Games Archives – The Writer Muses

Castle Crashers

Colin Parton — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 05:38:48 +0000

Castle Crashers - The Behemoth

What an interesting take on the side-scrolling fighting game. You play one of a group of knights who have to fight through hordes of enemies to save the princess.

The level-up system allows you to increase whatever skills you would like, from strength and agility to magic. All of the knights can do similar things, and the ability to diversify your skills is what will make you operate differently from the others.

We found that a diverse party did best. We had a serious damage output who was also super tanky.

We had a high-agility knight who was excellent at keeping us in the fight. We also had a mage good at long-range damage and freezing enemies.

The magic appeared to be the main way that the knights differed based on their colour. The ice knight and the freeze ability were excellent for the hordes you face towards the end of the game, but we didn’t level up the other magic, so we cannot give you commentary on theirs.

The gameplay was fun, incorporating some slight combos in the fighting to allow you to do some really brutal moves on the enemies.

The laning that is always important in this sort of game was here as well. You had to position yourself vertically on the screen to ensure you would hit or not be hit.

I don’t recall any levelling in any other games like this, but it was probably there; I just haven’t played any in a long, long while.

Other things you could do include collecting pets that would aid you in various ways. The different items and weapons you could choose had slight variance in gameplay and skill impacts.

For example, the spade allowed you to dig for treasure, and one of the animals scouted for where the treasure was buried. The boss variety was pretty good.

The end of the game was really hard because you couldn’t really see what was happening.

This was really disappointing because it had nothing to do with gameplay. Another neat feature was that after you finished a castle and rescued the princess, you would fight amoungst yourselves for her hand.

Overall, it was fun but not great. I find the laning stuff hard to judge, so it just gets frustrating. It also felt odd to have to replay levels in order to level up more for the end so our skills were better. It also felt pretty short. We finished the story in 7 hours.

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The Secret of Mana

Colin Parton — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 06:07:03 +0000

The Secret of Mana - Koichi Ishii

This felt like Square’s response to the Zelda series. For the first time, we have overworld fighting, rather than the typical cut to combat screen that we are so used to in the Final Fantasy series.

They moved to overworld fighting, just like Zelda. The choose to do something completely different with the way items work.

In both Zelda and the Final Fantasy series, weapons simply get replaced with new weapons. Here we see a move to levelling up items. This was really counterintuitive.

When your group start increasing in size, the combat is extra bad. Because you are only controlling one of the three party members, the other two are prone to get in the way of attacks and are just dead weight. This was game-ruining for me.

The narrative felt odd as well. The typical Final Fantasy plot of a villain wanting to overthrow the world order felt weird and out of place here for some reason.

Sitting between Final Fantasy and Zelda, it surprisingly fails at both. You would have expected the developers to take the good points from both, but it is almost as if they didn’t understand why the other games were so good.

I was surprised to learn that the game had gotten a HD re-release. This wasn’t for me. I gave up at Spikey, about 12% through the game.

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Super Mario Kart

Colin Parton — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 06:04:31 +0000

Super Mario Kart - Tadashi Sugiyama Hideki Konno

This is the first instalment of the now household title.

Some things have remained constant since the beginning, and others have come and gone. My first experience with the Mario Kart series was Mario Kart 64.

That game was much more forgiving and playable than this. Without a joystick, racing games are very difficult.

The thing that was new to me that was not part of Mario Kart 64 was the need to collect coins. You lost coins when you ran into things or were hit by other racers.

The little cloud guys that rescued you when you went off the map or into lava also took coins from you. If you didn’t have any coins, any collision, even hitting a wall, would spin you out.

In all the Mario Karts I’ve played, there is certainly a point where the computer players will start to work together to stop you from winning the grand prix. I’ve never seen it deployed as viciously as I have seen it used here.

The 50cc cups were all beatable with some practice. It was more down to your skill and knowledge of the tracks. Towards the end of these cups and definitely by the start of the 100cc cups, the computer players are in concert to stop you winning.

It got to the point of ridiculousness where one of them would purposely ram you off the track into lava, going in with you, just to slow you down.

I found the cups towards the end of the 100cc completely unplayable because of how brutal the computer players would be. After race one, they had chosen their winner, and every other racer had one job: take you out.

I think that this would be more fun with other people playing, as this may balance out the computer’s rage against the human players. Without this, it was unplayable in the later GPs.

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Virtua Tennis

Colin Parton — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 07:23:39 +0000

Virtua Tennis - Katsumoto Tatsukawa

Virtual Tennis with the stars of the time. I’m surprised that this is actually playable and plays like tennis.

The game is just too hard. You have to play well all the time to win.

Which makes sense, I guess, but tennis games are long, and you need to be able to make errors and be able to come back from them.

