T w e n t y S i d e d

So that was a videogame. That we played. For some hours.

Sad to see it end on a down note. It was a laugh at the start, but the end was a slog and it stopped being funny the moment it ran out of stupidThe awesome kind of stupid. ideas.

So that was Marlow Briggs. Our original plan was to play the game every once in a while, but I’m glad we just pushed through and finished the dang thing. I wouldn’t want to try and get through that final sequence once Josh had set the game aside for two months and forgotten how everything worked. (That’s what happens to me when I put a game aside for that long.) Playing in one-hour increments with a week gap between them seemed like a big enough handicap already.

Thanks for watching. We’ll be starting The Last of Us soon.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Josh brings up a good point about magic: All spells seem to take 60% of your mana, so you can’t use them more than once without a refill. I haven’t played the game so I don’t know what I’m missing, but from a design standpoint I have to wonder why we bother with mana at all. Like, if we can use one spell and then we need a power-up (which totally refills the bar) then why have a bar? The bar could be replaced with a simple “charge” concept: You either have one or you don’t.

Spoiler: No need to shout advice at him in the comments. We’re done with the game now, and I don’t imagine Josh is going to be in any particular hurry to play it again.

So now that we’re just about done with this circus sideshow, I guess I might as well do some actual game analysis:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Marlow Briggs EP14: Marlow Briggs and the Montage of Sadmaking”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Migraine today. It really hurts to watch this. It also hurts to not watch it. Whatever. I can’t fulfull my usualy commentary duties because i can barely look at the screen. Just watch the episode and pretend I said something witty or interesting about it . Or write your own. I trust you.

Good luck.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.