[blog] Kerf's Kwest: The Merf Missions

I s'pose it's right abouts time that this ol' fogey dusted off his controller and set up one of these blogamajig things that've been all the rage 'round these parts. See, I done heard there's a band of misfits what rolled up in my town, go by the name "Games." And pardner, let me swear it on the good book: them rascals need a good beatin'.

With that out of my system... I kinda had an idea to use this blog to give me a push to play some games in my backlog I keep glossing over and interact with folks at the same time. So, in that spirit, I'm thinking of using this thread like a bounty board of sorts. Basically, any members of the community can suggest games for me to play and they'll get added to the board (though I'd appreciate if you went to my profile and selected something already in my backlog to save my wallet some pain). If multiple users suggest the same thing, that game's bounty will increase (theoretically motivating me to complete it sooner). You could also suggest game-specific challenges, like attempting a speedrun, a randomizer, or a challenge run (harder difficulties, pacifist/genocide runs, Nuzlockes, etc) to raise the bounty. For now, the bounties will just be arbitrary internet numbers (just like Gamerscore heyooo), but maybe I'll think of some way to "spend" them down the line. And hopefully, I'll actually keep up the motivation to post about my progress and/or stream gameplay. I don't have a great track record for that kind of thing, but fingers crossed. I might also ditch the gimmick if it's not worth it lol.

Without further ado... place yer bounties, ya lily-livered varmints!

Completed Bounties:
Hypnospace Outlaw *
Little Inferno *
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door **
Total Bounty Points = 4

Current Bounties:

Posted Bounties:
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel *
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow *
Cry of Fear *
Disco Elysium *
Dragon Quest VIII *
Dragon Quest XI **
Final Fantasy VIII *
Outer Wilds *
Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin *
Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments *
Tak: The Great Juju Challenge *

Howdy there, pardner. I reckon you've thunk up a dern tootin' of a fine idea with this here bounty scheme. My two cents is that Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin really needs playin' by more good folk here at HLTB Ranch, and ye already done bought it, so there ya go.

That's such a cool idea. Here is a game from your backlog that I've played it myself waaay back in the day and never heard it mentioned anywhere: Tak: The Great Juju Challenge

And by using the expression "bounty board" my brain automatically goes:


GREETINGS TRAVELLER! THERE ARE NEW MISSIONS AVAILABLE AT THE FYRESTONE BOUNTY BOARD!

Seems to me that there Dragon Quest VIII has bin runnin' free 'round these parts far too long.

(Fun idea! I hope it can work out!)

Seems to me that there Dragon Quest VIII has bin runnin' free 'round these parts far too long.

(Fun idea! I hope it can work out!)

I like how you gave him a 60+ hour game and I gave him a 30+ hour game. XD

I like how you gave him a 60+ hour game and I gave him a 30+ hour game. XD

I see an unplayed Dragon Quest VIII in the backlog, I leap. What can I say? :D

Looking through your backlog, two games in particular brought a smile to my face as I remembered playing them for myself:

Little Inferno
Hypnospace Outlaw

Thus, they are my nominations =) They are both relatively short games, and perhaps fairly straight forward, but I have fond memories of playing each one and I had a straight up good time with them. Both also have enough depth to actually make you think, while remaining pretty casual and entertaining. Great little games to play for some unadultered fun!

Hey KerfMerf! Fun idea!

Out of all the games in your backlog I'd play Disco Elysium but I suggest you save this for a GOTM (it came in just 1 vote short this month, it's gotta win one of these months).

My vote is for Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments. It's on my own backlog. Don't know if it's a good game but that's what I would pick for myself.

Thou hast many unplayed Final Fantasy games on thou backlog.

My suggestion: get thee into the world of Final Fantasy VIII.

(Fun idea! Sorry, can't do accents the Shakespearian one is the one I can at least attempt to pull off)

I know that some lengthy RPGs were already suggested, but Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Dragon Quest XI are both 10/10s for me. And in case you're looking for a short podcast game, I'd go withCastlevania: Aria of Sorrow.

