gaming – asty.org

Malware is a Humorous Game About 90’s Windows Software Installer Add-Ons

Posted on September 20, 2024September 20, 2024 by chrisa

The question is how much fun can you extract from defeating evil software bundles?

When I saw the trailer for Malware, I was immediately transported back to the late 90s, when you just wanted to install a piece of Windows software, but had to navigate a hellscape of tiny additional checkboxes, each offering very vague but often ultimately useless or outright malicious ‘add on’ programs.

Virtual RAM ‘expanders’, download ‘optimizers’, offers to set your homepage to some website you’d never visit intentionally, ad ‘blockers’, which in many cases added more ads to your browsing experience, these were the inevitable add-ons (today we’d call them opt-out options) shoved into Windows software installers in that era. This originally started harmlessly of …

Maniac is a nearly perfect game for just $5

Posted on August 9, 2024September 10, 2024 by chrisa

If you don’t mind excessive violence and a few input glitches, this game is an absolute gem

Maniac by Transhuman Design immediately reminded me of a conversation with my friend Murray about the GTAIII-era games back in the early aughts. He described one of the GTA games as his ‘favorite murder simulator’. Seeing how violent many games have gotten in the last few decades, Maniac may not actually stand out all that much of its level of blood ‘n guts, especially with its top-down perspective and cartoony graphics. What does stand out is how much fun it is, even with in the first minute of firing it up.

[Minor spoilers for post-game unlocks below]

Premise

The premise …

Games I almost completely love: SpellRogue (on sale to boot)

Posted on June 3, 2024June 1, 2024 by chrisa

A new series

I’ve actually been trying to write this review for some time. I originally wanted to contrast it with Balatro, which is one of those games which seems to have taken over the indie and deckbuilder communities, and seems to be loved by virtually anyone, myself included. But I think that’s a bit pointless, especially at this point. After all, SpellRogue hews closer to Slay The Spire after all, so let’s talk about it from that perspective.

To be clear up front (aka tl;dr): I like this game quite a bit. I’ll discuss what I think are minor flaws or drawbacks with it, but in general it’s very good and worth a try.

The good news about…