It's a graphical remaster of Portal 2 that's mod-friendly and free (but requires the original game in your library). It uses an upgraded version of the Source engine called Strata Source, which also powers [Momentum Mod](https://store.steampowered.com/app/669270/Momentum_Mod/). [P2CE on Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/440000/Portal_2_Community_Edition/)

They're fast if someone dies.

Played this a few years ago during Steam Next Fest. It's a 2D platformer collectathon with physics and nonsense humour.

I finally have gotten around to playing SOMA. I got it in 2017 and always put off playing it for other games. So far, it's been keeping me engaged for the most part, but some parts have also been bothering me, which is leaving me with mixed feelings that I haven't completely sorted out. By my count, SOMA is actually the first pure horror game I've played! I've played games with horror sections (like Half-Life Alyx) and comedy horror games (like Anthology of the Killer, though it's only mild horror). SOMA is my first time playing a game that's entirely about being scared. As a result, my impression of SOMA is also mixed in with my first experience with a horror game. ## Quick info about SOMA SOMA is by Frictional Games, the same company as the Amnesia series. After undergoing a brain scan for therapy, the player character wakes up in a high-tech base at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The game is particularly famous for its atmosphere of existential dread. ## My current status (spoilers) ::: spoiler spoiler I've just found Catherine and we're exploring the wreck of the CURIE for an escape vessel. ::: ## Thrills As someone with little experience with horror games, I find some of the scary moments in the game very thrilling! It's the same kind of thrill I feel when action games get intense, and sometimes even more. I've found myself sweating or breathing weird while playing SOMA. SOMA's story is the thing that everyone talks about because of how it questions how you perceive your conscious existence. I've gone a bit into the game and I'm hooked on the plot. The story really got me once I realized (I think) what was going on with the strange growths the player character can touch. I have also been appreciating the sound design. The ambience, with all the creaking and clanging, keep me on edge all the time. As well, I'm impressed by the quality of the spatial audio in the game. It seems to be oddly rare for non-VR games to have sounds feel like they come from certain directions, but SOMA manages it. ## Stuff that sinks I'm not a fan of stealth games, yet some parts of SOMA feel just like a stealth game. Some navigation challenges are about hiding and waiting to sneak past a guard, except the guard is a scary monster, and your screen distorts as a signal that you're in danger of being spotted and chased. These are the parts of the game that feel less scary and more like a chore to me. In these cases, it feels more like I'm only roleplaying being scared than actually being scared, especially since I have to hide or run away even if I know what action I want to take. Also, the ocean exploration parts bore me. And I can barely see what's in front of me in those parts! ## I'm torn about the horror experience Sometimes, during SOMA's slow moments while I wait for a scary monster to waddle away, I wonder to myself if I should have played in safe mode so I wouldn't have to hide from monsters so much. The story is really interesting to me, but the spooky gameplay is not as important. So why should I keep doing something that I don't enjoy? That's the point that's making me argue with myself. I would expect that using safe mode would significantly reduce the hostile atmosphere of the game. But this is my first horror game and I do want to have the full experience. It's not that I dislike the horror and being scared — some of the scary parts felt great! It's just that other scary parts feel more like chores than thrills. ## SOMA is pretty cool Game is cool. Story is cool. Some scary parts are really cool.

Talk about Source spaghetti!

[Bits & Bops on Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1929290/Bits__Bops/) I backed this on Kickstarter a few years ago and I'm glad it made it past the finish line. I thought it was a bit telling that I received a Steam key a few weeks ago. Probably by coincidence, another rhythm game, Rhythm Doctor, released just a few days ago. [Apparently, these two games share code!](https://www.tempolabgames.com/tempo-engine)

This is kind of old news that I only caught up on recently. [Since October, Momentum Mod now has a publicly playable playtest,](https://blog.momentum-mod.org/posts/changelog/0.10.0/) announced alonside their 0.10 update. I've been waiting to try this game out since I first heard it mentioned in a related project, [Portal 2: Community Edition](https://portal2communityedition.com/). Momentum Mod is a standalone game aiming to be pretty much the greatest hits album of advanced Source Engine movement. It has game modes for the major categories, like rocket jumping, surfing, and bunnyhopping. It also has built-in speedrunning and practice tools, like automated timers and a meter that shows how well you're airstrafing. It uses a highly modernized version of Source, now branded as Strata Source. Strata is also powering [Portal Revolution](https://www.portalrevolution.com/) and [Portal 2: Community Edition](https://portal2communityedition.com/). For some visual interest, here's an embarrassing clip of me messing up in a beginner-level surf map. 

