Archives March 2024

The team at Ratalaika Games have returned along with Stately Snail to release the sequel One More Dungeon 2.

Our friends of Ratalaika Games shared one of their latest titles, One More Dungeon 2, with us and we recently had the chance to sit down and give it a play. We had never heard of the franchise prior to the announcement of this sequel but based on images alone we were excited to dive right in. In both titles you play an unnamed adventurer. I don’t know much of the original storyline but in OMD2 you are held captive by a kingdom of snails, or are they snails and slugs? Either way, they are green and slimy looking, but in a cute way. To earn your freedom, you must run through the dungeons and remove the evil denizens there to keep them from raiding the snail-king’s domain. More than enough justification for me to explore these dangerous spaces.

As I mentioned, the slugs are pretty damn cute and the enemies themselves are rendered in a chunky art style that reminds me of the Super-Hero Squad line that Hasbro released over a decade ago. The stages are randomly generated with each expedition but are hampered by the controls. Most games with a poor controller setup have a chance to make up for this by having easier gameplay, an engaging story or stellar graphics. The controls for this game are obscenely sticky, making aiming with ranged weapons quite difficult. They were so bad that they turned what would have been a great game into one that is only okay. The difficulty (when set higher) was much higher than I expected and provided a great challenge that was made more frustrating by these same controller issues. Overall we enjoyed the game but, without the necessary controls making it nearly impossible at times, it fell short of its potential.

Aquaman returns for what appears to be the final move of the current DC Cinematic Universe.

Recently the folks at Warner Brothers sent us a copy of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, featuring Jason Mamoa. Unlike most sequels this film directly follows its predecessor in every way. That means it is a direct continuation of the previous film. The story had ended off with Arthur and Mera in love, Orm imprisoned, Black Manta off somewhere licking his wounds and Arthur remains the ruler of Atlantis.

The film starts with Arthur sharing the joys and frustrations of balancing, life, family, jobs and how much he misses the more simple days where he could simply punch his problems. To make matters worse, his son likes to target his face whenever he changes the diaper. Life does not sound too enjoyable for our hero. Black Manta is using this time to hunt the oceans for any sign of Atlantean technology to repair his broken suit so he can kill Aquaman once and for all.

Visually the film is absolutely stunning. The effect and detail of the underwater cities and creatures alone make the film worth watching. The dialogue can be a bit campy at times but not more so than the original film. The fight scenes were a lot of fun and well choreographed. Overall I had fun watching the film but I only had one main complaint, that Amber Heard wasn’t recast. It makes no sense that she would be allowed to continue in her role after being found as the guilty party but when she accused Depp of the same behavior he was immediately removed. It’s an odd double standard that frankly doesn’t make sese.

Cat and Ghostly Road is a point and click adventure from Sometimes You and BOV featuring BOV’s actual cat as protagonist.

For most of Cat and Ghostly Road you play as a white cat that is adopted by a local painter. The painter “falls ill” and it’s up to you to save him. Specifically after you drift off to sleep, a demon appears and steals the soul of the painter. It’s up to you to follow the demon and get it back. The premise of the game, at least to me, sounds pretty awesome already, however point and click adventures rarely keep me engaged enough that I don’t drift off to sleep at some point due to their tediousness and slow sections. Is this as awesome as I hoped are did I fall asleep part way through? Keep reading!

BOV and Sometimes You teamed up to publish the title, with the main character modeled after BOV’s real cat that they recued from under a bridge. This was about fifteen years ago. Observing this cat they were inspired to create this game, specifically from the fact that the real feline reminded them of a moon cat and they went from there. The game suffers from the typically slow paced monotony that most point and click adventures are plagued with. The quirky nature of the cat does help with some of this but isn’t enough to make it enough to keep me awake or hold my attention for two long, one of the downsides to my ADHD. If you enjoy point and click adventures or an excuse to play as a cat then this will be right up your alley. The thing this game gets right is the puzzles, some require you to essentially play minigames to resolve their objective but unfortunately these were few and far between. I found the game to be cute and easy to play and master but with just a little too much tedium.

The Feeding, by Drew Zucker and David Booher, is a horror story centered around a painting of the same name in a tale of hunger!

Written by David Booher and line art by Drew Zucker, The Feeding is a tale of a man surrounded by death and misery, some of which is tied to a painting. This painting, with the same name as the book itself, is hungry and needs to feed. It follows the life of Nolan Ward, a Day Trader and total douche, prick, asshole, take your pick, they all fit. No matter how much he tries to distance himself from it, the painting seems to always find it’s way back to Nolan so instead of trying to escape it he instead purchases it from an art gallery it seemed to appear in by anonymous donation and tries to feed it one last time.

The book is currently a one-shot that you can purchase through Zoop but I’m hoping that we see it become an anthology of some sort. Maybe a series about the painting interacting with various people and the ruin it causes, something along the lines of the Silver Coin. Overall the book is well written with even better art and as I said, I very much would like to see the painting return for either the occasional one-shot or even a full series. In the meantime, if you haven’t already I highly recommend Drew’s series Canto- one of the best fantasy series out to date and currently at Dark Horse comics.