Animation Lead on Wanderstop! She/Her & Transgenderrific! Past: Radial Games, Gaslamp Games



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Michael-Klamerus
@Michael-Klamerus asked:

I've never really played any cd-i games aside from the Zelda ones (at a demo kiosk in CompUSA!), what would you recommend? Tetris is on my list but that's it

I still have a ton of the library to explore, but my top recommendation would be Laser Lords. It's a dense adventure/RPG hybrid that feels like computer RPGs of the late 80s/early 90s. The conversation system is surprisingly complex and really interesting; less of a conversation tree, more of a system that lets you pick up on individual points you're interested in exploring further. Instead of items, you collect information by adding those same dialogue branch points to your "inventory" where you can later ask other people about them. It's fascinating and it feels great. It takes place within a surprisingly huge open world across a bunch of planets, so it's easy to get lost, but the experience of getting lost while chasing up leads and making it further is really good. As far as I know, it's playable in MAME.

A recent CD-i homebrew from last year, Nobelia, is another one of my top picks. It's basically Zelda meets Bomberman. Each screen is its own standalone puzzle which feel a lot like Zelda-style puzzles incorporating Bomberman-style mechanics, and like Zelda it doles out new skills periodically that unblock you in solving other puzzles. It's well-designed and very, very fun. It's available as a download from Itch or on CD. https://twburn.itch.io/nobelia



I'm FREE. I'M FREE!!! No more imagining drinking laudanum. No more imagining beating up dockers for maps or imagining selling laser hearths. Finally I can do things in Reality again*!!!!

*without paying a 5-action tax to imagine it

In all sincerity this section has been a combination of fun, tense and horrific writing and kinda mean game design that sorely tested my rule of not looking mechanics/requirements up in advance on the wiki (though I did successfully resist the urge!! At great cost). I'm not sure how I feel about the experience in aggregate quite yet but it sure as hell was memorable.