[(Archived link)](https://archive.ph/ng0ke) New Half-Life 2 development lore drop! It's a wild ride to read. It's about a very niche bug that softlocks the game but somehow the bug can travel back in time and even affect the original retail version of Half-Life 2. ::: spoiler TLDR: the bug The softlock happens because an NPC is standing in the way of a door. This didn't happen in the original because it was compiled using the old-school Intel x87 floating point handling and not the (relatively) more modern SSE behaviour, which does cause the softlock. The bug managed to time travel to the retail build because modern compilers use SSE instead of x87. :::

Bejeweled is perhaps the brightest shining gem of casual PC gaming.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/49151220 ### I wanna get into it! Again! Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines is the follow-up to 2022's Grapple Dog. The story picks up where the first game ended, with protagonist Pablo being recruited to save the world using his excellent grappling skills. This time, we meet a new character, Luna, who is playable alongside Pablo. The grappling hook-focused platformer gameplay is back as well, where your speed and agility depend on your ability to swing to build up momentum.  You might see the bright colours, high-resolution pixel art, and lively energy, then remark, "this is like those Flash games Nitrome used to make!" That's what I thought as well when I discovered the previous game in the series, Grapple Dog. It turns out that the main developer, Joseph Gribbin, used to work for Nitrome, so that makes sense! ### Top dog theming Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines is a little more serious in tone but is still overall a simple, light-hearted 2D platformer story. This time around, the story gets bigger and the stakes get higher. There are more high-resolution cuscenes, they're more elaborate, and they're sometimes even animated. Pablo joins the fight against a multiversal threat, right after the ending of the first game and an off-screen wardrobe update.  I appreciate the more imaginative level theming this game presents. The first game relied on safer concepts for level themes — you know, beach, ice, forest, those kinds of themes. The elemental abilities introduced in this game made me expect more of the same for Cosmic Canines, but that pleasantly turns out not to be the case. You get to visit places like a futuristic monkey world, a noir cat world, and a frog dictatorship world.  Instead of having only one of these settings for each chapter, Cosmic Canines goes for variety. This is a multiverse we're saving, after all! Each chapter features multiple worlds, which sometimes reoccur between chapters. ### Hanging with Luna The most obvious addition to this game is Luna, a new playable character and the deuteragonist of the story. She and Pablo begrudgingly meet after they both respond to the call to protect the multiverse. The game has you playing as both characters in an even split, with half of the levels for Pablo and half for Luna. Like Pablo, she is indeed a dog and has a grappling hook, but otherwise has different abilities. And also a gun.  Luna introduces shooting gameplay to the Grapple Dog formula, with free 360° aiming. I find her controls more complex than Pablo's because her gameplay involves aiming and shooting in addition to grappling. Her levels also have a greater focus on combat and precision platforming compared to Pablo's, which focus more on swinging and maintaining speed. It sometimes feels like she only grapples as a commitment to the title of the game. Luna also marks the first time I've ever decided to play a game by alternating between a controller and keyboard/mouse! Pablo's controls are exactly what I was used to from the first game, so I stuck to playing as him with a controller. In contrast, I found platforming and aiming at the same time to be easier with a keyboard and mouse, so I use those when I play Luna's levels. Introducing Luna as another protagonist gives the game the opportunity to have more character interactions that are more substantial. There wasn't too much for Pablo to talk about in the first game. We even get a bit of character development for both protagonists in an otherwise straightforward, light story.  ### Swing to this beat  The soundtrack of the first game was great and that continues to this game. We can thank Queenjazz for this, who returned to make the soundtrack for Cosmic Canines, this time accompanied by WangleLine and HYPHA. I'm fond of the funky, sample-heavy style, which reminds me of the soundtrack of Jet Set Radio. I actually discovered the first game, Grapple Dog, through Queenjazz. I found her in the music credits of Hypnospace Outlaw, looked up what other music she's made, and saw the soundtrack of Grapple Dog there. ### Sequel hooked As a sequel, Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines grapples with the same kinds of things that challenge all sequels. In its case, rather than being just a pack of additional levels, it chooses to expand on the mechanics of the first game and ramp up the difficulty faster. However, it still has to devote teaching time for the players who didn't play the first game. Compared to the first game, there's less of a focus on pure grappling hook platforming, like needing to build up really fast jumps and swings or testing your agility with tricky grapple point placements. Grappling is obviously still around and critical to the game, but the levels devote more of their "difficulty budgets" on challenging you with the newly introduced abilities. For example, Luna has a very long dash in the place of Pablo's ground pound. Her levels, then, have a lot of large gaps to cross or walls of hazards to dodge using that dash.  With this expanded story and scope, I see parallels with Portal 2's position as a sequel to Portal. Like with Portal 2, Cosmic Canines is a bigger adventure with more to do, but as a result, it loses some of the simplicity and purity of the first game. It does make callbacks to its history, with some mechanics from the first game reappearing, but each of those only reappear once. Overall, though, I don't see this as such a tragedy: there's more to enjoy in Cosmic Canines than in the first Grapple Dog. Nothing from the first game is really gone in the move to this one. One thing I did notice as a Grapple Dog veteran is that this game feels easier overall. Time trial and bonus level requirements seem to be a lot more forgiving than the previous game. Additionally, you had only four hit points in the first game, but that's now upgradeable to eight, which lets you play a lot more recklessly. This doubled health is especially handy for getting fast times in the time trials. Why navigate around the spikes when you can just eat the damage and jump through to the other side in half the time? It was really only in the post-game levels where I felt the pressure to be careful with my health. It's hard for me to tell if this game feels easier because I already had a lot of experience from the first game or because this game really is less difficult. The frist Grapple Dog did get some criticism for being too hard, so Cosmic Canines could have been designed in response to that. Also, there's a level editor! I'm not much of a level designer, but it's cool that I can have even more Grapple Dog to play. ### Finish line Just completing the campaign doesn't take too long. A basic run will get you to the weak ending, which has a cliffhanger and some incomplete character development. If you want the good ending, though, you'll have to be more thorough in collecting items and getting good times in the campaign levels. That will unlock a series of post-game levels called the Trials of Egress. These levels are especially lengthy and difficult and will demand a deeper understanding of the game's mechanics. And there's still more! There are secrets all over the game that you can only access by cleverly using game mechanics in ways the game otherwise never tests you on. You'll need to figure those out for 100% completion. And yes, you can pet the dogs. 