If I may do so, after already suggesting one myself, I'll also throw my hat in the rink for the above suggested Paper Mario Thousand Year Door and DQ XI

Howdy partner, I see you haven't played Borderlands the Pre-Sequel. I'm going to put a bounty on that since I really enjoy that game. I would also like to put a bounty on Cry of Fear since it is a fantastic game that I haven't been able to conquer. I'll leave you to it, partner, go git them bounties.

Well, give my prized heifer a tug on the udder and call me a barnstormer, I didn't realize just how dire the sitch-ee-ation had got. Only opened this here enterprise last night and already I got me 13 bounties pinned up to m' corkboard. Good thing I got my dual-wield six-shooters, Law and Order, on standby. I ain't gonna mince words, and I ain't gonna waste time.

Can't walk a furlong on the interwebs without hearing 'bout that famed outlaw, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. Maybe I got me a deathwish goin' straight for the big cheese, but how else can an honest defender of the welfare make a name for hisself? Wish me luck, fellers. I'll send word of my progress from the road.

Oh, and since this might be a long voyage, I'll probably keep an eye out for some of those other misfits along the way. Hypnospace Outlaw's had it too good for too long--outlaw's right thar in the name! But here's hopin' I'll knock 'em all down afore too long.

Damn, you got The Outer Wilds?? I want a bounty on that. It's an amazing game, kill it

Well, folks, I've had a few sparring sessions with Hypnospace Outlaw. I'm still only scratching the surface, but it's truly a bizarre, charming world. Sometimes it doesn't even feel like I'm playing a video game. It's more like a throwback to the days of the early internet, staying up super late, surfing down the rabbit hole of niche message boards and esoterica.

For anyone who's not familiar, the game tasks you with enforcing community guidelines for HypnOS, a virtual reality users can explore during sleep. In genre terms, I'd say it has the most in common with simulation and point-and-click games. It reminds me of a more focused version of The Wikipedia Game, if anyone's familiar with that. As an enforcer, you have access to a series of "hubs" in HypnOS where users can have their pages featured. By exploring the sites pinned in these hubs, you can find users violating the terms of service and report them. However, there are a few snags that require you to use some deductive reasoning. For one thing, only certain homepages are pinned to the hubs, but the ToS violations may be buried deeper in websites or on hidden pages, so you have to find roundabout ways to find them, such as snooping on suspects' friends. There's also some ambiguity around what constitutes a rule violation--being too authoritarian can lead to a reprimand, so you need to consider how broadly you can interpret the laws.

I'm still only two cases in, and I'm sure the complexity and morality of the cases are going to get even more ambiguous going forward, but I do appreciate how your choices directly communicate some of the game's central themes. You're not an employee of HypnOS' parent company, you're just a volunteer who actually has very limited feature access. You are paid in "Hypno Coin," a currency that is mostly used to purchase cosmetics and has no actual monetary value as far as I can tell. You earn Hypno Coin for reporting violations and closing cases. The more violations you report, the more Hypno Coin you receive. Basically, you're expected to spy on your fellow users and rat them out. The only incentive for ignoring your moral compass is that you can earn the game's equivalent of Monopoly money. Already, I've slapped DMCAs on first-graders' crayon illustrations and flagged two teen boys (both of whom have made-up girlfriends) to be banned because of a relatively harmless feud between them.

It's a cool way to have players act out corporate feudalism, using the consumer base to police one another to obscure some of the sinister power structures. I really look forward to seeing if that theme continues to develop, but regardless I'm having a fun time discovering all the kooky digital worlds in HypnOS. It's uncanny how well the developers are able to emulate not just this specific era of net history but also the way humans behave in that space--that unique blend of anonymity and overexposure, wide-eyed wonder and cynicism.

