Silver Falls: Survive was a Halloween 2023 surprise homebrew game that Sungrand Studios dropped to tease the expansion of their supported consoles. They've already got games on 3DS, Wii U, Switch, and Game Boy Color with plans to put games on Vita, Atari VCS, and PC in the near future. This very early build of a new Silver Falls game was our peek at what Sungrand is bringing to Sony's ill-fated but much beloved handheld. Jerrel, the sole man behind Sungrand, was clear, however, that this is absolutely not a finished product and very much a beta type of look; according to the Silver Falls website, this is version 0.1, so temper your expectations. I'll elaborate on that, but keep that in mind; this is an extremely early playable demo that he released to celebrate Halloween and build excitement for the future of Sungrand products, not to put a finished product out and call it a day. You play as a recently divorced man, still mourning his divorce while trying to focus on his opportunities as a single man rather than ruminate on the loss of his marriage. He's come to the cabin where the game starts in order to hike out into the forested mountains to scatter his late uncle's ashes. In the cabin, there are several characters you may recognize from previous Silver Falls game with whom you can talk. There are also weapons and food items around the cabin that you can - and definitely should - take with you. Equip whatever weapons you found and head out the door. That's where the real game starts. You step out of the cabin into a dark, foggy night. There's no waypoint, indication of where to go, or even an objective to accomplish. As I said, this is an extremely early build, and Sungrand is planning some major updates in the future. Unfortunately, as this is a free homebrew title, it's a fairly low priority compared to the commercial releases in the works, but what is here is more than enough to whet one's palate provided one is a fan of the Vita or PlayStation TV. Anyway, as you wander through the dark woods, you're randomly accosted by mysterious creatures. Hopefully you've got some good weapons because you've just found the aptly named game's sole objective in this build - survive. Survive until you inevitably die, and when you do, you respawn back in the cabin with new characters to talk to and new weapons and items to collect. Wash, rinse, repeat. Right off the bat, one thing immediately jumps out at me - the atmosphere. I've played every game in the series start to finish, and while White Inside Its Umbra has an extremely tense and creepy vibe to it, Survive takes the cake. This is definitely the creepiest and most unsettling Silver Falls experience to date. The intense darkness, the rolling fog, the trees obscuring your vision - you can hear the enemies well before they're upon you, but you can't see them until it's almost too late. Even in this v0.1 build, it's a real Halloween vibe. There is some story in the game - your uncle's urn in your inventory and the dialogue with the characters who appear in the cabin, for example - but it's extremely bare bones in this build, although more story content is on the way in future updates. Likewise, there are going to be bugs given the early beta nature of this build. I didn't actually encounter any bugs myself, but I did find a funny element that hadn't been programmed yet. There's a lake I stumbled on, but when testing whether or not I could swim, I discovered that the water is only there in looks; I walked straight through it and along the bottom of the lake no problem. It's obviously a minor thing that just hadn't been programmed when this got dropped for Halloween, but it made me laugh. Other than that, the only performance issues I encountered were long load times - which seemed worse on PS TV than on my actual Vita, although that may just be my perception - and a lower-than-ideal frame rate. That's not to say the frame rate was abysmal, but it hung between 20 and 30 fps when I was playing. The game is intentionally pretty slow paced as it is to build the tension and unease, so that mitigates a lot of the frustration that sub-30 fps frame rates can often cause. Silver Falls: Survive is a sneak peek at what's coming to Vita from Sungrand, not a full release, and that's important to keep in mind. It nails the horror atmosphere to a degree of perfection that no other Silver Falls game save for White Inside Its Umbra has, and that's even with being a relatively skeletal build content-wise. I'm quite excited to see the future updates to this game no matter how long coming they may be. I did struggle with how to rate this one, though. I was going to give it a D since it's just so bare bones, but just as I try to judge every game in the context of when it was released and the hardware capabilities, I have to judge this not as a PlayStation Vita release but as a very early build demo of a PlayStation Vita game. In that context, it's not going to win any awards, but it's definitely an enjoyable experience. I would have liked to see more actual locations to explore rather than just trees and a few bonfires (I've heard there might be another cabin, but I've never been able to find one), and the enemy encounters were few and far between. On the one hand, that does build the tension, never knowing