Author: Greyson Ditzler

Recommended Game – Battle Chef Brigade Deluxe

Published by Greyson Ditzler on 20th August 2020

Introduction

Battle Chef Brigade Deluxe is a highly unique cooking game. It was originally released for Nintendo Switch and PC in 2017 as just Battle Chef Brigade. Before eventually being expanded on into its current version with several new modes and the added title of Deluxe. It remains to this day one of the most unique indie games that I’ve ever played. It’s unfortunate that more people haven’t heard about it. I suppose that’s the benefit of writing for a site like Polyspice. I get a chance to recommend a neat little side dish like this.

Battle Chef Brigade Deluxe is – in the simplest of terms – a combination of a side-scrolling beat-em-up, platforming, cooking, and match-three gameplay elements. It might sound intimidating or like too much to handle. But I can assure you that it plays like a dream. Once you get used to the controls, you’ll be eagerly slicing and dicing your way through fantastical beast galore in order to assemble gorgeous looking gourmet meals.

I barely even care that that egg yolk is also an eyeball, that looks delicious.

You play as Mina, a small-town cook working at her family restaurant who runs away from it all to accept an attempt to join the Battle Chef Brigade. Most of the plat after that is twists and turns that I’d rather not spoil here. But it’s a largely light affair. The story smartly never compromises the gameplay and keeps it safe with cooking challenge after cooking challenge. Making sure to take the time to characterize your opponents in the time between the matches. While also allowing the difficulty to gently curve upwards at a reasonable pace.

Gameplay

In the average battle, you have several judges who want certain flavors emphasized in the dish you serve to them. And each ingredient that you collect from different enemies has different levels of three different types of flavor. All with their own set color. You mix the ingredients into the meal as necessary in order to match the general flavor profile the judge wants. And the rest of the details are up to you.

The dev team really wanted to make a cooking game that encouraged creativity, rather than forced you to strictly follow recipes as many other games do. Battle Chef Brigade shines once you realize that you can basically just do what you want. And as long as you do it well, you’ll succeed. Even if you fail a cooking challenge, most of them are only a few minutes long. As so retrying steals little time from you. And every failure teaches you a little more about how to play the game more optimally.

The meat is a little tough... — The meat is a little tough…

Elements

There are multiple elements and items added to the gameplay the course of the story that builds on the established mechanics quite well and added at a reasonable pace so that the gameplay doesn’t get too repetitive. Things like fragile ingredients and removing bones from meat, all-natural things for a chef to consider that makes the experience that little bit more skill-testing and immersive.

What also helps the gameplay expand from it’s already solid core concept is the simple but strong customization system. Different types of cookware, spices, and stat-changing gear can be equipped between matches in order to sway the odds in your favor or alter the playstyle more to your liking. It’s a system that provides depth to whatever you decide you want your playstyle to be without being too alienating with it’s depth.

The gear customization screen has more combos than an old fashioned diner.

Graphics and Content

Then of course there’s the aesthetic of the game. Battle Chef Brigade Deluxe was inspired by the works of developer Vanillaware, such as Odin Sphere and Muramasa: The Demon Blade. This all shows in both the fantastical setting and beat-em-up elements, as well as the graphics. The visuals are all hand-drawn with an anime-inspired look loaded with both bright and soft colors and loads of memorable and diverse character designs. The animation itself might be rather minimal, but it’s mostly forgivable due to how expressive the art is by itself, held up additionally by the fantastic voice acting and solid soundtrack.

For $20 on all platforms Battle Chef Brigade Deluxe also offers a solid amount of content. On top of the roughly 12 hour long story mode, there’s also a local multiplayer mode, daily challenges with online leaderboards, free play mode, a mode similar to “Break the Targets” from the Super Smash Bros. series. It’s a great big buffet of a game with a one time fee, which is the best type of game and buffet.

Conclusion

There is not much that Battle Chef Brigade Deluxe does that I can criticize. The story could have been a bit more fleshed out in certain places, and some additional animations and characters to play as would be nice. But aside from that there is a lot here to love. It is a serious value for money, addictively fun, and still now wholly unique among both puzzle and cooking games.

Playing a game like Battle Chef Brigade is like taking a break from your favorite restaurants that you normally order from to try out a weird new food-truck. Perhaps it isn’t as familiar to you as your other typical meals. But sometimes it’s good to try new things and experiment because you might find something new to love. Battle Chef Brigade Deluxe is available now for PC, PS4, and Nintendo Switch.

What are you waiting for? Strap on an apron! Vive La Brigade!

