I've been adventure gaming
I'm on vacation right now, visiting Atlanta for a week, and with a lot of time on my hands, I've been playing a lot of games on itch. Specifically, point and click adventure games! I realized about a month too late that I had completely missed the Adventure Jam 2023 about a month after it ended... (Sorry Cassie!) So I played a bunch of those games and games of that style instead.
I love point and click adventure games, but not the Lucas Arts ones. I'm sure they're fine, I just didn't grow up with them so I end up feeling a bit alienated from the point and click die-hards. What I grew up on was Humongous Entertainment games. They're simple, they're fast, they're funny, they're so wonderfully animated and sound designed - you feel like you're playing a cartoon.
Very few games hit that standard for me.
I went back to the Rust Lake games - they have a demo in Next Fest. And then I ventured down itch's tags. I played several of Powerhoof's games, as well as machineboy's Milkmaid of the Milky Way. (I would have played machineboy's most recent game, but unfortunately it is not available on Mac.)
Something to note about all of these games is that they are made in Unity.* It is no secret that I am not fond of Unity. It makes every single computer or console I own run hot when I play a game made in Unity. These are not resource-intensive games, they're often pixel art for goodness sakes, so why does it feel like I'm holding lava in my hand?
But more than that, I think there's something I don't like about the feel of Unity games. There's something sluggish and floaty about how I move, regardless of the developer. Nearly any game made in Unity feels like it was made in Unity, and I don't mean that as a compliment.
Now, to address my * from above. As far as I can tell, Rusty Lake games are now made in Unity. They were originally Flash Games. I adore Flash games, at least partially from the rush of nostalgia I get from them. But on top of that, I think there's a very distinct feel that Flash games have that Unity does not. I wish I could pinpoint it. There's something snappy and crisp about the feel of Flash. The Ruffle Flash emulator has given me the power to play some of my favorite old games.
Back to Rusty Lake.
It feels as though the Rusty Lake games of the present are working hard to emulate the feel of their own Flash games of the past. I don't have evidence to support this, and I'm not sure where I would even find that information. (I don't even enjoy playing Rusty Lake games all that much!) However, their feel lights something inside me that few other contemporary games do. I hope they keep making their offputting and crisp games just as offputting and crisp as they have for years now. It's something I miss, and something I am grateful to see here and now.
A sidenote
I have been learning HTML and CSS this past month! I can reasonably build a legible site with relative ease now! I am working on learning the more advanced stuff, but I'm hoping to make this blog look more like my own very soon. (And hopefully fixing my pesky missing 'next post' button...)
Cheers!