when the next encounter was coming, but with so little to actually do in the game, I'd have preferred to see more. Regardless, I enjoyed my time with this playing both on my Vita and my PlayStation TV, and I definitely recommend that horror fans with a Vita or PS TV running CFW check it out. Or if you have a Vita emulator on your PC. It's not going give you a whole afternoon of entertainment, but it's a good way to spend half an hour here and there. My Rating - CAlso available on 3DS Silver Falls is an indie horror series made Sungrand, a one-man studio based in Australia, that focuses around the quaint little town of Silver Falls. This quaint little town isn't quite as normal as it looks, though; strange things keep happening, and strange creatures keep appearing. Each game in the series has a very distinct feel and style that matches the time period when the game takes place, and the fact that everything about the games from the visuals to the coding to the audio is all done by one person gives each entry a real labor-of-love feel that big studio AAA games just can't replicate. Not only that, but the series represents a wide array of genres, and it boasts an impressive number of entries considering that the first game, 3 Down Stars, was released only four years ago. That number is even more impressive if you include ports and remasters. This is one such remaster; Ghoul Busters was originally released in mid-2022 for the 3DS as part of Sungrand's last hurrah slew of 3DS and Wii U games, and it's actually the one that got me into the series. When the 3DS eShop closed, however, Ghoul Busters became unobtainable despite being an excellent game. As such, Sungrand made the decision to answer the prayers of fans and give the game a Switch remaster, now sporting HD visuals as well as a slew of visual effects and screen color schemes. Ghoul Busters takes place in the early 1990s and, as such, has an aesthetic intentionally reminiscent of the original Game Boy (that's also why the game's initials are "GB"). It follows two young best friends forever, Starlin Allerdyce and Atticus Longdraw, on their adventure-turned-nightmare in the woods. The two boys had gone to the woods one night to play Ghoul Busters, pretending to be the heroes from their favorite television cartoon, but they quickly stumble upon real monsters lurking in the woods as well as adults from the town who seem to know more about the strange goings-on than they're willing to admit. Now their playtime has turned into a very literal fight for survival. Armed only with their toys, the two children have to use their wits, agility, and the luck and survivability that comes with being the main characters to make it to morning. The game is a 2D platformer although one that was obviously designed with the 3DS's stereoscopic 3D in mind. As such, there's a little bit of a learning curve on Switch. There are obstacles and traps that swing back and forth between the foreground and the background, and there are platforms that spin around in circles so that you have to time your jumps for when the platforms are along the X axis and get off before they rotate to face along the Z axis. It's definitely doable - the high resolution graphics make it fairly easy to get a feel for the movement of these obstacles - but it's not as naturally intuitive as playing on 3DS with the 3D enabled. Each of the two characters - Starlin and Atticus - plays somewhat differently. Starlin is a bit slower in jumps, attacks with a hockey stick, and seems to deal a little more damage with more knockback. Atticus, on the other hand, moves much faster in the air, attacks with a slingshot, and trades some of that damage and knockback for attack range. Personally, I preferred playing as Atticus, although Starlin felt more useful to me in the last few levels. The game isn't very long, but what it lacks in length it makes up for in quality. There are nine levels and three bosses (one at the end of each three-level stage), and they are, as one might hope, increasingly challenging. On level 1-1, for example, I only died once; by level 3-3, you'd have thought I was playing Super Meat Boy. By the time I had cleared the final boss, I had died 421 times during my playthrough, and it would have been a lot more if I hadn't had items to use. Between levels, you get the chance to spend the bottle caps - the game's currency - you collected thus far to buy items for use later, and fortunately, you're able to go back and replay levels to grind more bottle caps if you find that you're in need of items but out of funds. There are box tops hidden throughout the levels, as well, and each level that you end with three box tops gives you a special item that you can't normally buy. The best part about the game's transition from 3DS to Switch is the visual effect options. Some add to the atmosphere of the game, like the fog and rain effects, while others actually make it a little harder to see but are there simply because they look cool, like the wool and retro graphic effects. Others, like the old TV effect, don't enhance the horror vibe of the game but do add a distinct vibe of their own. My personal favorite, the old movie effect, simulates the anaglyph 3D effect by adding the blue and red effects. It's nowhere near as effective as