Tag: Software

My hero is a skeleton destroyer with very bad luck. His magic attack is demolishing enemies, especially when paired with the extra batarangs I recently picked up. I’ve managed to keep his health high and have picked up quite a few shards and extra upgrade cards while exploring the level. But my attempts to get a ton of treasure were stymied by an inability to pick the right card when playing four-card monte. The bad luck also led to some hit point loss that required a detour and some extra fighting. Now I’m close to taking down the level boss and already evaluating when upgrades I need to deal more damage faster. Hordes of Fate: A Hand of Fate Adventure is developed by Spitfire Interactive and published by Spicy Koala. I played a demo of the title on Steam. The video game combines card mechanics with core mechanics inspired by Vampire Survivors. The world is similar to that of classic Hand of Fate, a high-fantasy one where an arch narrator challenges players to ba...

My teenagers have either very short memories or bad cases of amnesia. They are willing to explore this haunted hotel even after dying gruesomely at the hands of weird carousel horses, angry mirrors, and grass-covered vampires. Right now, my trio of heroes is fighting against some trippy, shattered mirrors. I’m running a team focused on dodging, healing, and reflecting damage. The last one tends to be high risk but can quickly deal with capable enemies. Sako is contributing plenty of dodging, as well as hitting multiple enemies with her racket card. Quintin never deals too much damage, but his Flash Camera both stuns and curses enemies. Maria has an upgraded Compact Mirror, with a 50% chance to reflect damage. Getting the card in hand and playing it at the right moment is the tricky part. Fortunately, I don’t need it to deal with the mirrors.  Damage over time from curses and direct physical attacks, including a broken bottle, takes them out. Let’s hope that the min...

Let’s say you have a bunch of audio devices connected to your Mac. Maybe some wired headphones, some Bluetooth speakers or earbuds, and the Mac’s built-in speakers. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to send audio from certain apps to specific audio devices, and control their volume independently? Surprisingly, these are two features macOS still does not offer. FineTune is an open-source app that handles both of these use cases, adding much-needed functionality that’s already available on Windows. It allows you to route app audio to selected output devices, manage audio device priority, and control app volume independently, even if the app in question lacks a volume slider. It also comes with an equalizer, volume boosting, and some other cool features. Send app audio to specific output devices This is the feature I got the app for, and it’s so incredibly useful. Any app playing audio will show up in the FineTune window, and you can select which output...

Rebel Engine is bringing that old-school, 90’s era of shooters where graphics were simple, and the focus was always on how the gameplay felt. Games like Ultrakill managed to serve the genre well in recent years, and Rebel Engine wants to upgrade that experience with even more, intense levels and crazy enemies. And to some extent, it manages to succeed. In Rebel Engine, you play as Asimov, which is a robot enslaved by the Concrete Corporation. You are forced to fight in an underground arena for eternity. But at some point, you are sick of it, and you are trying to figure out how to step away from this vindictive cycle. That’s when you get infected with a virus called Salvador, which helps you go to the top of the arena, slowly, as you destroy everything in your way. The primary focus is to find Entropy and gain your revenge, even if it might end up costing you a whole lot more than expected. Although the story is not that complicated, I think it serves the game quit...

I’m clearly not using my heavy attack as much as I should, especially when facing enemies that have a lot of health. The idea is to dodge their area of effect strikes, move into a good position, and then hold down a key to deliver a lot of damage. But plenty of underlings, less powerful but more annoying, are running around and make that difficult. So I decide my version of Cello is a light and nimble fighter that cares most about dodging. Basically, I want to make sure no enemy can land a hit and only use quick strikes to whittle down their hit point reserves. The relatively small combat space doesn’t make it easy. Sometimes three areas of effect attacks arrive at the same time, making even the best rhythmic dodging ineffective. Once all the enemies are down, I lose close to a fifth of my own health. But Cello gets an upgrade that gives her 300 more hit points. I hope to get even more as I explore the forest, which should make it easier to deal with the coming bos...