Greyson is an aspiring author and YouTuber with dozens of consoles and hundreds of gaming hours under his belt. He’s always looking for something new to play, and is always happy to share it with other people. He also likes the Shantae games, like, a lot.

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Recommended Game – Bug Fables

Published by Greyson Ditzler on 24th June 2020

Moonsprout Games’ turn-based RPG Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling is a love letter to the first two games in the Paper Mario series. Those first two entries in the console-based Mario RPG series are regarded by many as some of the best games ever made by Nintendo, which is no small feat.

Bug Fables was made with a crowdfunded budget of just under $25,000. Considering the massive scale and high standards of quality set by the original two Paper Mario games. It seems that attempting to capture the magic.

I can say confidently, after having – at time of writing – dumped more than 35 hours into the the game, that Bug Fables is the single best Paper Mario game that I’ve played since Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.

If this image triggers the same chemical response in your brain as mine, then I suggest you keep reading.

Story

I don’t want to dwell on or over-emphasize the extent to which Bug Fables takes inspiration and mechanics from classic turn-based Paper Mario. So I’ll refrain from going into detail about the similarities unless a major difference between the two comes up. Okay? Okay. For now, let’s take a look at the story in this self-titled “Fable”.

Bug Fables tells the story of Kabbu the Beetle, Vi the Bee, and Leif the Moth, three complete strangers who end up forming an expedition team by circumstance to carry out quests and treasure hunts for the mighty Ant Kingdom. What starts as a simple and friendly quest into the local monster cave turns into a surprisingly long, emotional, and effectively dramatic story of three friends learning and growing together in an attempt to save all they love.

In many respects, it’s a standard RPG story. But it’s presented very well and the high density of memorable and likable characters both in the main cast and on the side kept me intrigued over the course of the plot. Especially when the odd serious moment popped up in the middle of what was mostly a lighthearted tale. I’ll avoid spoilers for now, but just now that there are a solid story and overarching quest to follow on this adventure. With that laid out, let’s talk about gameplay, and how it differs from the familiar Paper Mario formula.

Combat

Unlike the games that it takes inspiration from, there are no bonus partners that get added to party over time. The three members of your party that you have at the start of the game will be your whole party for the rest of the game. Normally for myself and many others part of the fun of an RPG like this is found in adding new characters with new backstories and all to the party. You may not have that to look forward to in Bug Fables. But as a trade off the game is wholly designed around having just these three party members.

Each member of the party gains new abilities both in the overworld and in battle over the course of the story. Which leads to continuous development of new strategies. As well as new obstacles to overcome and puzzles to solve in the overworld. Not to mention, the core combat itself is built around.

The combat is a familiar and time-tested affair. But with it’s own twists on the classic staples of Paper Mario-style turn-based combat. Every character has their own distinct advantages in battle. Which makes each of them equally useful for different reasons. Kabbu can only attack the first ground enemy but can piece defense. Vi can hit airborne enemies, and Leif can attack enemies buried in the ground. Everyone also has a series of different special moves which take TP (Teamwork Points) which they gradually earn throughout the story as well as by leveling up.

Leveling and Medals

Adding further depth to the combat are both the leveling system as well as the Medals. Every time the party levels up you get to choose between a permanent addition to health, Teamwork Points, or Medal Points. So your growth in each area is dictated entirely by how you want to build your strategy.

The Medals on the other hand allow for many, many different battle strategies and builds for your characters. There are medals that swap defense for attack. Some that prevent status ailments, and even some that unlock moves for certain characters. It’s straight out of classic Paper Mario. It is just as wonderfully simple and yet staggeringly deep as before.

Side Quests & Bonus Content

As for what you do outside of battle, there’s plenty extra to do. There are boss fights hidden away on secret paths, dozens of side-quests with their own associated characters and storylines. In general a ton of positive reinforcement and rewards for experimentation and exploration. While the world isn’t the largest out there, but no space is wasted. You’d never guess how small the game’s budget was when looking at some of these massive areas loaded with different enemies and obstacles. Had this game released at the time of the original Paper Mario on the N64 or PS1, it would have easily been a rival to the original series’ quality and scale.

There are so many mysterious and curious moments in this game that you’ll find yourself searching around every corner for goodies and new things to fight and collect.

Special

The side quests in particular are something special. Don’t expect Witcher 3 levels of depth and scripting for them or anything. But you still get a ton of excellent side-stories, extra bosses, and loads of intriguing lore and secrets that help build the world of Bugaria. On that note. there are also Lore Books you can collect to help fill you in on the history and culture of the world around. Adding more texture and narrative depth to what appears on the surface to be nothing more than a cutsey game about bugs.