### I wanna get into it! Again! Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines is the follow-up to 2022's Grapple Dog. The story picks up where the first game ended, with protagonist Pablo being recruited to save the world using his excellent grappling skills. This time, we meet a new character, Luna, who is playable alongside Pablo. The grappling hook-focused platformer gameplay is back as well, where your speed and agility depend on your ability to swing to build up momentum.  You might see the bright colours, high-resolution pixel art, and lively energy, then remark, "this is like those Flash games Nitrome used to make!" That's what I thought as well when I discovered the previous game in the series, Grapple Dog. It turns out that the main developer, Joseph Gribbin, used to work for Nitrome, so that makes sense! ### Top dog theming Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines is a little more serious in tone but is still overall a simple, light-hearted 2D platformer story. This time around, the story gets bigger and the stakes get higher. There are more high-resolution cuscenes, they're more elaborate, and they're sometimes even animated. Pablo joins the fight against a multiversal threat, right after the ending of the first game and an off-screen wardrobe update.  I appreciate the more imaginative level theming this game presents. The first game relied on safer concepts for level themes — you know, beach, ice, forest, those kinds of themes. The elemental abilities introduced in this game made me expect more of the same for Cosmic Canines, but that pleasantly turns out not to be the case. You get to visit places like a futuristic monkey world, a noir cat world, and a frog dictatorship world.  Instead of having only one of these settings for each chapter, Cosmic Canines goes for variety. This is a multiverse we're saving, after all! Each chapter features multiple worlds, which sometimes reoccur between chapters. ### Hanging with Luna The most obvious addition to this game is Luna, a new playable character and the deuteragonist of the story. She and Pablo begrudgingly meet after they both respond to the call to protect the multiverse. The game has you playing as both characters in an even split, with half of the levels for Pablo and half for Luna. Like Pablo, she is indeed a dog and has a grappling hook, but otherwise has different abilities. And also a gun.  Luna introduces shooting gameplay to the Grapple Dog formula, with free 360° aiming. I find her controls more complex than Pablo's because her gameplay involves aiming and shooting in addition to grappling. Her levels also have a greater focus on combat and precision platforming compared to Pablo's, which focus more on swinging and maintaining speed. It sometimes feels like she only grapples as a commitment to the title of the game. Luna also marks the first time I've ever decided to play a game by alternating between a controller and keyboard/mouse! Pablo's controls are exactly what I was used to from the first game, so I stuck to playing as him with a controller. In contrast, I found platforming and aiming at the same time to be easier with a keyboard and mouse, so I use those when I play Luna's levels. Introducing Luna as another protagonist gives the game the opportunity to have more character interactions that are more substantial. There wasn't too much for Pablo to talk about in the first game. We even get a bit of character development for both protagonists in an otherwise straightforward, light story.  ### Swing to this beat  The soundtrack of the first game was great and that continues to this game. We can thank Queenjazz for this, who returned to make the soundtrack for Cosmic Canines, this time accompanied by WangleLine and HYPHA. I'm fond of the funky, sample-heavy style, which reminds me of the soundtrack of Jet Set Radio. I actually discovered the first game, Grapple Dog, through Queenjazz. I found her in the music credits of Hypnospace Outlaw, looked up what other music she's made, and saw the soundtrack of Grapple Dog there. ### Sequel hooked As a sequel, Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines grapples with the same kinds of things that challenge all sequels. In its case, rather than being just a pack of additional levels, it chooses to expand on the mechanics of the first game and ramp up the difficulty faster. However, it still has to devote teaching time for the players who didn't play the first game. Compared to the first game, there's less of a focus on pure grappling hook platforming, like needing to build up really fast jumps and swings or testing your agility with tricky grapple point placements. Grappling is obviously still around and critical to the game, but the levels devote more of their "difficulty budgets" on challenging you with the newly introduced abilities. For example, Luna has a very long dash in the place of Pablo's ground pound. Her levels, then, have a lot of large gaps to cross or walls of hazards to dodge using that dash.  With this expanded story and scope, I see parallels with Portal 2's position as a sequel to Portal. Like with Portal 2, Cosmic Canines is a bigger adventure with more to do, but as a result, it loses some of the simplicity and purity of the first game. It does make callbacks to its history, with some mechanics from the first game reappearing, but each of those only reappear once. Overall, though, I don't see this as such a tragedy: there's more to enjoy in Cosmic Canines than in the first Grapple Dog. Nothing from the first game is really gone in the move to this one. One thing I did notice as a Grapple Dog veteran is that this game feels easier overall. Time trial and bonus level requirements seem to be a lot more forgiving than the previous game. Additionally, you had only four hit points in the first game, but that's now upgradeable to eight, which lets you play a lot more recklessly. This doubled health is especially handy for getting fast times in the time trials. Why navigate around the spikes when you can just eat the damage and jump through to the other side in half the time? It was really only in the post-game levels where I felt the pressure to be careful with my health. It's hard for me to tell if this game feels easier because I already had a lot of experience from the first game or because this game really is less difficult. The frist Grapple Dog did get some criticism for being too hard, so Cosmic Canines could have been designed in response to that. Also, there's a level editor! I'm not much of a level designer, but it's cool that I can have even more Grapple Dog to play. ### Finish line Just completing the campaign doesn't take too long. A basic run will get you to the weak ending, which has a cliffhanger and some incomplete character development. If you want the good ending, though, you'll have to be more thorough in collecting items and getting good times in the campaign levels. That will unlock a series of post-game levels called the Trials of Egress. These levels are especially lengthy and difficult and will demand a deeper understanding of the game's mechanics. And there's still more! There are secrets all over the game that you can only access by cleverly using game mechanics in ways the game otherwise never tests you on. You'll need to figure those out for 100% completion. And yes, you can pet the dogs. 

