4 Games to Play Over Break
December 7, 2016
An hour-long experience of a story about cherished family members in a humble narrative, “Lieve Oma” is a masterpiece of a thank you to grandmothers. The player takes the form of a spectator in the nostalgic tale that flips from the past to present.
For a portion, you see the time spent between a kid and her grandmother, taking a walk in the woods on a mushroom hunt for their dinner. Throughout walking along the different paths, you hear crunching leaves, birds singing and squawking and the faint sound of rain dripping onto the path, all accompanied by a soft piano melody. The nature in “Lieve Oma” is strikingly beautiful – blue, orange, and pink mix together in a warm embrace of autumn, while strikingly clear hues of light blue, teal and white blizzard the scene in the future winter scenes.
It feels wrong to call “Lieve Oma” a game. It’s more of a story told over a warm bowl of soup, something that you can feel in your heart for a long time after.
The night is coming for you in this pixelated horror adventure. Traversing through crypts and graveyards, something is following you around. Notes are scattered, and to figure out what’s happening, you need to find all of them to survive.
The jump scares are a bit silly and predictable but scary all the same. The anticipation that something is going to happen haunts you in any horror game, but the dark and green colors in TNTS seem to bring it out tenfold. The gritty graphics gives a retro, yet uneasy feeling as your hand leads you towards unknown horrors. The best part? Your middle finger is the most powerful weapon in the game.
As excited I am for “Night In The Woods” coming out early 2017, for the moment, “Lost Constellation” is a side-tale supplementary, a ghost story of the NITW universe. You play as Adina, an astronomer on a journey to get through the forest, on a night where a harsh blizzard causes the trees to shiver. She must make it through the woods to get to her destination: the frozen lake. But before she gets there, she must face forest gods, séances with snowmen, and the possibilities of the entire universe. It’s a game that’s more replayable than you might think on the first playthrough, as I find myself gravitated towards another tug at the connection this game gives out every time I play.
Have you ever felt the intense desire to go speed dating? To meet some new people, to get to really understand others within the span of a few short minutes? Not really? Well, what if instead of people, you sat down with pugs? “Hot Date” sits you down in a jazzy atmosphere, sitting across the candle-lit table from a sophisticated pug, and gives you a limited amount of time to get to know each other. Bluntly, this is a pug dating simulator that goes about as well as you’d expect. It’s hilarious, strangely realistic, and just plain fun. If you need a break and a nice laugh, take an hour and see where the dog jokes can take you.