Not seen hide nor hair of Paper Mario yet, but I got a feeling he'll slip up and leave a track for me to sniff out soon enough. Till then, I'll keep takin' potshots at Hypnospace Outlaw here and see if I can't land one between those beady eyes of hers.

A bit of a non-update here, but an update nonetheless.

Haven't made too much more progress in Hypnospace Outlaw--I got to the three-week time skip and a few more Zones became accessible, which meant loads more pages. It's a bit overwhelming at the moment, so I've been playing some stuff I started before I began the blog.

Most notably, I've been making good headway in Resident Evil: Village. I put off playing it for the longest time, but I'm not really sure why since I have enjoyed every Resident Evil game I've played, and this one is no exception. The visual design is just so astoundingly good, with memorable character designs and setpieces. Also, despite being more action-oriented than RE7 and taking place mostly in broad daylight, it still manages to hit you with some good scares from time to time. Especially the monster baby. What a masterstroke.

If I had one criticism to make, it's the pacing of the overarching narrative. After finishing the castle area, the game makes it pretty clear that it's going to be a series of seek-and-destroy missions through the colorful cast of boss characters. It gives you a tidy way to track your progress, but it definitely feels like a very "video gamey" structure. There isn't really a continual rising action, but a sequence of mini-plots. I guess I'm saying it feels somewhat disjointed, and the fact that each of the game's main areas almost plays like an entirely different game kinda reinforces that. But that's still just a nitpick.

Anyway, I should hopefully have that wrapped up soon, and maybe by then I'll be ready to jump back in to Hypnospace Outlaw so I can collect that bounty. But if not, I've still got Paper Mario TTYD just waiting on my shelf, giving me the stink eye. I don't know the last time my Playing tab was this bloated, not that I'm necessarily complaining.

(Kerf Merf struts back into town with the exaggerated swagger of a wild west sheriff. The netizens of HLTB are gathered in the town square, fidgeting with their shirt cuffs and chewing on their braids. Kerf Merf doesn't say a word, but keeps on walking forward with no intention of stopping. The crowd makes a tunnel for him to pass through. He continues on until he reaches the outer wall of his office. For a moment, it seems like he's just going to walk inside and shut the door, but he pauses, glances at the bounty board nailed to the wall, looks back at the crowd with a grin, and finally tears down the bounty for Hypnospace Outlaw. The crowd erupts into hoops and hollers. An impromptu hoedown begins. While they celebrate, Kerf Merf enters the office. He sits at his desk and scrawls in his journal.)

That there Hypnospace Outlaw was an ornery game, no ifs, ands, or buts. But it was somethin' special, too. She was a game that poked fun at the naive sense of manifest destiny we all had in the early days of the internet, but she never punched down at anybody. It's a parable about our conflicting needs to share everything and to see everything. It's about trust and privacy, vulnerability and immunity. Aw, gee... there I go gettin' philomosophical again. Still, this is software that blurs the line between "game" and "digital art exhibit." Sure, there's a narrative. You have quests, levels, and a point system. At the same time, the game is so hands-off in directing you that it's more like when you were a kid and went on field trips to art museums that gave you a scavenger hunt to fill out as you explored. Completing objectives is just something you happen to do along the way. That said, it does tell a competent and surprisingly heartbreaking story.

I definitely recommend this to anyone who doesn't mind games that require a LOT of reading and out-of-the-box thinking. There aren't many puzzles in the traditional sense, but it's similar to Her Story in that it takes a fair amount of pattern-recognition, experimentation, and inductive reasoning to trigger all the right flags. For example, characters may not refer to each other by name but by nicknames, which means you have to infer who they're actually talking about using context clues. You might download a new file type you're incapable of opening and have to do some research in order to figure out how to access it. Later on, you can also use a system similar to the Wayback Machine to see webpages archived on different dates--important clues may exist on one date but not another. It can get a little tricky, but it makes you feel like a genius when you work it all out.