::: spoiler Yes After much brute forcing, Mario collects a star by punching over 9000 times and sometimes sleeping. It takes over 8 game hours and three real-time months to accomplish. ::: 👊👊👊👊👊👊👊👊👊👊👊👊

This Next Fest runs until October 20, 10 am Pacific.

Look at that new stick! The original thumbstick of the Steam Controller was always a bit imperfect. I bought my Steam Controller on day one, but a few years in, the soft-touch material on the stick started to flake off. That's gross! Those flakes that rub off also don't help with gripping the stick. It already has a convex-shaped top, which I like less than a concave top. It always feels like I'm pushing the stick in some direction but my thumb is slowly slipping. After almost a decade of putting up with this, I had enough. I looked around online and found that people had figured out how to upgrade that part of the Steam Controller, and it's actually decently easy and cheap. ## Replacing the stick [It turns out the replacement sticks for the 8BitDo SN30 Pro fit perfectly in the Steam Controller!](https://shop.8bitdo.com/products/8bitdo-sn30-pro-sn30-pro-pro2-joystick-rubber-replacement-1-pcs) The Steam Controller is held together with Torx T6 screws. I opened it up and carefully lifted up the mainboard, making sure not to harm the ribbon cable underneath. From there, I pulled the stock thumbstick cap off of the stick and slipped on the replacement one. I now have a Steam Controller with a thumbstick that doesn't rub off and is even concave for better grip! [My notes on how to do this replacement yourself](https://gemini.envs.net/~silv/wiki/steam_controller_stick.gmi)

