Have you heard of Archipelago?

This was something completely new to me!

Basically, Archipelago connects games together and something you get on a game, might something else on another game!

For example, if you have SM64 and DK64 connected, collecting a power star in the latter might get you a golden banana or the other! And vice versa!

It's a pretty cool and interesting thing!

Me and some friends tried it out.

After a quick test run with a handful of people and games, we invited more people to the new one and made a huge archipelago with 10 people and over 20 games!

I chose 4 games for this one: A Hat In Time, Pizza Tower, The Binding of Isaac and Donkey Kong 64.

The first two are games I decided to revisit after a very long time not playing them.

The third, y'know what's up, I'm the Isaac guy.

The final one… Dk 64… was my first time playing. But let’s go in order.

A Hat In Time!

I forgot how charming and cute A Hat In Time was.

The last time I played this game was over 6 years ago, and revisiting it for this Archipelago made me remember how good of a game this is.

Moving around and collecting stuff was so much fun, despite being locked out of major progress because other people needed to find yarn for my hats.

Time rifting.

This also made me realize how important the hookshot badge is for this game, so many missions require you to have this badge… I had to learn quantum apples and some speedrun techs to get a few checks without the hook…

I still had fun through the entire thing, this game was great!

This game ended up being my second game beaten.

Pizza Tower!

I was surprised how much I still remembered Pizza Tower, despite not touching or seeing this game for many years.

This game was pretty funny in the Archipelago as well, because some of the checks were “Nothing”.

So there was always a chance for the hardest check ever in a game just to send “Nothing” to my Pizza tower game…

(That happened to me…)

This game ended up being my last game completed, because for some reason, I need A LOT of toppins to even try to fight the final boss.

The Binding Of Isaac!

TBOI was a pretty fun game to play in an Archipelago. The checks are obtained when you visit specific rooms in a floor/ or chapter of the game.

I had fun flexing my niche knowledge of this game and finding ways to sequence break and unlock things before I got the tools required to get there.

My goal to beat this game was to beat the 4 major bosses the game has (Delirium, The Beast, Mother and Mega Satan).

Regular Isaac Gaming!

I managed to beat Delirium, and Mega satan in one room by using the sacrifice room and getting to the dark room before I got the negative!

Meanwhile, I had to find other ways to unlock the door to The Beast by using niche item interactions, because the polaroid and negative were too much of a pain for us to unlock.

In the end, TBOI was my first finished game… to no one's surprise.

Donkey Kong 64…

And finally… Donkey Kong 64…

I played it with the mod that allows you to swap characters anywhere, for sanity purposes.

After a long time learning how to play the game and how the randomizer worked (I skipped all tutorials, so I had to look up stuff online LMAO), I got the general hang of things and man… What a rough game.

Such a clunky game to control and weird to play, so many odd decisions and all that.

And yet, I couldn’t stop playing it…

This wrong 64…

Collecting things and just playing with this swap anywhere mod, was so much fun!

I got so into the game that I even dreamed about this game!

(For those who were wondering, my dream was me playing a new world in the game that was a farm themed level that took place on a massive hole, so there was a lot of vertically in the level.)

I had to forfeit the game unfortunately, because one of the important unlocks for the game was locked on the final area of the game, which wasn’t accessible with said unlock.

But I can't deny that I had fun playing this broken game.

And that was my contribution to our Archipelago.

These are fun to do, it felt like a group project where everyone was working together to beat all the games available.

If you know how to setup, I recommend getting a group of friends and doing it!

(This was supposed to be on the last blog, but I forgot to finish in time.)

Sure Is The Super Mario Movie 2 (Galaxy Edition).

I watched this film recently and it sure is a Mario movie ay?

The basic premise is that the cast here go from place to place, trying to trackdown Bowser Jr. and save Princess Rosalina.

And once the movie gets the ball rolling, it will NEVER stop. The pacing is fast and nonstop, so be ready for that.

Just like the previous one, they took the approach showing a bunch of cool action sequences and fun things to look at instead of a story you can sink your teeth into, which is fine. It 'sa Mario movie.

I had fun watching it, it kept me entertained, but I did wish it had a bit more substance in the story. Especially when the game is based on Galaxy, one of the only mainline Mario games to have a slightly deeper narrative.

There were a couple scenes with Bowser and Rosalina & Peach that could’ve been cool to explore, but they ended up not going anymore. The Bowser stuff was funny at least.

sure is a mario movie 2.

Sadness aside, the place they galaxies the cast explored and the many references sprinkled throughout the movie were very fun. Heck, Fox McCloud is in this movie and he does cool stuff! The short animated sequence when he was introduced was fun.

The action sequences in general were cool too.

I think I’m just gonna keep walking in circles if I keep talking about this movie because there’s not much else to say other than: “I had fun watching, that’s about it.”

It’s a good movie to just be entertained by from start to finish, but if you want to delve into a deep, rich narrative… you are probably not finding that in a Mario movie LMAO! (Though I wish we could have both.)

Lolo star jump!

Pre-Movie Absurdity.

Oh yeah, here’s something absurd that happened.

At the time when the movie was about to start, they played a short video of a guy recapping the story of the first movie so that we could watch the second movie well informed… which was odd because, y’know, the previous Mario movie didn’t have much TO recap. The story was pretty straightforward, it wasn’t this grand narrative that needed lore dumps.

It was a strange decision to make this video and play it just before the movie was about to start… but that wasn’t just it…

For no reason at all, the guy in the video just decided to start explaining stuff from the FILM WE WERE ABOUT TO WATCH!

HE JUST DECIDED TO INSERT SMALL SPOILERS ABOUT (most) ALL THE CAMEOS IN THE MOVIE WE WERE ABOUT TO WATCH!?