(Kerf Merf shuts the journal and tucks it away with a warm smile. But his smile fades when he sees a folded scrap of paper on his desk: red, blue, brown, and white. He plucks it up and begins to unfold it, but suddenly it springs open and Paper Mario himself is standing on his desk. Kerf Merf reaches for his pistol, but he's too slow, and Paper Mario brings down his hammer on the sheriff's skull.)

"Wahoo! Come and a-get me, sucker!"

"Git back here, linguine breath!"

TO BE CONTINUED...

BOUNTY COMPLETE
Game: Hypnospace Outlaw
Completion time: 13h 17m
Platform: PC
Rating: 7/10
Bounty Points earned: 1

(I love this so much)
Hypnospace Outlaw does sound interesting. One to possibly keep in the back of my mind. I'm excited to see you tackle TTYD!

Yesterday, I traded blows with Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door for the first time. I got a feeling in my gut that says we’ll be hacking away at this scum-sucker for a while, but I knocked out a couple of his teeth (that is, the Prologue and Chapter 1).

What sticks out about TTYD compared to other Paper Mario games is the breadth of character work. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like the writing and the character development in both the newer and older PM games, but the narrative and art teams really set a high bar here. So many NPCs have unique designs and traits to set them apart, and even the ones with generic appearances have surprising depths you can learn about by using the Tattle ability. It gives the impression that the world is truly lived-in, which helps to pick up some of the slack in the level design.

The areas you visit aren’t bad, but what I’ve seen so far has been a bit of a let-down. Interacting with the environment in creative ways is one of my favorite features of PM games—I love hopping around in weird places looking for hidden blocks or smacking scenery with my hammer to reveal secrets. So far, many of the spaces feel shockingly empty. Outside of the character design, I’m kinda missing that spectacle. But who knows? Maybe it’s coming down the pipe (ba-dum-tiss).

I’m still in the easy-peasy baby part of the game, but even so I’m digging the combat. Turn-based RPGs rarely find ways to keep battles dynamic and fresh, but I appreciate all the chaotic elements—the lottery spins, the audience members throwing things at you, the set falling apart, etc. Most of the battles so far have been pretty simple, but there have been hints of puzzle/strategy here and there, like using the FX badge on Hooktail to make him nauseous. I hope there’s more stuff like that.

I definitely came away with a good first impression, and I’m excited to chip away at it more over the holiday weekend!

One of the kids in town spies a plume of smoke billowing over the tree line where the old abandoned cabin is. He sprints to the mayor, tripping over his own feet, and tells him what he saw. The mayor immediately forms a small posse to go investigate--could be bandits or worse. Treading up the old foraging trail, they finally come to the plot of land where the cabin is. Or, rather, where it used to be. Now it's just a smoking pile of ash. The mayor sighs. Must'a been a freak lightning strike that stoked it up. The posse sets about clearing the wreckage, when some horrific, soot-covered beast bursts out of a dusty pile. Those who don't flee for their lives aim their weapons at the creature, but just before they fire, the mayor spots the familiar glimmer of a sheriff badge on the thing's chest and commands his backup to halt.

"Kerf Merf," he says. "That you?"

The thing chuckles, producing clouds of smoke. "Ya got me, Mr. Mayor."

"But we thought you went off to fight Paper Mario!"

"Yeah, well... I got a story for you..."

So, I wanted to use my days off work to clear another short bounty this weekend. And wouldn't you know it, Little Inferno happened to be the shortest item on the menu.



Little Inferno is a... wait, what exactly is it? I played it for a good 3 and a half hours and I'm still not totally sure. I guess you could call it a point-and-click incinerator simulator with puzzle elements? Basically, you're given a giant fireplace and encouraged to buy a bunch of catalog items and then immediately burn them. The way you progress is by 1) buying all the items in each catalog and 2) burning specific combinations of items, according to certain hints (some are pretty obvious, others less so).