The arcade mode was beatable, but the main game mode ‘world tour’ was impossible. While you do have the ability to shorten the game to single sets, this in no way helps with the next problem.

The gameplay’s repetitiveness is unbearable. This might be an issue with the computer.

I imagine that with some variety of shots, head-to-head might be fun. Playing today was pretty funny to see the characters from tennis past in action again.

I would not recommend wasting your time with this one.

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Overcooked 2

Colin Parton — Sat, 09 Nov 2024 05:13:05 +0000

Overcooked 2 - Ghost Town Games & Team17

This game is one of the best co-op games I have ever played. You have to work so well together to complete ever more complex dishes on ever more complex levels.

Communication is key to ensure that everything required for the dish is coming together at the same time. What makes for rip-roaring fun for me and my gaming group might have a very different outcome for yours.

It can become very tense in the kitchen, leading to emotional outbursts. There is a reason that you cannot communicate within the game apart from some very generic actions.

If you play with people you don’t get on well with, or cannot control your outbursts, this may not be the game for you. Otherwise, I highly recommend!!!

Overcooked 2: Carnival of Chaos

This DLC builds on the brilliance of the base game. You have new and sometimes more complex dishes. The level traversal now includes firing your chef as a human cannonball.

The training wheels are well and truly off with many levels needing perfect execution to get the four stars.

Once again I would highly recommend this expansion but only play with people you don’t know OR have a great relationship with.

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Circadians: First Light

Colin Parton — Sun, 11 Aug 2024 06:54:35 +0000

Circadians: First Light - S J Macdonald

‘Worker’ placement game where the workers are the dice you roll each turn. What you roll changes what options are available to you on the board.

This makes long term planning very difficult – which is fairly original for a worker placement game.

You can have a loose plan. If I roll x I will do y. You can slo mitigate this variance through the upgrades you choose.

There are lots of aspects of this game that I didn’t get a chance to properly explore. The compitition or lack thereof based on what each player has rolled is very interesting.

It forces you to be dynamic based on what is available to you on any given turn. The heroes allow you to focus on very different objectives.

There is a lot of choice available in terms of what to do with your dice. Because of this and the different heroes that can change you overall objective there is a lot of replay value.

I do enjoy when a new concept is tried. The dice bring something fresh to the genre.

The pieces are lovely as well and the board looks very complicated but it really isn’t. It is well designed to quickly be able to see what you options are each turn.

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Stone Age

Colin Parton — Sat, 13 Jul 2024 07:26:22 +0000

Stone Age - Bernd Brunnhofer

This is a typical worker placement game that focuses on probability. Unlike many other worker placement games when you place your worker somewhere an outcome is guaranteed.

Here it is not. This is only true with resource gathering.

All the other locations operate as you would expect. The rounds are very quick.

My version had a cool cup of leather that was stitched together for rolling the dice which gave it an ancient vibe. I’m a sucker for great game pieces like this.

The concept of tools to increase the dice rolls is a great way to show your society focuses on advancement.

This is at the cost of population increase or resource gathering.

The same is true for agriculture. You can spend workers to develop your agricultural advancement which will make food automatically produced in later turns.

The cost here is the same as for tools. There is also an interesting move where you can block the purchase of a point card by spending a worker to stand on it.

This is a fairly original idea and it can make tight games more interesting.

It is great that there is no clear ‘best’ way to play this game. A combination of technology, population, and agriculture all seem to work as well as focusing on a single one of these.

The game is enjoyable but there is not much depth here so it won’t be to everyone’s liking. It’s good for a quick pick-up and play.

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Betrayal At Baldur’s Gate

Colin Parton — Sun, 14 Jan 2024 07:39:20 +0000

Betrayal At Baldur's Gate - Chris Dupuis & Mike Mearls

This game is a reskin of Betrayal at House on the Hill. The reskin works fine and game play is similar.

It is a group co-op game until the haunt begins. At this point, a player generally becomes the bad guy.

The triggering of the haunt can take a while to figure out what exactly has changed. Generally, this is fine because the game pauses at this point and the good guys and the bad guys have to read their new rules.

In my last game, we got a haunt where there was no bad guy. This was not great as it wasn’t a simple pause of the two groups reading their rules it was a bad break in play where everyone but the people reading the rules had to sit around and wait.

If you focus on your character alone rather than what the group is doing you will have a very boring game.

It is a game on rails. Your decisions don’t matter until the haunt begins.

Before this, you are just moving your pieces around the board to a pre-generated story.

It’s a beer and pretzels game where you don’t have to pay much attention if you are familiar with the rules. So if a hands-off game where not much is happening until the haunt is your cup of tea then you will love this. Otherwise, it will be terrible.

