Demo Impressions Part 21

Featuring: Checkout: Cashier Sim, Hot Wax, Sky the Scrapper, The Supper: New Blood, and Winnie’s Hole

More demo impressions! Any game with a (*) means it still has a demo at the time of posting.

Checkout: Cashier Sim*

Out Now

This one is as you’d expect. This demo only includes the part where you’re working at a cashier, but simply this game is where you man the cashier. With a cute art style, you’ll get a set of items to scan and bag or, for veggies, find the number, input the number, and bag it. There is an area where you can place items (or item) to have the next set of items come up (or see if that’s all when one of those dividers come up). Each item takes up so many grids and this is used when you’re bagging as a bag can only hold so much before you have to get a new one. Each item type also seems to be associated with a color and if they’re beside each other will give you a bonus. Once you bag the last item, you just click the new bag button so the customer will give you their payment method and, after inputing it in, you’ll have a receipt to give to them (as well as giving back their card if they used one). If you accidentally scan an item twice, you can also void one of the scans. Once your shift ends, you’ll see how well you did.

This one was just okay. It didn’t really click for me and it does get annoying when you don’t align the item just right and it gets put back to its original positioning. The game does seem to have some item snapping to the grid, but it doesn’t feel like its big enough. Items will also not scan if you’re too fast, but that’s pretty accurate actually. It’s alright.

Hot Wax*

Are you a Tetris enjoyer? Are you Tetris enjoyer who also wants a new spin on Tetris? Well, Hot Wax has you covered. This has the classic block shapes that you’ll be familiar with, but they are instead candles with wicks located at the ends. Unlike regular Tetris, candle Tetris doesn’t clear a line and increase your score when you fill a line up. Instead, Hot Wax adds a flame and a bomb to the spawn pool. The only way to score is to burn the candles and the flame item lets you. You need it to land on a wick poking out on the Y axis and not wicks poking out on the X axis. Once a candle is lit, it will burn through one block of the candle block and, if it comes into contact with another wick, will spread the fire. Which does increase your combo allowing your score to rise faster. However, a candle can’t be lit if a wick isn’t facing the flame and the flame will be snuffed out if a candle lands on it either because that’s where you put it yourself or if it fell down as there’s nothing below it anymore. The bombs are as you’d expect, it not only destroys the candle bits around it, but also lit the wicks that were just barely out of the blast radius. And, if you think you can just play slowly, flames spread after you place a block. Making it even harder as you have to figure out how to place candles for a future flame, but also figure out where to place them so it isn’t snuffed out due to your placements. Though, you can get a wick lit immediately after placing if you’re clever enough. The candle blocks fall faster the higher level you’re at and the game ends when a candle block goes past the play area.

This is pretty unique and inventive. I would have never thought to make the Tetris blocks into candles and requiring you to burn them to score. This was definitely an interesting twist on Tetris that actively made it harder. Requiring you to think differently when you’re placing the candle blocks. The demo only includes what would be considered classic mode with three different difficulties (which determines which level you start on), but the Steam Page does describe the full game having five different game modes. I’ll definitely be keeping my eye out for a release date.

Sky the Scraper*

Ah cleaning games. I hate cleaning in real life, but not in video games. I wanted to try this one out as I haven’t seen any other cleaning game where you’re a building cleaner and after playing through the demo I’m pretty neutral on it. You play as Sky who has recently abruptly left home. We don’t know much about his situation apart from the texts he gets as you progress, but his parents don’t approve of his career choice due to how dangerous it is. Sky wants to make it work, though, and he’s not going to return home without trying. Taking place over 2 months, you’ll take on the game day by day with a goal that you have to hit for you to continue to the next set of days. The first is to earn $50 in 5 days. You’ll either be scheduled to work or be scheduled to rest. Selecting work will give you a little preview on what to expect before sending you off to where you’re already hanging on the side of the building you’re set to clean. With a strict time limit, you have to swing your way to the dirty spots, grip the building, and move towards the dirty spots to get Sky to wipe it (while gripping), and let go before Sky’s grip depletes completely. If it does, he’ll drop down. Which is bad news if you’re low enough to where he won’t be able to recover in time. If you see balloons, luckily running into them will help and grant you a brief window where your grip won’t deplete. You also have to keep an eye on your wiper so keep an eye on that bar. Once the timer runs out, you’ll see how much you earned based on how much you cleaned, get taxes taken out (and injury treatment if you fell), and be sent back to the home screen. If you fell and get injured, however, you won’t be able to work for the next two days. Getting injured definitely sets you back and you won’t just be hit with an injury jsut for losing your grip as you will if you swing too far from the building or happen to swing below the “you won’t be injured above this line” line using a skill.