The game relies a lot on its unique sense of humor in order to work. If you're a big fan of dark humor and the thought of exploding a school bus to the sounds of screaming children tickles your funny bone, you might enjoy it. For me, it just didn't click. Half the time, you can see the joke coming a mile away. Like corn on the cob--yeah, of course it's going to turn into popcorn when you heat it up. Most other items lose their novelty after the first time you burn them, and the combinations don't really add new interactions or animations. You get a notification that you did it right, plus a few extra coins and stamps. In practice, it basically feels like it's one step up from your average idle game.

The art design is quite nice, as well as the particle effects on the flames and charred remains. There's also a pretty damning allegory about consumerism and climate change within the lore--nothing too daring by today's standards, but 10 years ago (when the game came out) denialism was still REALLY bad, so credit to them for trying to get through to people back then.

It's a fine little experience for killing a couple of hours. I'm pretty sure I got it as one of Epic's weekly free games, so I certainly don't feel ripped off in any way. At the time of this posting, it's $3.74 on the US Steam store, and I think that's a reasonable price for anybody to give it a try. It's usual asking price of $15 is probably too steep for the depth and volume of content, though.

BOUNTY COMPLETE
Game: Little Inferno
Completion time: 3h 06m
Platform: PC
Rating: 6/10
Bounty Points earned: 1

I’d say I’m roughly knee deep in Paper Mario TTYD now. I’ve cleared chapters 2 and 3, so it’s probably a good time for a progress update. The game continues to impress and confuse me in equal parts.

After the relatively generic “grassy plains” design of Chapter 1, the art style in Chapter 2 came out of left-field with its stark black and white (almost Tron-like) imagery. Once you get inside the main dungeon (a giant tree) it basically turns into Pikmin Lite as you lead battalions of little termite dudes into war against evil little termite dudes. It’s pretty barebones—it basically amounts to a couple of battles and weight puzzles—but it was an interesting break from the typical gameplay structure.

Only a few of the bugs in your army have speaking roles, but it was fun to forge a bond with them. There’s even the classic character who doesn’t trust you since you’re an outsider but gradually warms up to you. Cliched, yeah, but these games always love playing up tropes for comedic value—which actually brings me to Chapter 3!

Chapter 3 was a straight-up anime-style tournament arc, and I was living for it. Sure, every other game under the sun has some kind of battle arena, but TTYD stepped it up by giving your competitors their own personalities and backstories, plus a grand conspiracy that unfolds in between bouts. Even though it’s still fairly predictable, there are plenty of twists and turns along the way: attempted poisoning, match rigging, espionage, and Mario even sort of becomes a father to a baby Yoshi (I named him Jürgen).

The dense, intricate plot definitely livened things up, but it didn’t entirely disguise the fact that the chapter is probably twice as long as either of the two that came before it, and you spend a lot of that time in back-to-back battles. And the back-to-back battles might not have been so draining except that you have to clear certain conditions to advance your ranking. Most of the conditions aren’t too bad, but they are randomized, and sometimes you can get a particularly bad combination of enemies and conditions (like “Don’t use special moves” when your opponent has high defense and your only attacks that can penetrate defense are special moves). It wasn’t a huge problem, and I understood that the conditions were meant to encourage planning ahead and being creative in battle, but it really killed the pacing a few times since I had to keep backtracking to the shop and redoing a handful of fights.

Anyway, I’ll keep chugging away at this, but I’m probably gonna start up Disco Elysium in the meantime, too. It’s the game of the month, so I might as well, right?

P.S. For those of you who have played the game before—can you get an alternate cutscene with the bug who eats the dried mushroom his sister gives him? Part of me wanted to see if I could slide into the jail cell and give her one of my fresh mushrooms, but I opened the lock too soon to test it out…

Now that the blog’s been up for a month and I’ve made relatively little progress I figured I’d take the chance to ask for some feedback about how to improve the blog.