## Surf the web! As the millennium turned, cyberspace sat abandoned, leaving behind only bots, ads, and the few who dared venture into the ruins. In Kitten Burst, you play as Hapi, a flying race cat with an awful losing streak. A hacker offers to help you get a win, but in exchange, you need to fly through abandoned sites to help her harvest their energy.  The primary gameplay challenge in Kitten Burst is time trial races scattered across the game's levels, where you need to touch enough checkpoints as fast as possible. I've found the flight-style controls to be pretty tricky, but after tweaking my Steam Controller settings, I'm gradually getting used to them. What makes good control so important is that flying close to obstacles builds a boost meter to go extra fast, which encourages "surfing" very close to floors, walls, and ceilings. The risk is that bumping into obstacles kills your acceleration and makes you lose control for a few seconds. The game tries to help with the "whiskers" visual aid, drawing lines from the cat to nearby objects to help you judge the distance. Despite that, I sometimes still find it too hard to avoid crashing, like when the sand dune I'm surfing on starts to curve up but everything nearby uses the same uniform dark sand texture. After completing the races in a site, you get access to the boss challenge. These take a different format that's more like a shmup. They're an abstract rhythm and bullet hell fusion, as if the game Just Shapes and Beats went 3D. You dodge obstacles that the boss shoots at you while listening to the music, and the challenge is complete when you reach the end of the song.  Like with the standard races, it can be hard to judge depths and distances despite the visual aids. This just leads me to wonder if being able to view this game with VR or stereoscopy could ease this difficulty. Overall, Kitten Burst feels like a 3D platformer except all the 3D platforming has been replaced with time trial flying challenges. There are level hubs, various missions to do, things to collect, and places to explore. Sometimes, though, the game takes a cue from the web's wild tangle of hyperlinks, and instead of having traditional hubs, has zones link to each other haphazardly.  ## So Y2K you can lick it If you haven't noticed from the pictures and video clips yet, Kitten Burst is loudly inspired by the graphic design, music, and cultural trends of 2000. ### Graphics from 2000 I'm a huge sucker for the graphic design around the turn of the millennium, so I am obviously eating up this game's look. To improve my frame rate, I even chose to lower my game resolution rather than reduce the graphics setting! I want all the refractive glass, shiny curved metal, and shader effects — I want all of those authentic renditions of the graphics of this era. Every picture from this game looks like a 2000 techno album cover or a Windows Media Player skin. There is also a variety of other environments in cyberspace to enjoy with your eyes. There are Counter-Strike surf maps, old abandoned sites riddled with ads, music piracy sites, and gimmicky single-purpose sites.    World's longest site, huh? I wonder what's down there.   Oh. ### Music from 2000 Kitten Burst replicates the styles of electronic music of the era, too. The soundtrack bundles together the likes of electronica, jungle, eurobeat, and a lot more! ["Bounce2me" uses that cheery, sugary eurobeat sound as the in-universe equivalent of Caramelldansen. This music video is also packed with references to meme music from the 00s!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw4Li0qRd7A) ### Culture from 2000 It's the type of people and attitudes you see in-game that make Kitten Burst more than just an aesthetic pastiche of the year 2000. That's what makes it feel authentic: it portrays the way people used to understand and use the web. The game takes you on an adventure through the subcultures and communities of 200X. There are forums, fanfics, first-person-shooters, and furries.    There is even an image macro generator!  The game also has a single jumpscare. I actually think it's pretty funny. If you know about online culture in the early 00s, you'll see it coming. Thankfully, the game does have a setting to remove this one jumpscare if you don't want to deal with that. ## All the cats are belong to me I've noticed that I've played a lot of games lately that prominently feature cats. Kitten Burst only continues this trend. * Cobalt Core * Nine Sols * CATO * Jazztronauts * OneShot I've even written about some of them! * [What I'm playing 🐈🍞 CATO | cat + toast = puzzles](https://sh.itjust.works/post/36482646) * [What I'm playing 😼🚋 Jazztronauts | Plunder the Steam Workshop for money](https://sh.itjust.works/post/35534975) ## I can haz analysis ### The dot-com crashed Kitten Burst's structure and gameplay loop look a bit strange to me. You explore sites and can admire their pretty scenery, but sites tend to be sparse with points of interest like NPCs and races. I guess cyberspace being abandoned is an adequate in-universe justification for this.  Completing all the races in a site unlocks the boss, but the races have no time requirements — the only thing required is to finish. That means you don't need to spend much effort to just advance in the game, since exploring and racing well are optional. At minimum, you could just treat all the gameplay as basic chores that unlock the next cutscene. However, I see the charm in Kitten Burst's humour and authenticity and I'm willing to play along so I can savour the experience. Besides, when a game gives you a timer and a ghost replay, you have to at least try a bit to shave down your times! That's what I did in Neon White and Sonic Racing Transformed, so this is no exception. ### Cyber punks Kitten Burst runs a cyberpunk story. Real cyberpunk, with actual punks.  It's a story of rebelling against the megacorporation that took over cyberspace. Although it's set in 200X, it uses the setting to provide commentary on the state of the modern web. We see commercial interests taking over and polluting a good thing. There may be non-commercial alternatives, but those are where technical-minded users retreat to. ### Cousin of Hypnospace Outlaw As I've gone through the story of Kitten Burst, it has started to feel like a cousin game to Hypnospace Outlaw, the detective game set in a fictional 90s web. Like that game, Kitten Burst's look and feel is obviously nostalgia bait, and yet this dedication to authenticity is an important piece of the game's narrative and message. They both place the player in an immersive representation of the internet and portray a past era of the web and its culture. While Hypnospace Outlaw starts in a burgeoning web, full of unexplored potential, Kitten Burst starts in the aftermath of a ruined one. Both then follow how their settings evolve to draw parallels with how we interact with technology and Big Tech today. [Hypnospace Outlaw's follow-up, Dreamsettler, was unfortunately cancelled.](https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/hypnospace-outlaw-sequel-dreamsettler-has-been-cancelled-we-just-way-overscoped/) This news was part of what made me move Kitten Burst further up my game queue. If you're willing to go with the speedy flight gameplay, you might find that it scratches the same kind of narrative and nostalgic itch as Hypnospace Outlaw. 

## The next book Moss is a VR "third-person" platformer set in a story book where you help a little mouse on a big adventure. All six VR players liked it so much that there's a sequel! Moss: Book II picks up right after the events of the first game, after you helped Quill kill the big bad snake.  The game starts with me opening the literal next book in the story and being transported into it.  ## It's on the mouse Quill, the mouse, works with the usual third-person platforming controls. Like every game that calls itself action-adventure, there's the usual mix of combat, puzzles, and exploration. However, the special feature of the Moss series is that you can directly interact with the level to help her, with the level shown at about the height of your chest. You can pull and push objects to help Quill get around or even grab enemies to hold them still for her to hit. The combat is very forgiving, with enemies slowly telegraphing their attacks, plus you can heal Quill any time by holding her in your hand.  As expected from a book, Moss: Book II is a linear adventure. I sometimes get pulled out of the book world back to my seat to watch the next pages of the story unfold.  ## A VR game that doesn't try to throw you around Even as an experienced VR user, it gets annoying when a VR game feels the need to have very large spaces or to fling you halfway to Mars to try to sell the immersive power of virtual reality. In contrast, Moss sells the immersiveness of VR modestly but also more intimately. The environments are smaller but very detailed, like a stage right in front of you on a desk.  Unlike a lot of VR games, in Moss, sitting is actually required. Sometimes, you need to lean and look around, but the game never asks you to get up and move around. Keeping with the book theme, instead of scrolling the view as Quill moves around, scene changes are represented as turning a page of the book. Since everything happens right in front of you, at about chest- to eye-level, and you never need to turn around, Moss is a much more comfortable and less intense experience. ## Friend-shaped Virtual reality is a very intimate format for a game. Eye contact and physical gestures feel so much more compelling in VR than in any other format. VR games inevitably integrate the players themselves into the game setting, so the fourth wall is always at least a bit loose in VR. In Moss, there is no fourth wall. Quill knows you're reading her book and often turns to look up at you to ask for help. And you can pet her!  And you can high five her! ## Where we've been At this point, I've explored swamps and castles on a quest to get the important things that do the important stuff. I've just made it past a big twist in the story, which I deliberately left out of the pictures and videos in this article. But here's a picture of a beautiful swamp. 

