DEMON’S TILT/XENOTILT thoughts

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

As part of my Pinball Era I have been playing a lot of pinball video games as well, which includes both DEMON’S TILT and XENOTILT. Both are pinball games inspired by the Turbografx/PC-Engine games Alien Crush and Devil’s Crush and like everyone else that’s played them, I think these are some of the best modern pinball video games out there.

At a very broad high level, they have the same format of there being three segments of a pinball table that you hit the ball up. Both games have two gameplay modes, with a main arcade mode and a secondary mode that adds a bit more complexity and new areas you can knock the ball into for boss fights, but the game is more difficult as well. The biggest difference is obviously the theme, with DEMON’S TILT having a gothic horror theme and the XENOTILT being more sci-fi horror. XENOTILT also has more complexity to it, like machine guns you can activate if you have both flippers up and nudge the table down.

big castle looking pinball table with a nun robot thing in the center
DEMON’s TILT screenshot from Steam

Like I said earlier, both are great! I love the art and music, which feel like if the Turbografx had just kept going and getting minor updates but folks kept making weird 80’s games for it. The games also feel good to control, with table physics that feel real in context with that world. I know it can seem goofy to talk about the controls in a pinball game but more games than you’d expect goof this up and make flippers that feel off, or a nudge mechanic that just isn’t worth bothering with. The only bit that I don’t really care for is the machine gun mechanic in XENOTILT, which feels a bit clunky to activate, but one you have to get comfortable using once you play more in the advanced mode. They’re pretty fair games too. The game does expect you to use the nudge mechanic but I think it’s generous enough that players feel comfortable using it without really worrying about tilting the table. I think the games could have explained the tables rules a bit better but you figure most of it out from playing anyway.

big sci-fi looking pinball table with a robot face in the center
XENOTILT screenshot from Steam

If you haven’t played either game but you are interested in trying one, just pick whichever one has a more interesting theme to you. I think XENOTILT is a little bit better, with every element of the game being done by someone who has more experience making pinball video games, but both games are some of the best in the pinball video game genre anyway so it doesn’t really matter. I also personally like the sci-fi theme and soundtrack in XENOTILT a little more, so that one happens to be one I go to more often.

I have kinda weird feelings about pinball video games, where I either like them if they strive to be very realistic, like Pro Pinball Timeshock, or really out there like these games and Alien Crush. When the tables are in that middle ground where it’s half realistic table and then there’s stuff flying around and maybe you play an arcade mini game, I can’t stand it. Or it’s possible that most of the original tables for Pinball FX are just bad, which is why I have this opinion. I do remember liking 3D Ultra Pinball, but it’s been so long since I have played it. Playing both of these games has made me interested in revisiting that series and playing other pinball video games, which will probably lead to disappointment but I guess we’ll see! I just love pinball!

DEMON’S TILT is available on Steam, XBOX, Switch, and Playstation 4. XENOTILT is on Steam, Switch 1/2, XBOX, and Playstation.

Domino Club Delivers Boffo Games With Latest Blockbuster Jam

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photo of a bridge and text on it saying "You alright?" and "Drew asked, noticing I'd stopped walking next to him"
hotwife chronicle screenshot

The anonymous collective DOMINO CLUB has just published 10 browser games for home computing devices as part of their Drive-In Jam on Itch.io. The video games cover a variety of genres, from interactive fiction to character creation games. At the time of this writing I have only played a few of the games but I loved the writing in the interactive fiction games hey chat, are we cooked? and hotwife chronicle. Unfinished Minecraft Clone is one that I was super into the vibes of and found one of the endings, but I feel the need to poke at more because it says it has multiple endings and I’m unable to find the other one. I really enjoy platformers where I kinda have no clue what’s going on and I’m trying to find secrets in them. I guess it’s only kinda sorta a platformer but close enough. There was also a late arrival, Creature Feature or A change has occurred and now nothing will ever be the same again, a character creator for fans of films like The Fly and you can make little guys like this

person in a lab coat and skirt with a worm head and the head has a bow
Creature Feature screenshot

Excuse the weird headline, I just like the word “boffo.” I will probably spend the evening playing the rest of them and I hope you check them out too! If you haven’t played the games in previous jams, consider checking those out too!

a little guy frowning and is next to trees and a ladder
Screenshot of Unfinished Minecraft Clone

I Have Entered My Pinball Era

~ mpklamerus ~ 1 Comment

I haven’t really posted about it on here but I’ve been playing a lot of pinball lately. I’ve always liked it but for whatever reason, I really got the pinball bug about two months ago. I think it’s mostly because I made an account on Stern Pinball’s achievement tracking thing, that automatically tracks achievements and scores across their tables as long as you scan a QR code on your phone using the machine’s QR reader. I’m generally not an achievement fan but it makes sense for pinball to me, where the goal is to reach higher scores. I think tracking my scores, even in the non-Stern tables, has made me more excited about pinball. It also just feels great to play and once you get good enough, it generally feels fair and you can play for longer.

