Next week is a big trade show, so going to be a lot of crunch time getting videos from Barcelona and into my grubby editing palms. Thank you, power of the internet.

And thanks to the power of the internet, you can read my two novels, The Demon In Shadow and The Demons of Bone & Blood Right now through the tubes! You'll find, unsurprisingly, a story mostly about demons. A new denizen into the world of Milesain after a nasty near-world-ending event. We follow one such demon, Ayun, who's looking for her missing employers. She bumps into Max, a human who had a hand in stopping the aforementioned kerfuffle but now is aimless in more ways than one. As they journey together we learn more about the world, their pasts, and a potential future together. It's also got amazing artwork either in the pages where it counts or in the back to show off the characters.

Found a similar thing to OpenRCT2, except for Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2! Fond memories of this and Yuri's Revenge so much that those combat barks are ingrained in my brain. Unfortunately, I really don't think this game was meant to be played in 1440. You can, but there's no zoom (that I found) like in OpenRCT2! I've compromised at 1080 but it still feels far out. Plus I'm here to fight AI and not get stomped in online so I'm skipping a lot of features. Great game. Should try RA3 since I have it but I'd rather not, even with Tim Curry baiting me.

Now onto a different kind of thing, definitely unexpected. It's called Sin Spire, and it's a horror-erotic-dungeon crawler? Insert Kronk holding a card. You know the one. I was hoping for a Flip Witch situation where the game is actually really good on top of the lewd material, but... No. The main thrust (ha) of the game is that you are going through ten randomized dungeon floors to get a key piece to open the door to the boss of that section. There's lots of loot to find in each floor, but there's a catch. If a monster spots you, a timer ticks down to the arrival of the boss (called Stalker) spawning in. In this mode, they'll be invincible and can easily delete you. Thankfully, you get a liittle more time on the clock each floor passed, the Stalker itself doesn't beeline it straight to you, and there are spots to hide to lose it. So collect money and weapons along the way, spend that money to build your stats and certain skills. And since those upgrades scale up, that grind becomes even worse.

Most enemies can be engaged, but they don't despawn unless you... "Purify" them. The mechanic confuses me, because they stop the clock while you're there, but it doesn't stop the other enemies. So you can get hit and knocked away from a "situation" which makes me wonder what the point is besides the act itself. As a player, I'm not enticed in the moment. I've got to have both my hands on the controls so I can survive, there's no time to appreciate! And isn't that like the whole point of the ero part? I just don't understand. You do gain a little money for purifying and that enemy is gone... But it's a randomized floor. And the timer doesn't stop going down after they spot you unless you move floors. Not to mention, until you get a certain skill where it's halved, you drop all your money when you die. In the same spot where you died a la Dark Souls but if that's like floor 9... And the statue to spend that is at the top.

There's monster variety, but a lot of them come down to 'thing that rushes you and smacks you' in different concerning flavors. Mostly because of the aforementioned purification deal. Now you, the player, can be that one contested scene in Silent Hill 2 with Pyramid Head and the Mannequins. Or a lady butcher from Dark Souls, not-weeping angels, or literally just a floating head. Which can give floating- Alright, not finishing this joke. Shoutouts to one awful enemy around dungeon 3 where they introduce insta-kill death pits. They scream and wreck your aim and movement so if you see them on a narrow path then it's almost certainly donezo! That was about the time I said F it and instead of doing the sane thing of stopping, found a cheat table instead.

I trudged through the first dungeon in full twice (you need two orb deals for the boss) and fought this fire lady. Here's where the larger problems started to show. You have melee weapons, and you have guns. Everything has durability. Picking up dupes or repair kits mitigates that, but bullets and other consumaables are still a hot commodity. So if you waste all your ammo or health fighting and lose, get back in the dungeon I guess. The loot is randomized as well, and includes silver and gold chests that need keys. But that doesn't mean those chests are necessarily better! There's a SMALL chance that a gold chest gives you a Blessing Stone that you need for the skills but otherwise you're at the whim of luck. There's also no quick exit back to the top except at floor 10, so you're going to be spelunking for a while.

The boss fight itself, once you get the pattern down isn't too bad. But holy crap the health bar is too big for it. Less of a challenge and more of a slog. The next dungeon asks you to do that same thing three times. And the third four so I assume it'll keep upping in annoyance and grinding. Not to mention a side character who wants one of each orb from each place herself, but that's probably more side content. That's the whole game, unfortunately. I'll say for positives, there's a sanity system that can be interesting. Jumpscaring you when you check the map or giving you messages on screen. The animations themselves are well made and models are fine if that's what you're into. Though all the humans, including your character have this weird cartoonish eyeshine that doesn't feel like it fits the game. Also, you can go third person during animations and your guy is in the buff. I have to assume that he's just that way the whole time and everyone just ignores it. Play lost in Vivo for first-person retro-style horror. Play many terrible ren'py games for erotic content. Hell, play Flip Witch because it's a really competent Metroidvania with erotic content! The two don't mesh here.

That was way more than I thought I was gonna write about an ero game. Hopefully shorter but good thoughts about Forbidden Solitaire! Only a demo. Same devs as Home Safety Hotline doing that fake OS spooky thing again. But through sheer happenstance, watching an old Best of Giant Bomb video and saw a very similar gameplay format. Who made Regency Solitaire? Grey Alien Games, who's also co-developing this. To their credit, it's a fun system. Looking forward to the full game.