This is by [pannenkoek2012](https://www.youtube.com/@pannenkoek2012), who you may know from his Super Mario 64 videos. [You know, the one from 2016 about playing Watch for Rolling Rocks in "half" of an A press.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk2tdsPh0A)

About a year ago, I heard someone mention that Outer Wilds had a VR mod. I do have a VR setup and am an experienced VR player, so I really could experience this game for the first time in VR. Is that reasonable or should I play it the first time with flat graphics? (Index btw)

Let's share our lists and opinions on the demos. We'll help each other find promising games. This Next Fest runs until Monday, June 16, 10 am PDT.

First, a little announcement. At this point, I've made plenty of articles in this "what I'm playing" series, and this is the eighth. [So now I'm gathering them onto my extremely barebones website, under the "gamelog" tag!](https://gemini.envs.net/~silv/tags/gamelog.gmi) ## Not your father's Nokia Snake game WORMHOLE, like all Snake-style games, has the usual formula. Eat stuff, get longer, and don't hit the walls or yourself. I found this game from a Steam Next Fest last year, where I was drawn in by the enigmatic trailer. I was really surprised by how intense and hypnotic the demo's gameplay was. ## Snake Arcade (Snarkade) But WORMHOLE is also a natural advancement of the Snake formula, bringing in arcadey additions. You get a choice of three classes of worm each with their own unique ability and wind your way around the galaxy through craptons of levels, full of planets to eat. You occasionally get a break to choose which set of levels to go to and get an upgrade on the way.  There are side objectives to eat, like the skulls that show up to steal your snacks, costing you points. UFOs fly by, worth big points if you catch them. Eat an entire trail of stars and you trigger a supernova, clearing the whole screen.  Obviously, there are wormholes as well! That's why this game is called WORMHOLE. You go in one and come out another. They make it easy to reach faraway parts of the level and can be handy escape routes if you trap yourself with your long body. It also mimics old-school arcade games in its presentation. The game uses monochrome pixel graphics with the usual set of filters to make the game feel like it's on a worn, ghosty CRT display, but you can turn those effects off if they bother you. The extremely restricted palette of WORMHOLE's graphics reminds me of Downwell, which does the same thing. And likewise, you get to unlock alternate palettes as a minor reward for playing the game. I've been deliberately switching palettes to show them off in this article. You can also choose from a range of corny background art that's like what you might see on the panels of an arcade cabinet, including some that write game instructions into the art. ## Snake turned up to 11 A game of WORMHOLE starts off looking and feeling pretty mild, but that contrasts with the much more intense late game. This game hypnotizes like the Polybius arcade machine from urban legends. It's full of very juicy effects to dazzle you, with plenty of particles, screen shake, and hitpause. It's especially apparent in the bonus levels, which are packed with UFOs to eat.  Early on, the music sounds chipper and friendly, but gets more and more panicked and aggressive near the end. The game gets faster and faster. Your worm gets longer and longer. The levels get increasingly intricate or cramped. You'll need to react quickly to navigate the levels. Thankfully, the game helps you a bit here: you get a brief warning period if you're about to die, with the game slowing down and the screen dimming. And if you don't save yourself in time…  With a longer worm and smaller levels, you'll start moving in dense squiggle patterns to fit, but that comes with its own risks. If you're not careful, you'll make a closed loop and trap yourself.  ## This wormhole was made for me I've been playing this game a lot in the past few weeks. A full run doesn't take too long but it's definitely satisfying to get into a flow state and mentally sink into the wormhole. Early on, I was really struggling to control the worm properly, especially as the game speeds up. But once I synchronized with the vibe of the game, I started to figure it out. Knowing which wormholes are connected. Always keeping track of where the head is to steer accurately. Always keeping in mind the tail length so I don't trap myself. Developing a strategy for which upgrades to take. Of the three classes of worm in the game, I found a fave in Yeehaw, a cowboy hat-wearing worm that shoots bullets. Lately, though, I've been focusing on playing Dash because of its strong high score potential. I've found that the Dash worm's high-speed charge can finish levels very quickly, which leads to big score bonuses. ## WORMHOLE is a hidden gem WORMHOLE is a proper hidden gem. The game is small in scope but very polished for its purpose. Currently, it has only 35 reviews on Steam. If you merely finish the game, you'll be guaranteed a top 10 spot on the leaderboard, since only the top 9 have even gotten to the kill screen! You want to make it to the kill screen?  # EAT EM ALL.