On rest days, you can just rest to regain stamina or do an activity once that’s unlocked. You’ll also get to see what Sky’s mood is, which does affect your grip on jobs and how much stamina you gain when resting.

Once you get past your first roadblock, it seems like the whole game opens up more. Activities get unlocked so you gain a small addition to a stat(s), a skill synapses where you can gain skills you can use at cleans or unlock more activities, a shop to buy better equipment and more activities, and your boss reveals that he’ll let you pick your work schedule for the upcoming week (which gives you four sets to choose from). Different buildings and conditions will also pop up. It does also look like there will be a penalty for skipping work for a day you’re set to.

I did make it far enough to where it’s confirmed that you’ll be able to buy equipment to improve things like falling recovery time and having more balance/grip, so that’s good. Though, I do wish the activities told you what will happen when you do them. I bought the “drink alcohol” activity thinking it would just be to relief stress or whatever, but it lowered my Will and cost a lot of unexpected money, causing me to go into the negative. It also doesn’t help that the second progression requirement is getting Will to 35 and I had no idea how to raise it other than the one activity that raised it by one point.

Also I just realized the title’s wordplay. Sky the Scrapper. Sky scrapper.

The Supper: New Blood*

Not going to lie, I picked this up when I saw the screenshot where you’re cooking someone’s brain. In The Supper: New Blood you play as Stewie who not only runs a hotel all by himself, but also lost his beloved grandmother. He has made what I hope is a scarecrow dressed as his grandma, who he sometimes talks to like she’s actually replying (and I know this is a reference to a horror movie that I can’t remember the name of), to keep him company since both the house and the hotel are pretty remote. However, the start of this game is the start of his evil streak. A despicable man comes in to rent a room talking about what he did, all while threatening him. Also, saying the man rented a room isn’t true as he uses not being shot with his shotgun as payment enough. Stewie, scared and done with this treatment, remembers his grandmother’s famous meat recipes. Meat recipes that used human meat from only the criminals she killed. Stewie decides to follow her steps. If anyone rents a room in his hotel and they’re a criminal, they’ll be the main course for the next meal. How will Stewie know they are for sure criminals? Not everyone will be as dumb as that despicable man and just because someone seems suspicious doesn’t mean they are. Well, I guess it’s a good thing that he was a victim of a truth serum while he was in school as he remembers the recipe.

After altering the recipe so it’s like a cocktail and writing it down, it’s now time for some puzzle solving. All the items are scattered around the property and they’re not just in the open ready for you to pick up. You do need to figure out how to get them or make them. The overworld map will let you click on specific areas of the hotel for Stewie to visit; while clicking on his house will ask which room or area you want to go in. Of course, there are some interactable spots and you’ll get a variety of results. It’ll either be nothing and you’ll just get an observation text to the side you can read; an item you can pick up; or it’s an item you need as it’s part of the puzzle to get whatever item it’s associated with. Some puzzles require more steps than others. Like getting the pineapple just needs you to get another item while getting the ice requires multiple steps (which also reveal that what you need might not be an item but a state of Stewie). Once you get everything, you’ll mix up the drink and the next day you’ll get a new visitor who is acting awfully suspicious. Hmmm…

This demo stops before you do any interrogating. So far, The Supper: New Blood is interesting. I like th writing style, the art looks pretty nice, and I found the puzzles to be pretty good as well. I can see someone getting stuck trying to get the ice, but otherwise I found the puzzles to be logical. I do also like how Stewie wants to make sure his victims are bad people and that you’ll be finding that out before you kill them. You do also get to pick what hotel room a guest stays at, each room having a theme, and I do wonder if that has any effect. It’s implied that it does, but I wonder what the penalty could be for picking an ill fitting room.

Lastly, I’m sad that the demo didn’t get to the cooking part (I’m sorry, I like cooking minigames), but I guess that’s something else I can look forward to in the full release.

