🕵️ Emulation and Deception

James is back to talk about what's happening in games this month

🆕 On the Shelves

🐸 Will the man get frog?

Released a few weeks ago, this PICO-8 game(...?) is super cute and chill, falling into the realm of cosy games perhaps. Get a random mix of words and build a haiku.

It does a wonderful job of introducing the conventions of writing a haiku, including the use of kigo, or seasonal words, as well as the short stanzas.

I made a couple, exported as GIFs. Nothing ground-breaking, but I had fun!

🎱 POOOOL

A cute, chill, pool-ball version of the enormously popular "Suika Game" which blew up on the Switch store here in Japan.

POOOOL was featured on the new and trending page, which is great to see. Good to know that there is space for cool lil games like this.

🃏 Sunset Solitaire

A new one from Johan Peitz, creator of Orb of Aeternum, a game featured in April's Sandbox Victory.

A fun, cosy solitaire game with a bunch of different game modes and unlockable card backs.

I've not actually played it, so I can't give it a proper review, but for PICO-8 of the month, this one stands out to me.

📡 On the Radar

🍵 Wanderstop

From the creator of The Stanley Parable and The Beginner’s Guide comes Wanderstop, a narrative-centric cozy game about change and tea."

I'm surprised at the announcement of this game from the creator of the Stanley Parable and Beginner's Guide as they are both incredibly unique and powerful experiences. That is to say – although I haven't played Wanderstop, knowing that it's a cosy game comes as a bit of a surprise considering the pedigree of the creator's previous games. But at the same time, I should make it clear that I'm not disappointed with the announcement. I'm really interested to see what did in the cosy game space!

🔫 Deadlock from Valve

Not a huge amount is known about it yet.

But apparently a combination of "Dota 2, Team Fortress 2, Overwatch, Valorant, Smite, Orcs Must Die" which is a hell of a lot of content/genres to squeeze into a single game.

As someone that has never played Team Fortress, Unreal Tournament or any of the major team shooters, this game is quite outside of my play style, but in the world of eSports which revolves around such games (as well as MOBAs of course) I can imagine this being big news for a lot of people.

It doesn't seem to be anywhere near completion, so news will probably continue to be leaked over the coming months.

🔥 Fumes

Seen on Twitter, this game looks like a wild mix of Mad Max and Destruction Derby.

🎮 In Rotation

📱 Delta emulator on iOS

Last month I enjoyed Animal Well, and cleared it quite quickly. I played with my son and we worked together to figure out where we should go and what we should do. I know there is a bunch of extra stuff we can do (collect eggs, find the final items, etc.) but I'm not sure I want to spend my time perfecting the game (and using a bunch of guides to help me). As such, we're going to leave the game here and move on to something new for June.

Speaking to my son this morning, we have decided to give a Dragon Quest game a try. Neither of us have played a DQ, and so to fill that void of our gaming literacy, we have decided to pick up DQ5 as it comes highly recommended by DQ fans.

How are we going to play? Well, as the title of this section states: Delta on iOS, mirrored to the TV in our lounge.

Although not a new release this month, this is the first month I'm writing about it.

In May, I played a little-known Japanese-only horror game on the SNES called Otogiriso (which is a kind of visual novel) using Delta, and the experience was great.

Some of the charms of Delta:

Wonderfully fast emulation
Easy saving
Ability to play on my device ANYWHERE
Use of airpods (no cable!)
Sharp screen

So, this month, I'm going to dive into DQ5 (the DS version) using Delta. I'll report back at the end of the month regarding how it's going!

🍸 Speakeasy

For the second game for this month's "In Rotation," I'm going to bring the focus to my teaching! Yes, this is a game that I'm playing (or at least, moderating) in one of my English classes at Meiji University.

I (and my students) have really fallen in love with this game and have played it for three weeks in a row.

The game has replaced Two Rooms and a Boom as my default game for large groups of students. That is to say, I'm still very much attached to Two Rooms, as this game was at the core of my TBLT gaming methodology from the beginning. However, I'm finding it harder to justify using Two Rooms recently. It has some... flaws:

Two Rooms has strict, short time limits per round which–by and large–hinder, not promote oral output.
The variety of language used when playing Two Rooms is also quite limited, especially in an EFL environment. Students do not think much more than outside of asking simple questions of each other.
And, once things get fast-paced in the third round (a single-minute round where decisions have to be made quickly!) students resort to using Japanese.

What is Speakeasy about?

