion, especially on my OLED. Overall it's a great concept with a lot of potential, but having played the demo, I think this might be one of those games that I respect more than I'd actually enjoy playing.
Beyond the great concept, let me get the other good elements out of the way. Umbraclaw uses a papercraft-esque artstyle that looks incredibly unique and striking, this certainly does not look like anything Inti Creates has ever made. While the trailers made Umbraclaw out to be a more fast-paced action platformer, in actuality this is quite the deliberate game. Kuon, the cat you play as, moves pretty slowly and dies in a single hit. Even if you die a bunch of times and get new skills, you can't go combo mad like you could in a game like Mega Man Zero or Gunvolt. Instead, Umbrawclaw feels more like a survival game, almost like Rainworld. In each chapter, it plops you into a large map filled with dangerous wildlife and tasks you with finding four keystones. You have pretty much no direction and are expected to wander around until you find them without losing all nine of your lives. Even in the chapter I got to play in the demo, Inti Creates took the training wheels off fast. Umbraclaw is a very tough, punishing, and kind of oppressive game and I... just could not stop dying. There are some generous features like difficulty options that either remove the lives completely or make the entire game permadeath, and an upgrades system that can augment Kuon's abilities further, but even then, I really don't think this type of game is for me.
That being said, I have no ill will towards Umbraclaw, not in the slightest. As I said, I seriously respect Inti Creates for going outside their comfort zone and taking a big swing. I'm 100% sure that there are going to be people who fall head over heels for this game, it will absolutely click for some people, I just don't think I'm going to be one of them.
Picross - Logiart Grimoire: This is going to be short, but while checking out the demos on Indie World, I noticed that a new Jupiter Picross game in an original setting is releasing on Switch soon, so I thought I'd check it out too. Jupiter is pretty much the Picross developer, and have a very strong track record, with even their weakest games still nailing the Picross fundamentals. So I don't really need to say that Logiart Grimoire plays really well. It's polished, it's got well-designed Picross puzzles, and it has a bevy of control options and assist features. What I'm more interested in is the new stuff...
Logiart Grimoire is about a Magolor-looking wizard named Emil who asks for the player's help to repair his grimoire by solving puzzles. Seems simple enough, but there's a bit more to it than that. Eventually, you'll start running into obscured puzzles that you can only unlock by fusing completed puzzles together. This essentially adds a meta puzzle on top of the already existing Picross puzzles, and it helps give Logiart Grimoire a unique identity. At least, beyond the mystical witchcraft-themed presentation and Emil's utterly adorable design. The demo mostly contains the first few puzzles of the game, but you're able to look around the menu and from what I can tell, the game has around 400-something puzzles which will definitely give the player a lot to sink their teeth into.
I don't think I'll be getting Logiart Grimoire or anything personality, there's a ton of other ways I can play Picross, but I do think that this is another very quality entry in the genre. It seems to be getting great reviews on Steam and Backloggd and I can see why, it's a unique and charming little experiment from Jupiter that easily stands out as one of their most visually interesting games.
Europa: Europa is described as a "peaceful exploration game". It's been delayed a few times, but it did just get a demo on the Switch so I decided to check it out on a whim.
The main premise is that you play as an android named Zee who's let loose on the planet of Europa to do... something. This definitely feels like one of those stories that's meant to be pieced together as the game goes on, so I honestly didn't really know what was going on most of the time. Europa basically lets you loose on a guided tour of the titular planet, while also picking up journal entries that explain the lore a bit more. Europa's greatest strength is definitely in its art direction. I've seen a lot of comparisons to BotW but honestly I got more Team Ico vibes, with its vast green plains and how they contrast with the intriguingly broken ruins. The level design does a pretty solid job at grabbing your attention without outwardly telling you where to go, so while the demo of Europa was mostly pretty linear, it definitely didn't feel like it. The demo also ended on a pretty impressive setpiece as you soar through the air as what looks like a giant dragon shows up right in front of you in real-time. Now that's a good-ass hook.
Unfortunately, all my praise towards Europa's art direction is severely hampered by the fact that I don't think the game plays all that great. Europa tries to play up the weird planetary gravity of Europa, so Zee controls incredibly floatily. He bumbles around, and you need to charge up your jump and let go of the button to launch yourself off the ground. I'm not a huge fan of this kind of jumping, but it feels especially delayed in Europa. This is another case where the developers certainly feel inspired by Ico's more realistic controls, but for as jank as Ico could get, it never felt anywhere near as sluggish or delayed as Europa does. You also quickly get access to a jetpack that lets you fly around, but that also has its fair share of issues like how you can't really angle Zee while in flight and just how quickly he runs out of fuel. For an exploration game, I should enjoy exploring but the controls in Europa make it really hard. Also, the trailer that showed at the end of the demo was weirdly stuttery and buggy?
So overall, Europa didn't really impress me. It's certainly a visual treat, but the clumsy controls just weren't all that fun to deal with, regardless of how on-purpose they were. This wasn't a bad demo, it definitely had its high points, but it was probably my least favorite of the bunch.
Cat Quest III: Cat Quest 2 was a game I got to play thanks to Apple Arcade, and it was a fun time. It's very simple and basic, but it's cute and addicting in its simplicity. That being said, Cat Quest 3 is looking an absolutely massive glow-up in almost every conceivable way. Just from playing this demo, I went from being pretty meh on the Cat Quest series to being genuinely hyped about this third installment.
In terms of gameplay fundamentals, Cat Quest 3 is mostly on par with the previous games. It's an action RPG with a pretty simple combat loop where you switch between attacking and dodging, like a Souls game for babies. Cat Quest 3 carries over the magic system that previous games had, but it also lets you swap to a shotgun for long range and it feels very good to use. But what really sets Cat Quest 3 apparent from its predecessors is its shift from a fantasy setting to a pirate setting. Now, you have an entire sea filled with islands to explore, and a pirate ship you can sail around in and engage in naval combat with. I'm a sucker for a good exploration-focused pirate game, and Cat Quest 3 absolutely scratches that itch. Even in just the demo, I spent so much time exploring the small amount of the vast open world I was given, stumbling on unique islands, and hunting for the game's many treasure chests. It's very Wind Waker in all the best ways.
On top of that, Cat Quest 3 looks so much better than the previous two games, it's night and day. There is some gorgeous 2D animation in not just the opening animation but pretty much all the characters, and the blend between 2D sprites and the 3D environments and ships looks better than ever. There is so much more detail in every aspect of Cat Quest 3's visuals, and even the dungeons already look more varied and dense than they did in 2. I'm actually so excited for this game now, the demo was great and it really looks like a huge evolution of the Cat Quest formula. Definitely my favorite demo alongside Antonblast.
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