Eleven Forward

Planet of Lana is lovely. A relatively straightforward puzzle platformer, with a simple story told without actual words (in Simlish, if you will). Calling it Nausicaä-like is a stretch, but I will do so anyway.

While I admit that Signs of the Sojourner is not really my thing – I don’t like card games – I think the way it depicts conversations is very clever. You have to make a path out of cards, simple as that. Well, they are called cards, but they behave more like dominoes, where a one pip side of a piece can be connected to a one pip side of another piece, but not two pips, three pips, etc. I don’t want to spoil how that mechanic evolves, but if I mention that it’s a conversation, there are people who are not on your wavelength, you can get tired, etc., you can probably guess.

The story of The Invincible, as they never tire of reminding you, is based on a novel by Stanisław Lem, so it is pretty straightforward: it is the era of science fiction that was more about ideas than plot twists. As far as I can tell, the game takes some liberties – it invents another spaceship where the player character comes from – but the core is there.

I would not call Dolphin Spirit: Ocean Mission an educational game, it is a fantasy. Literally, because there are some magical elements, and figuratively, because you can oh so easily clean and fix the environment. I don’t want to criticize it too much, it’s still a pretty good game, but don’t expect a serious depiction of problems that the world is actually facing.

Suzume is pretty great. My only gripe is that it’s kinda a love story between a high school girl and a college student, which is yikes, but only kinda, as it doesn’t go anywhere near “there”, so it’s a little yikes. Other than that, it is funny and sad, beautiful and great sounding.

I can’t really recommend Star Trek: Picard. If you liked The Next Generation, yes, there is a lot there (and bits from other shows and movies). But it is not a good Star Trek. And if you didn’t like it, well, depending on why, you can enjoy some of it, but it’s still not a good show. In the end, I didn’t hate it or anything, but, yeah, I would have stopped very early if I hadn’t been like “Hey, it’s TNG!”