The mummies have a bad habit of spitting poison all over the place. Spreading out my heroes is a way to avoid it, but cleric Ignatius still has to regularly use his two main healing abilities. It’s important to make sure our relatively fragile mage stays up, throwing chain lightning and fireballs around to thin the enemy ranks. It takes six turns to deal with the bandaged-up enemies, and everyone is alive. They get enough experience to level up, and I get to choose new abilities for all. Resting at a campfire offers another opportunity to improve battle skills. And then it’s time to face a mini-boss, who will probably drop a powerful artifact. The demonic Harlequin can summon allies every two turns, which is a problem. It crowds the tight combat arena and makes it harder to strike it. Alistair swings a heavy sword around to take the henchmen out, but he also suffers plenty of damage. Rogue Elara poisons the mini-boss when she can, using both a special ability and h...

When The King is Watching was first launched, it quickly became a cult hit between roguelike game enthusiasts who wanted to create their own kingdom and protect it from dangerous enemies. The new Crowns of History DLC plans to expand upon the existing content with 3 new, historical rulers. They all have their own abilities, and they help add some new mechanics into the mix. Few people expected The King is Watching to expand with more content, but I think that the Crowns of History DLC helps the game grow naturally. Granted, there is a little bit of a grind until you reach the new map, but once you do, you’ll definitely enjoy the theme and visual style, but also the new mechanics brought to the table. The new map was added with a free update alongside Crowns of History, and it has a dark, Lovecraftian vibe which I enjoyed very much. The Kraken-style boss you fight at the end is definitely going to require a lot of planning, but it’s fitting for this map, and it will...

Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly has always been known for being really scary, especially for the time it came out, which was 2003. Now, well over 20 years later, we get to relive this game in a fully remade fashion and enjoy or run away from those scary ghosts once again. The Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly Remake does a wonderful job at bringing the old Fatal Frame II experience to life, with stunning visuals and some other interesting changes. In this game, you follow Mayu and Mio, which are two twins exploring the Minakami Village. The village is full of angry ghosts, and it also has a rather strange history, which you will uncover as you play. Another interesting thing is that you are introduced very early on to the idea that you need to perform a ritual, which does mess up with your brain. Seeing the two scared girls explore a haunted town and embracing the challenge brought by jumpscares makes the game very scary at times. They are dealing with a very opp...

There are moments when a simple negative response seems a little too respectful, given what my conversation partner has just said. I wanted an option to throw a punch or maybe deliver a carefully selected and long sequence of curse words. But that would involve substituting my own standards and thinking for those of the character I’m controlling. So I decide to play it cool and aloof, maybe to show that my character can deal with anything. Then I launch a previous story sequence to see whether my intuition is correct or not. I make different choices than I did when first experiencing the content. But the results are ambiguous. After all, seven short narrative sequences aren’t enough to fully fill out another human being’s shoes. We are all too complex for that. But playing through them is enough to reveal what drives the seven characters and how stressful modern life can be. There’s no way to navigate it all without being stressed and without making mistakes. Somet...

Crimson Desert has received a lot of hype over the past few years because it seamlessly tries to integrate elements from Red Dead Redemption 2, Witcher 3 and Elden Ring, all while blending various MMO-like aspects. After all, the game was supposed to be an MMO at first, but it transitioned into a fully singleplayer action-RPG without microtransactions. That being said, the game doesn’t feature any leveling system or mob/box XP, however there’s plenty of loot for everyone to enjoy. The game’s story is quite straightforward, you’re almost killed at the beginning of the game, and you enter a pocket dimension called the Abyss from where you come back to life. Your focus is to find not only your brothers in arms but also gain revenge over the enemy leader who killed you. Along the way, you’ll also encounter many regions of Pywel, all of which have dozens of quests for you. Those can range from finding someone’s cows to battling one of the major enemy leaders who stopped ...