Tasting the Feast: Excave

A donut fell on my mom and crushed her, so I decided to try a game! This time, I went for Excave, a recently distributed new action RPG on the Japanese e-shop by Mechanic Arms, the lovely people known for the incredibly unique DSiware RPG The Enigmatic Mini-Games, a scrumptious little treat that combined Wario Ware with a dungeon RPG.

The dungeon is getting unruly! The king is restless! Mercenaries seek fame! Off to the dungeons, my lads!

As I set foot in the dungeon, I notice two things: 1) I'm not in 3D, what's up with that? I haven't been a two-dimensional oaf since I used to look down on women, only be interested in sports and pick on gay people! 2) I must have eaten too much of Aunt Harriet's black sugar pumpkin pie because I move like molasses.

Suddenly, a voice echoes from the heavens: "Equip some armor, you blinkin' idiot!" Ah! I see, choosing to equip various things in 3 armor slots from the 16 item slots below that I prepared before I delved inside (did you catch all that?) lets me to choose whether I want to focus on high hit points, high attack or faster movement speed! Interesting! I can also equip one weapon and one item, magic spell or shield to use, though I have to be careful, because the shields and weapons were made amateur blacksmiths and they deteriorate. Furthermore, the bottom screen is used very well to throw away useless items in a trash bin, re-equip different things, and drag potions to your mouth to drink them.

"Do your inventory chores or no successful dungeon exploration for you!" "But ma!" "No buts! I bought you that touch screen to make it easier and more fun, I expect you to use it!"

Whoa nelly! That thunder magic spell was the business! I just let Zeus's lightning rip, and attracted all the slimes to the slaughter as they walked right into a stationary bolt of patented electrical nightmare! It was like cooking Lima beans and green jelly beans using with a mounted taser.

Hmmm, there are lots of keys. All sorts of different colors. This is one of those situations where you have to be careful how much you take, and what you keep, huh? Just then, the voice from the heavens echoes again: "Press and hold the X button in your heart to conjure a magic rune that will transport you back to town." Ah ha! So this is one of those thrift store dungeons where they expect you to go back to town to discard items regularly and manage your inventory that way. That's why my mom named me Excave! It's that whole balancing exploration with escape mechanic!

The voice thunders again, "And read my diary notes, you nincompoop!" Hmm, I do have a lot of pieces of parchment in my inventory. Oh look, they contain hints and directions from the Diary of the Dungeon God, how helpful, yet politely unobtrusive! No tutorials here!

Well, I've only delved into the dungeon for 15 minutes, but already I've traveled multiple floors, accessed a dangerous trap room where I was ambushed by slimes, discovered the satisfying clunk and clash of two distinct types of weapons with their own animations and the need to manage your inventory between two different characters who can equip different things.

I think this dungeon has potential! Let's keep going!

At the Dragon Palace: Ruta and Better Living Through Puzzles

Crazy Fat Ethel wouldn't return my Fig Newtons, so I decided to play a game instead! This time it was the tricky puzzle game, Ruta!

---

Operator: Thank you for calling Better Living Through Puzzles, how may I help you?

Girl: Yeah, hi, I just got here today and I'm trying to move into my apartment, but there's all these barrels and pillars and creepy rock face people in my way.

Operator: Okay, what you're going to want to do is press the arrow keys to move around, press Z to generate a flaming ball of fire from the palm of your hands, X to go back to the main menu and C to commit suicide.

Girl: What?!

Operator: Glad you're following me. Now then, do you see a shiny golden key?

Does this make me a keyblade master?

Girl: Uh, hold on, there it is. Yeah, I see it. Is that my apartment key?

Operator: No, that's just the key to the first level. What's your name?

Ruta: Ruta.

Operator: Your apartment is on level 51, you'll have to pass 50 levels to go there.

Ruta: How do I do that?

Operator: Get the key and stick it into the keyhole you see on the ground. You should then be sucked into an inter-dimensional vortex and transported to the next floor. You'll see we've also generated a nifty clear animation for you. Enjoy.

The first stage already contains a trick and by the third stage the game has completely warmed up into something dastardly, tricky and vermiciously knid.

Ruta: Wait, I have to do this 50 times.

Operator: Yes, but don't fall into the gaps, or you'll lose hearts and lives.

Ruta: What?!

Operator: Well, if you want you can always get them back to start all over again.

Ruta: I don't wanna die!

Operator: Nobody does honey.

Ruta: Well, if I can just get them all back by re-starting or continuing, what's the point of them?

Operator: Tradition, honey.

Ruta: ...fine. But can you help? The key seems to be behind a barrel and I can't pull it out.