There’s also a simple yet deeply fun to explore cooking system that encourages risks and experimentation. A Magic the Gathering style card game on the side that gets better the more you study enemies in battle, and tons of different items to find and collect. It almost seems like you’ll never run out of things to do, and even though you do eventually. I promise you you’ll be satisfied with your own journey by the end.

Conclusion

There is much more good I could say about Bug Fables. I could go into detail about every little reference and element directly lifted from Paper Mario (of which there are MANY), or how many moments from the story will stick with me for a long time. But I’d rather say this: If you enjoy classic Paper Mario or good RPGs in general, you need to play Bug Fables.

I must stress that Bug Fables is not a perfect game. I did come across the occasional minor bug or performance issue. But it was only ever a minor annoyance at worst, so I can forgive that. The controls for overworld abilities can be a bit difficult and sometimes annoying. But it never becomes too serious or stressful of an issue.

Any other complaints I might have would be to the tune of “the Paper Mario games did X element better”, and I don’t want to linger on thoughts like those, because I believe this game stands strong enough on its own.

While Bug Fables may not be better than the classic Paper Mario games. It might be just as good and deserves to be regarded as a modern RPG classic all it’s own. I am hopeful that many of you will go and enjoy it for yourselves. This game made something fresh and new out of an old formula and made something magical that is all their own.

Watch this video for some extended thoughts on the game.

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Recommended Game -Vitamin Connection

Published by Greyson Ditzler on 14th May 2020

As a small-time writer in the gaming journalism circle. I don’t have a tremendous amount of power. I have some power, granted to me mostly by the people kind enough to give me a platform. But I can only reach so many people this way, and only so many people will listen. But if I had my way, and I could get people to do whatever I wanted them to. I would have everyone reading this go and buy Vitamin Connection on Nintendo Switch right now.

Vitamin Connection is a game that deserves to succeed. It has the kind of unique gameplay that I wish I could see more of more often. It’s original in so many ways. It utilizes the unique hardware of the console. It’s exclusive to so well that it fits in right alongside the major releases made for the system.

Vitamin Connection has you controlling Vita-Boy and Mina-Girl. Two tiny friendly folks who pilot a vitamin-capsule shaped spacecraft. They fly through the bodies of sick individuals in order to blast bad guys, heal their vital areas, and make them feel all better.

WayForward

Vitamin Connection comes exclusively to Nintendo Switch courtesy of WayForward. The superstar independent developer who has given us the Shantae series, Cat Girl Without Salad: Amuse-Bouche, and many fantastic licensed titles such as their Adventure Time games and DuckTales: Remastered. More specifically, the game was brought to use by director James Montagna. A longtime member of the company who previously worked on many projects including the previously mentioned Shantae and Adventure Time games, and who makes his directorial debut within the company with this game.

Having been one of the few people I know to have played his previous game. The retro-simplistic but still fun and creative Dodge Club Pocket for the 3DS. I can see his style oozing from every crack of Vitamin Connection, and style is exactly the word to use.

James Montagna

James Montagna has stated that influence for the game was taken directly from the original Jet Set Radio as well as Katamari Damacy. Particularly in how both games have exuberant, upbeat tones emphasized by their highly joyful and elaborate soundtracks, and it shows. It’s the kind of game that you might have found in a video store in the early-to-mid 2000s. When Japanese imports were flooding North America on systems like the Dreamcast and PS2. Where unsuspecting American youth would be drawn in by their rainbow color-pallettes and enticing J-Pop soundtracks. This is the type of energy and tone you can expect from Vitamin Connection. Bright, simple colors creating a stark but striking visual style, personality practically dripping from its pores, and simple but fun and addictive gameplay.

Gameplay

The gameplay of Vitamin Connection is a brilliant mechanical twist on the classic premise of flying around and shooting things. The gameplay has both Vita-Boy and Mina-Girl controlling their ship at the same time. Regardless of whether you are playing in single-player or co-op, and will have a lot of mechanics to balance.

You will be both moving the ship as well as rotating it in clockwise or counterclockwise motions in order to dodge obstacles and fit through gaps. All while watching your ammo while blasting baddies with your vitamin beam. A single player will use both standard and motion controls to pull off these maneuvers while playing in co-op splits the duties between two people. Both of these modes are absurd amounts of fun. There is a bit of a learning curve to the general gameplay, what with all the unique controls to consider. But it’s nothing too major considering the game’s generous checkpoint system and steady difficulty curve.