TLDR: an hour long roleplay with lots of small talk and strategy.
Speakeasy is a game of deception for lots of players (10-40).
Players are secretly divided into two teams (the Mob and the Feds) and given a role with a special ability and a password.
There are two passwords per team, and they are given out randomly to the team players (thus, if there are 10 players, 5 may have one password, and 5 the other).
Each team has a Rat working for the other side.
Power cards are available which let players enact a variety of actions in order to obtain information or points from the other team
After 60 minutes, the teams separate and work together to pool information about the other team.
Points are earned by correctly guessing roles and passwords of the other team, holding onto point cards, and correctly identifying the Rat.
The team with the most points wins.

Why do I (and the students like it?)

The pace is slow and steady. There is time to talk and think, unlike a lot of hidden role games.
Roleplaying is really good fun.
- Each student has to decide who they are, and why they are at the speakeasy, working in their passwords into conversation naturally throughout the roleplay.
- I get into it too. As the bartender, I come over and offer drinks, food, and make players laugh with my very un-teacher-like attitude.
- At first, students are really thrown aback when I do things like come over to their table with a projector manual and pretend it is a menu for them to order drinks from.
- I get a lot of "what the hell is he doing?" looks and comments.
- But that's the point. If I can get into a role, so can they!
Play progression goes from simple formalities as a full class, to group chats, to individuals pulling each other out of the classroom to have private chats in the "smoking area" outside the bar (I mean, classroom!).

How am I helping students to speak English as they play?

With a zine (p.5 and 7) of course. Zines are becoming my default orienting, support materials.
Students have space to write about their character, some small talk topics, and then fill in information for each team.
The small talk area of the zine has been used by students to think of topics which would naturally draw out passwords from their teammates. For example, one time a group had "toast" as their password, and looking at one student's zine after class, I noticed they had "what did you eat for breakfast" as a small topic question.
On the back of the zine is a section which I hoped they would be able to fill in whilst playing, showing how much English they are using.
My goal for this section was to have a separate point system for "English use," declaring the winning team of the game, and then the winning team of the "English" game.
However, I kept having to tell students to use it when I heard them using various parts of the language that I wanted to assess them on. In other words – they did NOT use most of the "Language Goals" part of the zine.
The only part they said worked well was the "Japanese" row. It prevented them from using Japanese because I said that if they heard anyone using Japanese, they could grab the player's zine and put a mark in that section!

Post game play activities

I have NOT asked students to record themselves and then transcribe their recordings for this game.
However, we have done some work regarding the "key phrases" for the game. Students reflect on their previous week's performance and create a list of phrases that they think are important for playing. These are mostly asking questions, showing how certain one is, relaying information, etc.
As a final step of the zine creation, I have also added in a checklist for students to note when they use certain target forms, too.

😈 Ico

In Ico, you control a young boy named... Ico, who was born with horns. (At the time, I thought it was a Viking helmet). He is imprisoned in a remote castle by his village as a sacrifice. (I'm not sure exactly why though). Ico manages to escape his cell and meets Yorda, a mysterious girl who is also trapped in the castle. Together, they must navigate through the castle's puzzles and avoid shadowy creatures that try to capture Yorda.

The main gameplay elements revolve around solving environmental puzzles, platforming, and protecting Yorda as they seek to escape the castle.

This is a point made tin the Jason Geller video, too. The fact that the castle is the main adversary in the game. The castle is one of the main characters.

Why play?

After watching this wonderful video by Jason Geller, I decided to pick up Ico again to relive the experience.

I've not played it since it came out originally in 2001. At that time I didn't own a PS2, and so played it in turns around a friend's house.

I remember vividly that we both felt that Ico was something different. It had to do with the role that you take on as the main character. How different it felt to have a dependent to look after throughout the whole game. How weird it was to not have such minimal dialogue. How interesting the AI felt in Yorda (the mute girl that we must protect). How bizarre the whole plot was.

Ico was a game that made us go "Wow, Japan does things differently" but in a good way, not in a "Wow, Japan is weird as hell" way that is so often the case with games like Mr. Mosquito, or Incredible Crisis. More like, wow, as in Katamari Damacy.

Definitely worth a play IMO.

And if you like it, check out the other games by this excellent studio:

🚚 DRIFTWAVE

We need to talk about Poki.com!

I found out about DRIFTWAVE from this tweet by Janie Rowan, the game's creator.

Poki is a site that hosts 100s of mini-games that are of surprisingly high quality (like DRIFTWAVE). And there are so many! It's like the all-you-can-eat buffet of online gaming. Want to solve puzzles? They've got you. Craving some action? Oh yeah, it's there. Feeling sporty? You bet!

It works on mobile, too; so, if you're like me and have little kids that play games on Poki, you can limit their time on the site.

All free-to-play with adverts sprinkled in here and there.

Some other notable games on there:

—James