The ruthlessly random puzzle platformer just had a major update to make it a "Mosa Lina 2". - The number of tools and levels has about doubled. - There are new features for custom levels. - There are many other improvements. It's on a small sale until June 11, then will increase in price on June 13.

https://p2ce.org/clustered

CATO is that old nerd joke about cats and toast turned into a puzzle platformer. Cats always land on their feet, but buttered toast always lands butter-side down, so if you strap them together…  I found CATO through a Steam Next Fest in 2024. The first few levels in that demo were promising enough to get me to wishlist the game. CATO is in a corner of the puzzle game genre I like to call "single-player co-op" since you control two characters at the same time. The cat can run and climb but can't jump, while the toast can jump sideways and up walls but is helpless on ice. When the two are assembled together, their abilities are combined and they also gain infinite jumps. Almost all puzzles in the game involve splitting up and reassembling at the right times. There's also a basic plot about running out of milk and going out to get more. For a puzzle game, that's enough of an excuse to get the game started. Story is obviously not the reason a puzzle game fan would play this.  ## Smart puzzle design I consider the puzzle design in CATO to be exceptionally smart, yet understandable. The levels are laid out so it's easy to tell what they want you to achieve, with each major step of the puzzle placed in a different part of the screen, so you only need to worry about how to solve it and not what your objective even is. While these are often multiple simple steps, the challenge is completing them all at the same time. The most interesting levels remind me of community-made advanced levels for Portal 2, where it's often easy to just reach the exit but tricky to get there with the door held open. A small number of puzzles instead focus on execution challenges, like sensitive timing, but these are thankfully rare. The game gently teaches its mechanics with just level design and no text. That's the ideal execution of a tutorial, on the level of the greats. It follows the classic pattern: you first get a very easy puzzle using the mechanic, then the puzzle repeats, each time with an extra twist added that makes it harder, guiding you to discover the mechanic's nuances. The game makes good use of its mechanics, exploring each deeply, and in later levels, starts combining them and challenging you to understand how they interact. There are mechanics like: * Walls that become solid if the cat is carrying the toast! * Cheese that is bouncy for the cat but sticky for the toast! * High-speed pipe transport! * Multiple toasts!  Overall, CATO isn't too hard of a puzzle game, but there definitely were a few levels that had me sitting still, thinking for a while. There's also a hint system available for most levels, which marks the important places in a level. ## Action breaks The final level of each of the five worlds is an action-focused level instead of a puzzle. Some are runner-style platformers, like Canabalt, which have you dodging obstacles while sliding to the exit. Others are boss fights that feature the main mechanic of that world as the key to beating the boss. None are really that difficult, but they're an adequate change of pace after playing a long chain of puzzle levels. Although five worlds sounds somewhat few, each actually has a lot of levels — about 30 or so in each.  ## Looks The art style of the game is pretty interesting. It imitates chunky pixel art with 3D graphics, while maintaining the flat, two-tone shading to sell the pixel art look. But with its 3D art, it gets to have very smooth animations and detailed environments. Without the obviously artificial pixelation effect, this would have been fine, but unremarkable 3D art. Without the 3D, there may not have been the smoothness in the animation or the flexibility to zoom in and out to appropriately fit levels on screen. Also, there are skins! Don't worry, they don't require any money or grinding. You unlock them as rewards for finding in-game secrets. There are separate skins for the cat and the toast, but I find the default toast to be too much fun to switch off of. Despite that, getting these secrets is relevant for achieving… ## One hundred percent! I liked CATO so much I decided to 100% it. I consider this a great honour for a game, since I so rarely bother with full completion. (The previous time I did so was with Grapple Dog in 2023.) That involved finding all the secrets throughout the game. On the level select map, some level icons have a mark indicating there's a secret there. Some secrets just involve going into a hidden passageway, like in Doom or Quake, but accessing others requires using a level's puzzle elements in a counterintuitive way to get the cat and toast into an obscure corner of the level. Some secrets just contain unlockable skins or easter eggs, but some actually lead to additional, secret levels. More interestingly, they feature a special mechanic that only appears in these secret levels! If you never go for secrets, you would never even know about this mechanic. (Of course, I won't be giving away what this mechanic is.) Most of these secret levels have a similar difficulty as the main levels, but the ones near the end of the game get particularly hard, involving clever usage of the secret mechanic in combination with the other mechanics. 