Shooting baddies is all well and good. But there’s so much more to Vitamin Connection than that. Vitamin Connection is a Nintendo Switch exclusive by design. It utilizes every single exotic function of the Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons in a variety of ways. I’ve not really seen for the system since 1-2-Switch (only much, much better). You’ll be rotating the controller to spin the ship, squeezing it in order to simulate a love-tester machine, using the infrared camera to reach out and grab objects. Basically everything and more you thought the Joy-Con was capable of.

Soundtrack

I alluded to it before, but Vitamin Connection has a truly excellent, diverse and bountiful soundtrack that is equally as good as the games it draws inspiration from.

The soundtrack is mostly composed of J-Pop songs with catchy upbeat rhythms and lyrics. But there’s also rap music from the perspective of a dog, emo grunge from the perspective of a baby, yodeling and orchestral music and so much more. There are multiple songs on each level, and during gameplay, the game will play these all of shuffle in the background as you play. Adding a layer of refreshing variety to the experience that – on top of the normal gameplay – ensures that boredom is impossible. Speaking of layers, there’s even an additional unique layer of instruments that play over any song whenever you’re firing the vitamin beam, which is a really nice touch.

Speaking on the package as a whole, I do have some minor nitpicks. Some may find the story campaign is a little short for $20, and the main levels can be a bit long with a bit of backtracking through them thrown in. But the constant variety of gameplay – as well as optional means of speeding things up if you should be so inclined – made it not feel like too much of a problem for me personally. Plus, you unlock mini-games to play as you go along, and even a sort of New Game+ sort of scenario once the main quest is over, and you can play through the game either alone or in co-op from the start, so there’s actually a fair bit of replay value here.

Tone

On top of that, if you’re looking for something lighter in tone or something to play with your children, this game is right up your alley. I can’t remember the last time that I played a game this good-natured. The music is all upbeat, the game is loaded with bright colors and wonderful shapes, and the dialogue and writing, in general, is both funny and wholesome. This game just wants to spread good vibes and teach kindness, and honestly, I can appreciate that a lot at the moment.

In a time where nearly all of us are stuck inside and worried about the future. We just need something fun to distract ourselves, maybe with a friend if we’re lucky. Here comes a fun, friendly, good-natured game like Vitamin Connection to make us smile, tell us to be kind to one another, and remind us to take our vitamins.

Vitamin Connection is a special kind of game that comes by only a handful of times every generation. One that truly captures the purity of gaming and puts a wild spin on it with the effective use of what so many other developers typically ignore about the console it was made for. I’d go so far as to call it one of the best games available on Nintendo Switch right now, and a classic for the system in the making.

Conclusion

As I write this review, it has been around two months since the game launched, and barely anybody has been talking about it. Sure there’s been some major release lately to be excited about. But it was a bit of a slow spot for the Switch when it released. I’m just a baffled how a game both this unique and this good has been getting ignored by so many people. This has happened with other games before, even with many other WayForward games. But I refuse to let it happen this time.

Vitamin Connection is a must-own game for Nintendo Switch owners given its high quality and meager $20 price tag. So you should absolutely buy it if you’re interested. But if you do buy it, and if you do like it, then do WayForward and people like me a favor and recommend it to a friend. Show it to them, maybe even play it with them, and maybe together we can form a greater connection. Open up the eShop and say “ahhh”, because it’s time to take your vitamins.

Watch this video for some extended thoughts on the game.

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Recommended Game – What the Golf?

Published by Greyson Ditzler on 7th November 2019

What the Golf? is a recently released comedy golf game that was developed by Danish team Triband, crowdfunded though Fig, and released for PC on the Epic Store. It’s a rare breed of game that that just keeps making you smile, presenting you with pleasant surprise after pleasant surprise, constantly topping itself and keeping you engaged. It’s a very funny comedy game, a very fun sports-type game, and a solid value for money considering how much content comes in the package.

Triband is made up of a lot of people, and none of them like golf. Their goal in making What the Golf? was to take the simple concept of golf – that is to say, putting a ball into a hole or towards a goal – and go abstract on it. Start with the idea of golf ball and a hole, then just skew it a little and you end up with a football and a goal. Then you skew that a little further the next level, then a little further the next level, and eventually you’re playing as a swivel chair jumping gaps or paying homage to Portal and Super Mario Bros. That is the magic of What the Golf?. It is a very silly idea, and you could say it often breaks it’s own rules of being a golf game, but that’s the point.

The fact that the game breaks the rules of golf so often and gets extremely loose with it’s definition of a ball and a hole are all part of the joke. Plus, all rules broken and minor mistakes made – such as the odd graphical glitch or finicky controls – are easily forgiven when you’re hopping from level to level, playing golf in first-person one moment and playing Superhot-style slow-mo golf the next.