Operator: Of course you can't, we don't believe in being pully with objects. It objectifies them. You can push them around all you like, but don't you dare pull them!

Don't push my barrels, or I'll make you sit in the car again!

Ruta: Why do I have to do this?

Operator: At Better Living Through Puzzles, we believe that life can be improved by enhancing the mundane tasks such as opening a door through the fun integration of multi-level puzzle dungeons. Better Living Through Puzzles, for a better, smarter tomorrow.

Ruta: So every time I want to enter my new home, I have to go through all 50 levels of this thing?

Operator: Yep, have a nice day and don't let the bats that appear later on kill you!

*click*

---

Operator: Thank you for calling Better--

Ruta: Why did you put bats in here?

Operator: We find they add a nice new twist to the rooms and keep them from becoming monotonous.

Ruta: Yeah, well when I get hit by them, they take my hearts and then I die in the middle of a puzzle!

Operator: At Better Living Through Puzzles, we believe in teaching residents to protect their hearts, lest they be hurt.

Ruta: How am I supposed to get rid of them?

Operator: You know that frustration that you can't just walk into your damn house? You can manifest that into a flaming ball of fire and shoot that at them.

Batman might not approve, but Ryu sure would!

Ruta: Do you sell laser bursts from the eyes for when I encounter creepy, leering old men on the subway?

Operator: 'Fraid not. Thanks for calling and for heaven's sakes, don't die.

---

Operator: Thank you for calling--

Ruta: I notice that as the puzzles start introducing new ideas and get more complex, there's a host of different ways to complete them. If I do it particularly well, can I get a bonus, like an extra life?

Operator: Thank you praising our in-depth personality monitoring system, where the puzzle solvers find solutions based on the way they think. You are free to work out a variety of different ways to complete each stage. We're especially proud that unlike other inter-dimensional apartment challenge complexes, our puzzles change based on how you think them through and what type of player you are. We reflect the diverse personalities of our customers--

This one requires a creative mind and excellent timing. Or does it?

Ruta: Are you reading from a script?

Operator: At Better Living Through Puzzles, we believe in increasing reading comprehension, by using only English in our puzzles, even though our manufacturer is Japanese. Anyone can play! Reading is good for you!

Ruta: Can you just tell me whether I can get a life or something for doing well?

Operator: Don't try to get a life, do well with the one you have. That's our motto at Better Living Through Puzzles.

Victory is celebrated with "You won the battle RPG music," while defeat is lamented with "Your party was defeated RPG music.

Ruta: Fine. Gotta go. If I don't complete these damn puzzles soon, the milk and yogurt I bought from the store is going to go bad.

---

Operator: Thank you for--

Ruta: Hello again. You know the music here is nice and catchy, but there's only two types, and it's so short and loops so much it kind of gets on my nerves.

Operator: I'm sorry, sir, I'm afraid that's all we've got.

Ruta: Well, put on the radio then. Some smooth jazz would be nice.

Operator: None of that, either.

Ruta: Not even a little saxophone playing by a balding, middle-aged man?

Operator: Not even a little. Goodbye and thank you for calling Better Living Through Puzzles.

---

Headaches, you will get! Lovely fun headaches!

Operator: Hi, Ruta.

Ruta: How'd you know it was me this time?

Operator: Lucky guess!

Ruta: Okay. Well, here's the thing. These puzzles are getting bloody hard! There's warp tiles and directional arrows and crumbling blocks and frozen blocks and switches that raise blocks and blocks that change the direction of the directional arrows, how am I supposed to keep track of all the possibilities?

Operator: Use your prefrontal cortex!

Ruta: My what?

By this point the game is every bit as tricky as Lolo or Solomon's Key.

Operator: Better Living Through Puzzles is designed to stop you from being a troglodyte and reduce procrastination by making you think several steps ahead. If you don't, you'll burn your bridges and die. We think this a healthy lesson to teach our children.

Ruta: Aren't I your resident?

Operator: Oh, child please. The sad fact is that more and more people are giving into the urges and demands of their limbic system, which is a buried in a primitive part of the brain and causes you to eat ice cream until you get dumped by your boyfriend instead of thinking toward your bright, sexy future in the Bahamas together! If only your prefrontal cortex had been stronger and you were able to think ahead several steps so you don't meet disaster and regret!

One of my favorite stages. Can you figure it out?

Ruta: Where are your getting this?

Operator: You know that guy who designed the robot masters?

Ruta: Dr. Wily?

Operator: Yeah, he told us it would strengthen the prefrontal cortex.

Ruta: ...

Operator: Hello? Hello?

---

Rating: Three rutabagas out of  an unmolested lamb.