I enjoy the story and the setting so that helps a lot. Just make sure your group enjoys it or you could be in for some groans when you take it off the shelf.

I think it is better than the original as I enjoy the setting more and I think that the tiles are more interesting as is the framing story.

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Skyrim

Colin Parton — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 10:24:42 +0000

Skryim - Bethesda Game Studios

Rated 8 out of 10

I only finished playing this recently after playing on and off since release. The time I spent playing this game verges on the ridiculous. More ridiculous was my fixation on completing every facet of the game.

Reflecting back on the game as a whole I must say that overall I found it good, great even in parts but not the fantastic game that it was lorded (and still is) to be.

The main plot follows the return of dragons to the world as well as the Dragonborn (you) who are here to defeat them.

This takes place on the backdrop of the civil war in Skyrim as the xenophobic Nords, seek to retake take their land, and leave the empire.

As you navigate your way through these two main storylines you meet many other people of note throughout Skyrim and also run across a number of the Daedric gods.

You have the opportunity to end up leading the Wizard’s College; the Thieves Guild; the Dark Brotherhood assassin guild; and the Companions.

And this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the people you meet and aid across the country.

With so much to sink your teeth into it felt like this was a no-brainer 10/10. The problem was that it all felt a bit bland. I found that I ended up not being able to identify with any of the groups.

So you end up as a lone wanderer, who can be a member or even leader of a group that they don’t identify with. Even if you lean into the group’s goals I felt that you either ended up having to do something that didn’t sit right or it was a bit lack-luster.

The main quip I always hear is about the civil war – this is low-hanging fruit because the Nords are racist and you are encouraged to support them without knowing this at the start. You escape from execution by the empire – so why would you side with them?

The companions were a group I felt was much more interesting. While they do have the same – we love nords attitude – theirs is rooted in history. While their history does see them participate in wars they stand apart now and are more interested in personal choice and honor.

What makes them very interesting is that they have a dark secret. They are infected with lycanthropy. Their story sees you join the head of their group in his quest to rid himself of the curse so he can enter the Nordic afterlife.

What is great about this story is the player gets to choose whether they end up following this example or join others in the group who relish the hunt. Great stuff. But the problem I found is that it was a very quick quest line compared to the others.

Gameplay itself was fun and allowed you to play whatever sort of character you liked. I enjoyed the skill development, especially the crafting skills. Allowed you to tinker and develop the types of items that you wanted to create.

After all these years something still made me want to come back and finish it properly. And when I did I felt more relief than accomplishment.

So while there were some great parts and the gameplay worked well the thing I have to thank Skyrim for is making me realise that there is no need to 100% complete a game.

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Who Said Bird Watching Was Boring?

Colin Parton — Sun, 20 Oct 2019 23:38:26 +0000

Wingspan - Stonemaier Games

Rated 8 out of 10

In this game you curate different species of birds into their habitats. As you place birds onto your game board you gain access to their abilities.

It’s essentially an engine building game. From the birds available you need to choose the ones that will work best together to produce the most victory points.

Intuitive and Complex Game play

There is a lot going on, especially once the game processes. Your one action allowed each turn can end up triggering many more actions as you activate all the birds in a region of your board.

While there is a lot to keep track of the actual way that each bird works is rather intuitive. Once you have the overall game mechanics down the birds tend to look after themselves – as long as you don’t forget any of them.

There are 170 unique birds to play with. The combinations available and decision options this allows will give this game heaps of replay value, and lots choice for hardcore gamers.

Quality of What's in the Box

I seem to talk about this a lot. That’s because when you play a game you want to see the love that the designers had for the game coming through to you.

The easiest way for a game designer to do this is to make great game pieces. This game is beautiful. As soon as you crack the box you will be drawn to the colourful eggs. These are some of the most beautiful game pieces I’ve ever come across.

The art in the game is brilliant as well. It fits very nicely with the theme. The bird-box dice roller is a fantastic touch as well.

Concept

This game is a perfect example of a simple idea done well. The bird watcher theme is everywhere – from the design of the cards to the bird box and even the food and nesting mechanics.

Every bird card has a fabulous little fact on it and includes the area the bird is found as well as its wingspan. The birds location and wingspan play an important part in the game as well, so they aren’t just fluff.

The designers have done a great job capturing the way some of these birds work in real life. For example: the eagle ‘hunts’; and the sparrow ‘flitters’ around the board.

Final Thoughts

This game was so much fun to learn and play. You thought you had it all down and then you would notice another way that your birds could interact.

The execution of the game concept is a big draw for me as well as the quality of the pieces.

People who are new to gaming might find it a bit overwhelming. Avid gamers might find the different engine paths a bit repetitive. So I think that overall the complexity is good.

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