The presentation is a real treat too. The simple, smoothed out models and deep, bold colors make the graphics feel vibrant and alive, while also being dopey looking enough to add to the comedy before the golf aspect even gets involved. The soundtrack is simple, but often catchy and charming, with lots of upbeat “doot-doot” A cappella tracks full of joyful, silly vocals that make the whole thing feel like an elaborate performance piece.

Adding to the base content that is all the different levels with their different gameplay twists, each level actually has two additional versions of itself that you can complete in order to unlock bonuses and more hidden levels, as well as the added benefit of more solid gameplay that puts a twist on the first run through the level. This is all completely optional, but if you want to find any sort of major challenge in What the Golf?, this is where you’re going to find it, because the base game is admittedly very easy. And if you ever feel as though you’re running low on levels to complete, the game offers level layouts for streamers to try, and daily challenges with leaderboards for people to compete against each other’s par and time globally.

As an added bonus, the structure surrounding all the levels has a great deal of care and personality put into it as well. There is a top-down overworld that is a level itself, somewhat similar to Yooka-Layle and the Impossible Lair, which has loads of secrets and shortcuts laying around just waiting to be discovered. A map would have been nice for getting around once a lot of the overworld opens up, as it is quite large and getting lost can be easy to do at times, and the previously mentioned finicky controls do make precise navigation somewhat iffy. But it is overall a welcome addition that I was not expecting and was happy to receive nonetheless.

What the Golf? makes minor stumbles in small technical and control fumbles, but it delightful in basically every other way. It’s successful comedy game full of surprises and engaging if simple gameplay. For $20 I would absolutely say this game is worth it for the several hours it will likely last you. This game is a hole-in-one success.

Watch this video if you’d like some extended thoughts on the game.

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Recommended Game – Donut County

Published by Greyson Ditzler on 28th August 2019

Donut County is a game that seems very simple on the surface and is basically just as simple underneath the surface. But anything and everything can yield more nuanced and intriguing results if investigated further. It’s a game that I picked up some time ago simply because I enjoyed it’s premise; that being that you play as a whole in the ground that eats up the level and grows bigger the more that it collects. It seemed to be a reverse Katamari Damacy with a laid-back soundtrack and a few frosted pastries sprinkled in. While Donut County is by most means a very simple game to play, and does share similarities with Katamari Damacy, calling it a clone would be inaccurate, and calling it shallow would be unfair.

What started as a game that I breezed through in a hour and half became a game I replayed twice the first day I got it. it became the neat little game that I kept breaking out to show all my friends, and soon enough I was trying my best at landing a speedrunning record and learning all the best shortcuts and the many intricacies of the wonky, Crazy Taxi style physics. I found myself smiling bigger and bigger as I heard that satisfying little popping noise every time something fell down the hole and bopping along to the catchy level-cleared jingle, as well as the rest of the chilled soundtrack.

To put it simply, Donut County is a very fun, very easy game that I find myself replaying once a month when I just want something relaxed and satisfying. Everyone I’ve shown it too has wanted to play it afterwards, or at the very least watch me play it, and it really is a remarkable achievement for a game so simple to be so deeply satisfying. It certainly helps that the dialogue and story are very funny and well written, leading the whole events of the story to feel like an episode of a sitcom in the middle of a season that you flipped to on accident. Character motivations are often used as jokes, but are still consistently clear and logical, and people grow and change over the course of the story, all the while you’re still laughing.

It’s also a game with a surprising amount of history behind it. It began life as Kachina, a game which took inspiration from the Hopi Native American tribe and went through a serious shift mid-development once developer Ben Esposito realized he could not (and probably should not) do the story of the Hopi people justice. He reflected on his failures and started the project over almost from scratch, turning the setting into one he knew – that being Los Angeles – and focusing the narrative on a story of self-improvement following failing those around through callousness. Over six years of development and ups and downs lead to a game that is truly not quite like any other.

Donut County is a simple pleasure, much like an actual donut, but like a weird experimental donut that’s no less tasty than its more traditional counterparts. I would say it’s worth the movie-ticket price that it has going even if you only play through it once, but I could easily see it being something that you take the time to show to as many people as you can. It’s a story of personal redemption, it’s a labor of love, and most importantly it’s a game where you can drop people and buildings down a hole and laugh at their suffering. It’s a good time at a good price that I can recommend to people looking to laugh and relax.

Donut County is available now for PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and iOS.