The arcade I’ve mostly been going to has been Pinball Pete’s in Ann Arbor since it’s by the Downtown branch of the library. They recently moved from another location, which I think I liked slightly more because of all the old arcade games they used to have, but now they have more pinball tables which I guess fits in more with the name anyway. Just yesterday, after the Comics and Small Press event they had at the library, I walked over and played Elvira’s House of Horrors, Pulp Fiction, the new Transformers table, Foo Fighters, and Uncanny X-Men. My favorite table at Pinball Pete’s at the moment has been Stern’s Godzilla table, which I think is a great tribute to the Showa era of Godzilla films.

I’ve also been playing DEMON’S TILT and XENOTILT (both great, I should do separate posts for those) and Pinball FX, where I really like the recreations of real tables and can’t stand the ones made for the game. Anyway, pinball is great. You should look at this map and see what tables are near you. There will probably be more posts about specific tables in upcoming weeks as I play more tables and revisit others.

Wonderful games collection Cartomancy Anthology is now free

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This will be a very short post but the games collection Cartomancy Anthology is now free on Steam and Itch.io. It’s a games anthology where you pick the game you want to play by drawing from a tarot deck. I originally got it from backing a Kickstarter a while ago but I’m really happy it’s free so more folks will play it. So many game developers I’m a fan of worked on it and I highly recommend checking it out!

My Favorite Halloween Game is Online Again!

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an old building and carved pumpkins and night with text on the building saying Happy Halloween
Screenshot taken from Itch.io page

The Annual Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival is a cute online game by the designer of another game I love, A Short Hike. You explore a small town, carve pumpkins, and do other Halloween stuff! It’s only an online game for the month of October but you can play offline all year. Every year they add more stuff and even from playing for just 15 minutes I already found something new. I suppose it’s possible that it’s a thing from last year that I just never saw but it just shows how much there is to do in the game. I love playing it with my kids, who are also big fans of this and A Short Hike, and something that’s been really nice as the game has been adding additional adventure gamey segments you can engage with (or not, it’s all optional!) is the ability to enable/disable the horror elements. If you want, you can even switch between night and day time if you have a preference.

I don’t think it quite counts as a MMO, it’s probably too small and there’s probably a different and more specific term for an online game with a smaller player count, but it’s a lot of fun seeing other ghosts floating around and interacting with the world. There’s no text chat either and I suppose it could be possible to grief by making obscene pumpkins but I haven’t seen it.

I don’t want to talk too much about what’s in the game since a huge chunk of the fun to me is the exploration and thinking “Wow, they even put _____ in here?” but it’s got a nice mix of exploration, more Video Game stuff, and other activities that are just more creative and chill. There is a very brief moment I’d like to give a shoutout to because it made my kids laugh so much last year. There’s an adventure game section where you do puzzles, and if you play on the cutest mode, there is a door you can click on that will slowly creak open, positioning itself to be a jump scare, but then a cute pumpkin pops up and does a baby laugh before the door slams shut. This extremely brief moment alone made my kids so happy every time we played and that’s the magic of video game baby!

It’s an impressive amount of work for a project that you can play for free, but you can pay $2 to unlock the ability to wear hats and I think it’s worth doing so this game can be supported.

The Annual Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival is available on Itch.io for Windows/Mac/Linux.

It’s World Postcard Day!

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Today, October 1, is World Postcard Day! I am going to copy Renkon’s post and say that if we interact with each other a bit on The Internet, most likely mutuals on some social media platform, and you would like a postcard, let me know! You should know where to contact me through email, social media, or Discord, and I will send you a postcard from my collection. I can’t guarantee it will be a great one, it might be some silly touristy thing, but you will receive one.

Stop Sending Me AI Slop

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I think it should be clear to actual readers of this site that I do not want any games sent to me that use generative AI, including code, but since it keeps happening: Please stop sending this crap to me. I think it’s morally wrong to use these products, it’s an obscene waste of energy, they’re built by stealing the work of others, and all of these companies have rancid ethics. I don’t care if you just used it for code. It fucking sucks and I hope your next game will be better.

Thank you.

Game Devs of Color Expo Starts This Week!

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GDoC is a yearly virtual conference I love to watch and I highly recommend buying a ticket to watch the talks happening and support the conference. I’ll let the website describe GDoC since it does a better job than I could

“Game Devs of Color (GDoC) is a non-profit organization dedicated to amplifying and empowering developers of color in the gaming industry. Since our founding, we’ve focused on elevating talented creators and their innovative work, providing platforms and opportunities that help developers of color bring their unique games to life and connect with the broader gaming community.”

Even if you aren’t a game developer, I think there’s a lot to enjoy with the various interviews and panels, and you’ll be supporting a really cool group!

lol, never mind on that Zium Railway recommendation a few days ago

~ mpklamerus ~ 2 Comments

Turns out the main programmer heavily used AI in the hub world area and didn’t tell artists and collaborators until it was too late. But they did make a pathetic post saying that Valve and Hideo Kojima should hire them and says positive things about company towns?? Explains the bugs in the main hub though. I’ll rewrite the original blog post to explain this further.

It’s incredibly frustrating that the artists involved have to put up with this. Those external exhibits are great! Anyone not letting collaborators know up front that they will be using AI on a project are just assholes.

Anyway, I read this post about creative coding and felt better about not using AI to code, even at my day job