Comes recommended. Does not include above story. In English too! Download it here, at Japanese software portal site, Vector. (For those who don't know Japanese, click here where it says Download Now in green.) Some other games by the same group can be found here.

If you need help navigating either of those Japanese sites, let me know in the comments! And don't forget to remind Crazy Fat Ethel to bring back my Fig Newtons!

Don't Open the Box: Mama Mia, My Dear Korea!

Viva Korea!

When I was still a young Sazanami of about nine, I cherished two weekly events more than anything else: my video game time and my time with my English tutor. He was a ruddy Scottish man who taught you through the things you liked best. The things I liked best were stories, especially fantasy stories. He had a whole head full of myths to impart on me and would relate them to me in energetic story-telling sessions. Then he would write them down in a to-be-understood-by-9-year-old-Japanese-boy-if-he-studied-hard versions every week and then ask me the next week to explain it to him in English, hopefully having understood it more.

My lovely black mage badass, Medea!

I loved all the stories, but especially the Greek ones! At around the same time I was obsessed with playing Super Mario USA (2 for the rest of the world) with my friends, I was learning all about Jason and the Argonauts. I especially liked Medea, because she reminded me of a Japanese RPG female sorceress character, with all the ways she would cleverly help Jason. If you know the story, you know that it's also like an RPG in that there are several different endings, particularly about Medea. No matter how it ends though, Medea either has something horrible done to her or is coerced by fate to do terrible things. I didn't like how Jason betrayed her. I would always think, "Poor Medea!"

As my brothers and friends played through Super Mario USA, we'd say "Mama mia!" when we died. One time, I said, "Mama mia, poor Medea!" when I died as the princess, because you know, the princess was helping out like Medea did. It caught on.

One of my friends was a master at Super Mario USA. Her family had moved from Korea to work in Japan. She was my first Korean friend. We always left the hardest parts to her. It was in one of those levels where you have to be very careful how you bomb the rock walls to move on and in a dubious case of carelessness, she accidentally died. Cue, "Mama mia, poor Medea!" I thought I would be clever and add "From Korea" to the rhyme.

From that point on, the rhyme got longer and longer as we added more silly things to it. Anything we could think of that rhymed with "mia" got in. The chain got very long, but it always started with, "Mama mia!" and ended with, "Poor Medea!" At one point we added "Pizzeria" and of course if you eat something, what's the funniest food-related thing in the world to a nine-year-old? If you guessed poop, congratulations, you either understand children, are one yourself or are a child at heart -- all good things if you ask me! So the pizzeria chain evolved into "Pizzeria, poopa-pee-a, diarrhea!"

Now keep in mind we were just playing around, so we didn't really pay any particular attention to the order we were rhyming in. Here's what the finished monster looked like:

Mama mia
Two and three-a 
It's a me-a
No, it's a she-a
Drives a Kia
From Korea
Pizzeria
Poopa pee-a
Diarrhea
Ants and bee-a
Gonna sting-ya
Poor Medea!

Harmless and fun, right? Well, not entirely. Unfortunately, our little rhyme was so catchy to us, we'd often sing it when not playing the game. My Korean friend sang it at home in front of her parents. I'm not sure how fluent they were in English, but all that stuck out to them was "Korea" and "poop."

We got in trouble. While my parents were understanding and tried to reason with her parents, I'm afraid I was never allowed to play with my Korean friend again. It was obvious to me and my brothers that we weren't trying to be mean to Koreans. My dad and mom simply warned me that no matter how innocent the intentions are, one should never put country names anywhere close to defecating terms. I did take the advice, of course and I've been lucky to make many other good Korean friends since then, but I can't help but think this when I look back on it:

Mama mia! Poor Medea!

Mr. Fix It: How Random Battles and Lives Systems are Like Balding Remedies

Dear Sazanami,

My friend just recommended what he called a great RPG to me. But I starting playing it and to my horror, it has random battles!

I spent good money on this game! Why would my friend do that to me?

-Quaff, a Hairy Middle-Aged Accountant from Wisconsin

My dear Quaff,

I have a friend who has been blessed with a natural affinity toward beauty. Without any effort, he has maintained a nicely muscular frame, avoided any nasty kind of facial blemish and been endowed with lovely, floppy hair whose default state is permanent sexy. He doesn't use skin products, work out or constantly fuss with his hair.

As if dragged by some beauty inertia, his careless handsomeness has led him to become as vain as the sorceress from the Gummi Bears, Lady Bane. About a year ago, nearing the last futile bleats of his roaring twenties, my friend found his hair was starting to thin. This caused a sense of crisis in him until the day he saw a tip on variety show that advised people to stand on their head a little each day. Doing so would increase circulation to the head, which is needed for healthy hair growth, so goes the traditional wisdom.