I couldn’t believe it! How was that a good idea??

I’ll quote the reaction of the one guy in my theater that expressed his reaction outloud: "W-Why did you spoil the movie bro?"

From looking around, it seems like the version of the video I watched had cuts, because from other people’s comments, the video was longer and had even more spoilers about movie 2… I just don’t understand man…

Anyway, I guess that’s it for this blog. I have rambled enough about this movie.

Bery Bood!

Berries! You love them right? I know you do!

Here, Berry Bro (or Brodette), I got a very cool game I played recently that will satisfy your berry needs: Berry Bury Berry!

The premise is simple: you have a flower that generates berries, you pick up a berry and throw it in the mysterious deep hole. Hole gives you money for berries, you collect money and then comes nighttime where you need to go to bed to buy your upgrades to start the cycle again.

This is one of those incremental games where the number goes up, you feel dopamine and then repeat over and over again. Very fun one too!

For me, this one stands out because you have more control over the gameplay than most of these games where you just watch the number go up. You are a player in the world and YOU utilize the tools you buy to get more berries into the hole.

Me utilizing my tools as a first time weakling.

After getting some money you can vacuum which will pull berries towards you and store a limited amount of them. It’s a good upgrade concept, but since you are a player in the world utilizing this tool, you can take full advantage of this mechanic!

When the vacuum contacts a berry, the berry will slowly be dragged to you no matter what until it enters the vacuum itself or you stop holding the button. You see where this is going?

Let’s say you got a pile of berries, but you can only hold 8 berries in your vacuum, well, with this tech that is no problem! Start vacuuming the pile then run to the hole and watch as all the berries follow close behind you and all fall into the hole!

I really liked that the player’s creativity can affect the process of numbers going up!

You also got powers to increase berry production and send them to the hole all at once!

Rabbit Hole!

Oh yeah, about the hole, you can move your hole!

The game is full of props all over the place and if you get them to fall down the hole, you will be rewarded with stars which you can use to get better berries like strawberries and even bananas!

Once a prop falls down the hole, it is gone forever and you would be surprised how addictive it is to clean the entire area from all the silly props and gnomes…

Beast ravages.

I guess I should talk about a small elephant in this game, it has a narrative.

This is the part I didn’t care much about honestly, so I can’t really talk about it. But the play area has some puzzles for you to solve which gives you tapes that tell a spooky story about a woman and her extreme actions towards her TV show.

Thankfully, the game doesn’t stop to force you to listen to the story mid gameplay, you just do the puzzles and have fun with it.

Gnome party!

Berry Buy!

But anyway, it's not a long game. I had a lot of fun playing it and uncovering its secrets!

I completed it in about 8 hours and getting all the achivos was fun enough to try.

So, Berry Bro (or Brodette), if you are looking for your next fun berry hit, this is a game you should check it out!

Tower Defense At Its Prime!

I found this cool game while browsing the Tower Defense sale on Steam a couple of days ago.

I looked into it and a lot of the screenshots really reminded me of the Kingdom Rush style of gameplay, so there was no choice for me! I had to check it out!

Spoiler alert: I really liked the game!

In case you don’t know what I mean by KR style, the map you have to defend has a fixed route for the enemies and you have determined places where you can place your towers. But aside from this solid base for stages, this game does a lot more things differently! Even sometimes better than the series they take inspiration from!

The main mechanic of the game is that YOU, yes YOU the player, is a pawn in the battlefield. You can walk around the stage, interact with objects, hopelessly hold enemies and… dance!

The graphics & animations of this game are really cute and fun!

You can’t place towers with your mouse, you have to go to a designated spot on the map to buy/sell them, then bring said tower to their building spot to place them. You can grab already placed towers and move them around as well!

This made the TD formula much more frenetic, because now you have to move around the map moving and replacing towers on spots where you might need them more, while still looking at the entire map to strategize your next move.

Your player character doesn’t do just that, some stages have small gimmicks that require your input and they are always so cool to do while trying to defend against the endless hordes!

This mechanic is used in many fun ways!

You can even have a sword! (At the cost of some lifes!)

As for towers, they can be specialized into 3 different types based on their main archetype, which is very old school Kingdom Rush! But again, the game forms his own identity by giving each specialization 4 attributes that you can choose, unlocked by beating challenges. These give towers new abilities or even change how they work!

For example, the basic archer tower, you can use the one that makes them shoot 2 arrows instead of one, or every sixth they do a strong attack that stuns the enemy!

These attributes add so much to the strategy aspect and it’s fun to unlock them, since the challenges are focused on showcasing these new powers!

Fight Pani Fight

Even the hero system from KR is expanded here! Pani is the only hero in this game, but you get many forms of her that behave differently to each other.

Some forms are proper towers, others on field units and there’s even one that attacks within your tower's ranges!

Here's a Lolo I made in the image of Pani!

This game is great! I really enjoyed my playthrough, testing a bunch of strategies and getting all the achievements. And I love that it carved out its own identity while still paying tribute to the other juggernauts in the genre.

The only thing I think this game did wrong was not having an original OST, I think a lot of the songs are licensed songs cause I'm pretty sure I heard a few of them on youtube videos. But even that is not a big deal, because the songs are still good to listen to and fit the areas.

I absolutely recommend you check this one out, even for the people who want a chillier time! The game has good difficulty settings and even the most hardcore mode isn't impossible! I mean, I managed to beat the game on that mode, with a couple retries of course. If I can do it, then YOU can because I suck at bideo gmaes!

That's all I wanted to yap about!

The game is getting a new DLC sometime in the future, so expect a follow up on this blog when that releases!

(In case you are wondering about the newest DLC released for KR: Alliance, or the newest game announced, I'm just not in the mood to finish the new content right now and I'm still waiting for more info on Genesis.)