Winnie’s Hole

I am speechless. Winnie’s Hole is so surreal. I know I should have known what I was going into as I did wishlist this a year ago, but to be honest it was purely due to the game’s cover art (and it was during the time when Winnie-the-Pooh games were popping up after its copyright expired). I got the notification that this got a demo and of course I wanted to try it out.

Both the story and the gameplay is so weird. When you start, there’s a high chance it’s going to be filled with “what’s happening”, but in a good way. The game opens with a overhead shot of the forest where we see something, or someone, huge pushing through the trees. As we get a closer, more personal, look we’re met with someone fitted in a plague doctor mask facing off none other than Winnie-the-Pooh. However, it’s not the Winnie we all knew and loved, but a horribly deformed one. We then rewind to before this transformation to the point where it all starts. It all starts with Pooh walking out without any clothes, which may or may not be due to the fresh virus growing and spreading within him. Eventually, it causes Winnie-the-Pooh to mutate and gain a “Feeding Hole” or a scary mouth on his stomach. It quickly starts sucking up the flowers around Pooh. One of the forest residents, a rabbit, comes to check out the noise and asks Pooh if he’s okay as well as asking why he’s naked. After having a quick discussion, the rabbit tries to help, but the Feeding Hole scares him off. Pooh encounters others that ends up attacking him and I was able to get to the event where a priest and his congregation tries to help, but to no avail.

Gameplay is so weird, like I mentioned before. This has different genres mixed together that strangely ends up working together pretty well. The first phase is where Pooh is just walking and this is when you’ll be spreading the virus (which is what you technically are playing as). This is basically like a puzzle Tetris-y thing as you’ll be given Tetris-shaped blocks determining how you’ll be moving through Pooh’s body. Here, you want to hopefully place these blocks in the empty cell blocks that’s surrounded by red cell walls, but you can place blocks where parts of it overlaps the walls with the downside of taking damage. The goal here is to grab the various things you can overlap your virus with, such as resource cells that lets you evolve, one that will add an extra block to your inventory, a block that will heal you a bit, cells that will heal you a bit or increase your max health, and a little cell blob that will let you mutate between this phase and the encounter phase. Once you got everything, or feel you want to move on, you can then overlap with the exit, which will let you dive deeper into Pooh. Giving you the chance to get rarer cells in the randomly-generated depth level.

Now the Encounter Phase starts. If you’re set to mutate, you’ll be able to choose between three different mutations, giving you an aesthetic change as well as giving you new battle tiles. The first mutation is always the Feeding Hole, but they all give you different tiles so you can choose what build you’re going for. Though, what’s really cool is that the mutation you pick is shown on Pooh at the top of the screen. It’s really cool and I was not expecting it to be reflected visually. And finally, we’re in the combat section of the Event Phase where you’ll be facing off against one of the local residents. Taking place in Pooh’s brain, this mixes turn-based combat, deckbuilding, and the Tetris-y gameplay. The action tiles you received through mutations come into play here as Pooh’s brain space gets filled with these and what you do in combat is determined by what your Tetris Block overlaps. Luckily, you do get to know what your opponent will do and get to see a preview on damage, but the tiles are all discarded and drawn each turn, and you don’t draw more Tetris tiles until you use all of them. Combat here is hard, especially when you throw in enemies that have their own perks and unique actions that you have to take into account. If you win, you’ll get some of those sweet resources, combine those with the ones you gained when you were spreading in Pooh’s body, and gain a perk for combat if it’s enough to evolve. However, a run ends if you run out of health and the plague doctor is called over.

Also, did I mention that this is a roguelite? While we don’t get a map a la Slay the Spire, you do get to see what you’ll be going into as you’re in between Encounter Phases. It’s just how strong the enemy will be as it is up to you to add in more events like a mutation event or a mystery event where, for example, you’ll be able to upgrade a card. Once you’re ready, it’s time to give it another try and see if you’ll be able to get to the end.

Winnie’s Hole is so crazy and I’m so surprised with how good this game ended up being. The premise is so weird that it works, the gameplay is weird but it works, the art is great, and the writing is on point as it managed to capture how these characters talk. There’s no way I’ll be able to get to the end of this game (whatever the end will be) as this game is pretty hard and I’m so bad at deckbuilding games, but that doesn’t mean I can’t recommend this game. Which I do. Go check out the Winnie’s Hole Steam page and wishlist it already.