Inspector Waffles
I finished Inspector Waffles yesterday. It's a pixelated detective mystery with anthropomorphic cats and dogs. You play as inspector Waffles who is trying to solve the murder of a CEO for a box company, but like all good mysteries, the plot goes deeper. He is joined by his sidekick sniffer dog, Spotty as together they try to solve the case.
This was a charming, cute, detective game with a lot of cat puns. It reminded me somewhat of The Darkside Detective series, but with cats. There wasn't a whole lot of challenge to it. The puzzles were mainly dialog based with a few inventory puzzles thrown in mostly towards the end. It's more about selecting the right clues or dialog responses to get the answers you want from the characters as you question them. You're not penalized or anything for selecting the wrong clue, so you can literally just click on everything until you get the right answer, but it's usually pretty obvious if you've been paying attention. I admit I don't always pay attention. Maybe I do have a degree of ADHD. :P
The clues and questions are in this notepad system that is like a similar system to the one in the Blackwell series. New information gets added to it as you learn more. I do think the system could have been more streamlined than it was. Instead of having separate tabs for questions and clues, just put them all together. It didn't make sense to me at first because the clues and questions amounted to the same thing. Also you can't just show inventory items to characters. You have to open up the notes first, and then click on the question, and then select the inventory item to show the character. It could have been more simplified. It's a minor quibble though.
I did get stuck a few times despite this being an easier game. It mostly had to do with pixel hunting. There was no hotspot finder. One item in particular really tripped me up and I got frustrated. The game has an inbuilt hint system where Waffles can call his mom for hints. I thought the hints she gave were a little too overt, but the one hint I got at the end was poorly clued I felt. I was trying to find a key and the hint said it was in one location, so I scoured that area and couldn't find it. Turns out the key was in a different area of the screen than what was mentioned. So yeah, that was a pretty poor hint. Although I did like how the villain at the end mocks you for how many times you used the hint system. I felt called out. I confess it was six times for me.
As for the rest of the aspects, the story was pretty good. Nice buddy cop mystery. Decent twists. Good music and likeable characters. I heard there's going to be a prequel out, so I'll probably play it at some point. Pretty good game, but I feel the Adventure Gamers score is a little on the high side. Here's a screenshot. Waffles and Spotty.
Now I've been playing a game called The Shattering. It's a psychological first person narrative game. Unfortunately, it does give me motion sickness, so I'll likely only be able to play it in short bursts. I don't know if I'll be able to adjust the settings. Why do developers do this? :/ But sometimes whether a first person game makes me sick or not varies.
This was a charming, cute, detective game with a lot of cat puns. It reminded me somewhat of The Darkside Detective series, but with cats. There wasn't a whole lot of challenge to it. The puzzles were mainly dialog based with a few inventory puzzles thrown in mostly towards the end. It's more about selecting the right clues or dialog responses to get the answers you want from the characters as you question them. You're not penalized or anything for selecting the wrong clue, so you can literally just click on everything until you get the right answer, but it's usually pretty obvious if you've been paying attention. I admit I don't always pay attention. Maybe I do have a degree of ADHD. :P
The clues and questions are in this notepad system that is like a similar system to the one in the Blackwell series. New information gets added to it as you learn more. I do think the system could have been more streamlined than it was. Instead of having separate tabs for questions and clues, just put them all together. It didn't make sense to me at first because the clues and questions amounted to the same thing. Also you can't just show inventory items to characters. You have to open up the notes first, and then click on the question, and then select the inventory item to show the character. It could have been more simplified. It's a minor quibble though.
I did get stuck a few times despite this being an easier game. It mostly had to do with pixel hunting. There was no hotspot finder. One item in particular really tripped me up and I got frustrated. The game has an inbuilt hint system where Waffles can call his mom for hints. I thought the hints she gave were a little too overt, but the one hint I got at the end was poorly clued I felt. I was trying to find a key and the hint said it was in one location, so I scoured that area and couldn't find it. Turns out the key was in a different area of the screen than what was mentioned. So yeah, that was a pretty poor hint. Although I did like how the villain at the end mocks you for how many times you used the hint system. I felt called out. I confess it was six times for me.
As for the rest of the aspects, the story was pretty good. Nice buddy cop mystery. Decent twists. Good music and likeable characters. I heard there's going to be a prequel out, so I'll probably play it at some point. Pretty good game, but I feel the Adventure Gamers score is a little on the high side. Here's a screenshot. Waffles and Spotty.
Now I've been playing a game called The Shattering. It's a psychological first person narrative game. Unfortunately, it does give me motion sickness, so I'll likely only be able to play it in short bursts. I don't know if I'll be able to adjust the settings. Why do developers do this? :/ But sometimes whether a first person game makes me sick or not varies.