At this point, I imagine many who read this can be dragged into two categories. You could be the curious, open-minded type who is sometimes easily fooled, "Oh, does that help stave off balding?" Or you could be the type who scoffs at such things as if they were irrational nonsense, "Scientists have found no direct link between such silly remedies and hair growth."

However, like usual, I think the truth is in the middle somewhere. It would appear that the prevailing fact is that once hair follicles stop growing -- not simply falling out, as from brushing or cancer treatment -- that's it, there's no getting them back. Until evidence comes saying otherwise, that's what I think is the truth. On the other hand, as somebody who was pulled into endless bathroom sessions to confirm that yes, my friend's hair did seem to be thinning at an alarming rate, with no discernible sickness or malady causing it, and seeing how he looks now, I can confirm that his hair definitely made a recovery. Apparently, the trick has worked for others as well.

That may down to what they and my friend did though. He's never been the type who can stand on his head, or do cartwheels, but every morning, after introducing an exercise regimen of various push-ups, pull-ups and the like, he spent some time against the wall teaching himself to stand on his head. Now, he has become quite an acrobatic guy who can walk on his head and do some impressive body-bending tricks.

My hair will be victorious against the ravaging of time!

He also started to take in more minerals, cut down on snacks and eat more fruits and vegetables. He learned to become more flexible and changed his sedentary lifestyle to something a little more athletic and healthy.

I think what happened is a combination of good living habits made his remaining hair much thicker and staved off any additional hair loss. He perhaps realized that nobody stays beautiful forever without at least a little effort. Either way, the change has made him a healthier person. He still doesn't use balding creams or spend hours in the bathroom, but indulges in good habits to maintain the pride in his natural beauty.

This could be called a healthy kind of vanity: a kind that inspires movement in a better direction and does not make the person seem like a massive piece of dick lint. So elements that have passed out of favor in video games, like random battles and lives systems, are at their best when they are inspired by a healthy kind of vanity. I bet you thought I would compare them to balding because such old video game ideas were once considered normal and natural, and have now faded away, didn't you? Gotcha!

No, no. The truth is that some people go bald and others keep their hair. (Some games still use old ideas for their mechanics, others adapt the new ones.) There is a third category of person though. They try endless remedies, like tonics or implants and such, to regrow their hair. (Some game designers throw in old elements without thinking much, in a misguided attempt to recapture the old days.) In this third category, there is still another person like my friend who practices healthy vanity. (They continue to carry on the tradition of the old games by thinking about the reasons why they started to fade and adopting healthier practices to prevent them falling out of favor.)

There go the random battles of my youth.

There are many unhealthy practices that went on with lives systems and random battles that led to some gamers thinking these ideas are now obsolete.

Because it was easy to design, older RPGs would repeatedly vomit out easy battles and with little care, attention or thought, one could mop up the chunky brown monster goo by taping down their A button. There weren't many engaging ideas in the battles, but that's not because they were random. Another complaint was that, like a wannabe rapper interrupted by his mom yelling to come to dinner, it interrupts the flow of the game and happened too frequently, which isn't so much a complaint leveled at the mechanic as it is due to sloppy game design or an incompatible taste between the developer's intentions and the player's wants.

Likewise, now that we can save our games to hard media independent from the game itself, the consensus seems to be that nobody wants to replay the same portion of the game. If a game isn't much fun anymore under the duress of repeated play, how good could it have really been? Even if it's a game where the appeal comes in experiencing the interactions, like any good story, it should inspire another go eventually (any parent who gets a nighttime request for the same book for weeks on end can tell you this). Everyone has their personal level to which they like to repeat an experience. Which would be healthier: insist that the only modern ideal of game design should be to keep the player going forward as much as possible, at all times, or that there is a spectrum of different preferences that can be catered to by knowing your audience?

Random battles, as a design element, still have a lot of value.

They can be a boon to developers with scarce resources. Inventing a system for encounters where battle initiate through contact with a visible object involves animating, programming and designing a whole host of symbols or enemies to populate the world and then designing environments so that players can avoid them, but are fostered into enough battles to keep the difficulty curve in the desirable area. Doing this incorrectly makes the whole thing cascade into the same kind of frustrations that poorly implemented random battles used to cause; players can still get caught into a series of battles that cause tedium and frustration because of AI routines, enemy or area designs. Developers who want to focus on character growth, intricate tactics or other mechanics; they can skip implementing symbol encounter battles and focus on the mathematical equations and ratios that are much easier to tweak and change.