[Jazztronauts doesn't have a page on the Steam Store. Instead, it lives on the Steam Workshop!](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1452613192) Quick facts: * It's a full game mode for Garry's Mod * Genre: Uh, first-person collectathon? * Number of players: Singleplayer and online co-op ### Getting Jazzed Up *Jazztronauts* is a deeply meta kind of game that takes full advantage of its Garry's Mod base: it uses the Gmod workshop as its playground and the story takes place within it as a "Source engine multiverse" of sorts. I find it's a great experience in online co-op with friends. The story starts off with you playing normal Gmod. However, while playing some unremarkable Half-Life 2-styled map, a band of interdimensional cats show up, exploring the worlds of the Source engine. They recruit you to help with the mission: you're going to help them gather junk from maps from all over the Gmod workshop. You will actually go out to real maps to steal props and level geometry! Wait, otherworldly visitors that show up to offer you a job for a mysterious agenda? Am I back in Black Mesa? ### Joining the Band Once you join the cats, they take you to the Bar Samsara, their hideout between maps. You chat with them to get to know them better and receive jobs from them to fetch certain quantities of certain objects.   You go over to the giant TV and channel surf on the *real* Gmod workshop for a *real* map that you want to visit. These are maps people made for other game modes, like Sandbox, Prop Hunt, or Zombie Survival. In one rare case, I stumbled upon a map that was specifically designed for Jazztronauts, called jazz_artemis, uploaded a few days prior. [jazz_artemis on the workshop](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3244640713)  Once you find a map you want to raid, you call over a trolley to take you there and the map starts downloading. Panels all over the bar also display stats about the map. Hopefully it has a lot of props to steal! You get in the trolley and honk the horn repeatedly to tell your friends to hurry up and get in.  Once you're in the map, you pull out your prop snatcher baton and start ripping stuff out of the map. You remember to be on the lookout for any quest items you need to grab. When playing with friends, credit for stolen props is shared, so there's no need to compete for props. When you snatch stuff, it'll automatically be lifted off the map, leaving behind a pink crystal pattern to indicate what used to be there.  After a while of stealing potted plants and office windows, you're satisfied with what you've gotten and the map is looking pretty pink. You pull out your keyfob and press the button to summon a trolley to take you back to the bar. This exit effect is absolutely amazing, with the trolley smashing through map geometry to get to you. It's an impressively robust and seamless transition!  Now back at the bar, you head to the prop claim area to get paid. You pull the lever to unload your haul of stolen props for the cats. When playing with friends, all money earned to date is copied to each player, so late joiners automatically get caught up with money. You can then go see the Bartender to buy upgrades for your tools.  The tasks the cats assign you start off simple, like "find 15 barrels", but the needed objects become more and more obscure: washing machines, live headcrabs, suspicious chemicals. Later quests get strange:  ### Grooving in Maps The variety of quest items means you're going to have to explore far corners of the Gmod workshop for many kinds of maps to find your loot. Here are some examples of maps I found. rp_newexton is a roleplay map where you pretend to live in a fictional Australian city. There are apartments, a shopping mall, a giant banana beside the highway, and even a working train that takes you to out of New Exton to the suburbs!  This map, whose name I don't remember, has a turret that rapid fires rockets.  vp_voidmall is a creepy, sprawling abandoned mall with phenomenal lighting. There's also a playable story in this map if you were to play it properly. It was too powerful for Jazztronauts and crashed the game! However, it was too intriguing to pass on, so my friends and I explored the map in vanilla Gmod instead. This is no doubt the highest-quality map I've ever played from the Gmod workshop.  ### Coda Jazztronauts feels like a wild take on a story mode for Garry's Mod itself, given its persistent story and its awareness of Garry's Mod and its player culture. It has a special, meta perspective on the game it's built on, reaching through the fourth wall but never getting smarmy or self-referential about it. This game certainly could only exist as a mod on top of the mountains of content made for Garry's Mod. Jazztronauts is an earnest love letter to the Source engine and celebrates all of the things fans have made for it over the years. In fact, this is at the core of their objectives: they want you to collect stuff so they can build an interactive Source engine museum! Learn about brushes, the intricacies of crouch-jumping, and surfing! Now this is edutainment.  Is the gameplay of Jazztronauts thin? Yes. One of the cats even says to your face that this is "fetch quest hell". You run a long chain of fetch quests for objects that aren't even guaranteed to appear in the maps you visit. How many maps do you think contain Dr. Kleiner? Nonetheless, my friends and I enjoy playing; we care more about the journey than the destination. We get to share our reactions to all the interesting things we find, and some maps have stuck with us. Months on, we still talk about the memorable ones: maps with awesome atmosphere, humour, wacky ideas from novice mappers, and inventive interactive elements. Jazztronauts has taken us on trips to see more of the Garry's Mod workshop than we'd normally bother to. (If you really want, you can open the console and directly load a map that you know has quest items.) Jazztronauts is like some fever dream interpretation of what surfing the web looks like inside cyberspace. It's like a StumbleUpon for Garry's Mod. ### Want to play Jazztronauts? You'll need: * [Garry's Mod](https://store.steampowered.com/app/4000/Garrys_Mod/) * [Jazztronauts from the Garry's Mod workshop](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1452613192) To avoid map errors, make sure you have Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2 installed. To avoid *more* map errors, you'll probably have to install more Valve games, like Left 4 Dead 2 and Team Fortress 2. If you're playing with friends, make sure to always have the same person host the game because the save file is kept on their computer. 😺

> Coming to PC and Consoles on May 28, 2025