I’m open to any suggestions whatsoever, but here are a few things that have crossed my mind:

1) I update pretty infrequently because I’m playing other games alongside the “bounties.” Would you like to hear about my progress in those other games as well or just stick to the posted bounties?

2) Sometimes I feel like I have more I can say in my updates, but I don’t want to write so much that it becomes a wall of text. Am I worrying over nothing? Should I just write everything I have to say? Would you prefer shorter, more frequent updates rather than big dumps?

3) I kinda want to include some screenshots and stuff to break up the text but if it’s not a PC game I think my only option is to take a picture of my TV with my phone. Are washed-out phone pictures too inelegant or does it not matter?

4) Are you guys still enjoying the story bits I’m writing to go along with updates? Should I tone them down, amp them up, or keep the balance about where it is now?

5) The “points” system is pretty pointless (for lack of a better word), which I’m fine with, but I’m still trying to think of ways to implement it to give the blog a sense of progress… any ideas?

I tend to get really stuck in my own head about projects like this, so it helps to hear how people think I’m doing and if there’s anything I can do better. Thanks for anyone who’s kept up with the blog so far!

Now that the blog’s been up for a month and I’ve made relatively little progress I figured I’d take the chance to ask for some feedback about how to improve the blog.

I’m open to any suggestions whatsoever, but here are a few things that have crossed my mind:

1) I update pretty infrequently because I’m playing other games alongside the “bounties.” Would you like to hear about my progress in those other games as well or just stick to the posted bounties?

2) Sometimes I feel like I have more I can say in my updates, but I don’t want to write so much that it becomes a wall of text. Am I worrying over nothing? Should I just write everything I have to say? Would you prefer shorter, more frequent updates rather than big dumps?

3) I kinda want to include some screenshots and stuff to break up the text but if it’s not a PC game I think my only option is to take a picture of my TV with my phone. Are washed-out phone pictures too inelegant or does it not matter?

4) Are you guys still enjoying the story bits I’m writing to go along with updates? Should I tone them down, amp them up, or keep the balance about where it is now?

5) The “points” system is pretty pointless (for lack of a better word), which I’m fine with, but I’m still trying to think of ways to implement it to give the blog a sense of progress… any ideas?

I tend to get really stuck in my own head about projects like this, so it helps to hear how people think I’m doing and if there’s anything I can do better. Thanks for anyone who’s kept up with the blog so far!

I think the idea of talking about games outside of bounties is great! You know, the law can catch criminals that no one knows!
For me personally, I don't really care about washed up photos, but I don't know if that's the case for everyone.
And the story bits are pretty fun and I like them how they are now.
Also, I would love to read even more so I'm ok with longer posts

1) I update pretty infrequently because I’m playing other games alongside the “bounties.” Would you like to hear about my progress in those other games as well or just stick to the posted bounties?

Totally cool with hearing about anything you've got on the go.

2) Sometimes I feel like I have more I can say in my updates, but I don’t want to write so much that it becomes a wall of text. Am I worrying over nothing? Should I just write everything I have to say? Would you prefer shorter, more frequent updates rather than big dumps?

This really comes down to what your time and energy preferences are but nothing wrong with walls of text here. So I wouldn't worry about that. If you've got stuff to say, say it!

3) I kinda want to include some screenshots and stuff to break up the text but if it’s not a PC game I think my only option is to take a picture of my TV with my phone. Are washed-out phone pictures too inelegant or does it not matter?

I've seen plenty of phone pictures that are just fine. I wouldn't complain seeing some.

4) Are you guys still enjoying the story bits I’m writing to go along with updates? Should I tone them down, amp them up, or keep the balance about where it is now?

Balance seems to good to me! As long as you want to keep going for it, please keep doing it. It's fun :D

1. Yeah, it would be fun to hear about all of the other smaller bounties that you are hunting while going for the big ones.

2. This is all really up to you. I don't mind the walls of text

3. They should be fine, just try to take the best ones possible.

4. I love the story bits, they really keep me coming back.

5. None specifically