Random battles also allow for interesting and fantastic contradictions. You can have a knight crawling in a series of narrow pipes and fighting witches and ogres. Some may say that ruins immersion, but many will also say they don't care about that, and like the strange gap, and rightly so for both parties. Random battles also help less coordinated players who do not like to have to contend with any action elements. They're also great for preserving surprise and tension.

Similarly, leaving the concept of lives and continues to drown with the Titanic would seriously hurt the design scope of surviving games. Many have noted that modern Mario games are so easy that "it makes the concept of lives meaningless." I wouldn't go that far. For one thing, I still encounter younger children or less skilled players who play Mario levels and can't get through a level without running out of all their lives. "Exactly! That's why there shouldn't be any lives. Just replays!" Not so fast.

Many games adopt a difficulty structure where the challenges grow more complex as the game continues. If a player is having trouble completing a certain stage, one reason might be that they have not learned or perfected skills in earlier stages that would help them. Designing a lives system that punishes the player by requiring a play-through of earlier stages can be a great strength of the design. Players may be reminded of other ways to play, might strengthen skills that could help with further portions and encounter situations that may provide hints or new insights to their current problem. In real life, is it reasonable to say anyone should just their charge their horns into their problems without taking a breather, looking at it from a different angle, telling the intern to do it instead, or going back to an earlier step? I think most would agree, it's often not healthy to do it this way.

There are many benefits of a lives system such as bragging rights, infinite 1-up tricks, rewards for exploration or skill, pithy comments about getting a life and easy numerical comparisons of how much more skilled one player is to another. Anyone who has played modern Mario games know also that it can also be fun just to stop and find ways to generate lives.

There are all sorts of other mechanics that have come under fire by using hyperbolic statements that call them archaic, like turn-based battle systems, save points or indeed, even things like boss battles and boss rushes. These well-trodden, traditional game mechanics are much like works of art whose perceived quality fluctuates based on the cultural values of the people who view them (also because plebes point at them and say, "I don't understand it, therefore it has no value.")

Let's keep them around by involving a healthy amount of skepticism toward sketchy ways bad designers implement them, letting them wax and wane like the hairline of a recurring chemotherapy patient, and by indulging in healthy vanity to keep the tradition alive. 

Yours If You Want Me to Be,

Sazanami

Don't Open the Box: Lakitu is a Tongue Twister

Quiz! Who is that creepy guy in the clouds throwing his red spiny friends at you from his fortress of solitude? Yeah that guy, the one on the left. If you come from North America or an English-speaking country, you might know that his name is Lakitu.

A violent hikikomori

However if you come from my land and his country of origin (where apparently we speak the language of the moon), his name is Jugem, or more appropriately, Jugemu.

You might recognize the word Jugem from the item Jugem's Cloud, which in Super Mario Bros. 3 allowed you to skip levels! (Funny how today that doesn't seem to be as appealing a concept, isn't it? Nowadays hopping on his cloud will help you explore more of the level or open up new ones.)

Sure, in English, he lacks a tu, that makes perfect sense, considering the world of cloud ballerinas and their single tus. But Jugemu? That makes no sense at all!

Well, maybe, but I remember a childhood tongue twister that is known as Jugemu. It goes like this:

Jugemu jugemu
Gokou no surikire
Kaijari suigyou no
Suigyoumatsu unraimatsu fuuraimatsu
Kuu neru tokoro ni sumu tokoro
Yaburakouji no burakouji
Paipo paipo paipo no shuuringan
Shuuringan no guurindai
Guurindai no ponpokopii no ponpokonaa no
Choukyuumei no chousuke
   
I loved this tongue twister as a kid. I could always get to the middle part easily, my mouth rattling it off at 400 RPM, but the middle part (that starts with yaburakouji) always messed me up. It still does to this day. I can even do the last few lines perfectly. If it weren't that dastardly middle line and its pesky syllables.

The tongue twister was said to be created when a man asked a priest to name his child something that would ensure he had a long life. The priest came up with all sorts of long-lived metaphors, legends and expressions, which form each part of the verse. (The very name Jugemu is an amalgamation of Japanese characters meaning "no end to the life line.") Can you imagine someone being named that? "Jugemu jugemu, gokou no surikire ... blah blah blah ... shuuringan ... blah blah blah ... chousuke, can you pass me the salt?"

If you are fluent in Mushroom Kingdom common sense, like all right-thinking people are, you will remember that Lakitu/Jugemu tends to come back no matter how many times you kill him and will follow you to the ends of the earth (or at least the stage). Do you think that's why Nintendo named him Jugemu? Can you say the tongue twister as fast as you can?