the 3DS's stereoscopic screen, but it does give a subtle 3D effect to a non-3D screen. In addition to the visual effects, there are numerous color effects that you can enable. Don't like the green look of the original DMG Game Boy? Make it pink. Wish you were playing on a truly black and white screen like the Game Boy actually produces? There's a grey color. Wish you were playing this on a Virtual Boy? There's a red color. Want it to be generally radical? There's a neon blue color. Mixing and matching different screen colors and visual effects was one of my favorite parts about playing this remastered version of the game for the first time. The coolest thing, in my opinion, about the Silver Falls series as a whole is the connectivity between games courtesy of the Code Linker system. Jerrel, the developer, really went out of his way to make sure that his games connect with each other in some way. The way it works is that one Silver Falls game - let's say Episode Prelude on Switch - gives you a blue code in its Code Linker menu. You then plug that blue code into the Code Linker menu in Ghoul Busters on 3DS, and it spits out a yellow key code. Plug that yellow code back into Episode Prelude, and a character from Ghoul Busters is now playable in Episode Prelude. That's just an example - I'm not sure if that particular example is actually viable - but that's the gist of how it works. Jerrel designed it to be like amiibo but without the need for an additional purchase and as a sort of bonus for buying the other games, although he's stressed multiple times that he actively encourages folks' sharing codes with friends who may not have all of the Silver Falls games; he just wants people to play and enjoy what he's made. Now that four games are unobtainable due to being on Wii U and 3DS with Jerrel adamant about never porting White Inside Its Umbra due to being designed specifically for the Wii U's control scheme, that encouragement to share code linker with other fans is important. Silver Falls: Ghoul Busters is really an extraordinary platformer. It's short and extremely challenging at parts, but at no point does it ever stop being fun. It's got its moments where you can tell that you're being directly trolled by obstacle and enemy placements, but it's never to the point where you rage quit; it's always just reasonable enough to make you say, "One more try." There's also just this unexplainable magic that comes from a game made entirely by one guy who's genuinely super passionate about gaming and making games that people want to play. It's made in Unity, so it's got its unpredictable quirks, but those are significantly less common than in the 3DS original, and the game's got a good auto-save system just in case. The music is absolutely phenomenal, and while you'll hear the low-fi voice saying "Bummer!" every time you die in your nightmares, it's a wholly satisfying, enjoyable, and charming platformer from start to finish. I enjoyed this game more than any other indie platformer I've ever played and for reasons I can't quite put my finger on, but regardless of why, I honestly can't recommend this game highly enough. I'm thrilled that this game isn't trapped on the 3DS because it deserves to be played and enjoyed by as many people as possible. My Rating - AAlso available on 3DS Guardians and Metal Exterminators was one of the final games released for the 3DS when it launched (for good after some technical issues had it briefly delisted) back in January 2023. Another excellent entry in the Silver Falls series from one-man-show studio Sungrand, Guardians and Metal Exterminators has been given a breath of new life as it makes a remastered and expanded re-release on Switch, now sporting an "S" at the end of the title (for Switch, obviously). The bulk of the game is the same as on 3DS albeit prettier and with smoother performance, but there are some key additions and changes. Guardians and Metal Exterminators is a bit of an odd duck in that the "main" game modes only make up like 5% of the content in the game. Game A and Game B are designed to emulate the old Tiger Electronics handheld LCD games. They're simple score chasers with shallow but addicting gameplay. Unless you're a serious score chaser, they're unlikely to hold your interest for more than five or ten minutes here or there. That said, that's part of the purpose of Guardians and Metal Exterminators; it's meant to be a game you can pick up and play for a few minutes when you have down time without needing to invest a lot of time in a long story mode or keep up with a lengthy narrative. It is, after all, stylized like old LCD games that one would rarely play for more than ten or fifteen minutes at a time. While Game A and Game B may not be a big draw or enough to make a purchase worthwhile on their own, Frontier Guardians, the game's ostensibly-extra content, is actually where the vast majority of the gameplay is. It's a mission-based RPG mode where you start off with two playable characters, Oxa and Gold, and play through set missions. This is also where the game's story and lore are shown. The premise is that Oxa Boscova, a local ranch hand, meets up with local carpenter Gold Prospector for a blind date near the Allerdyce farm where Oxa works. Unfortunately, their date is interrupted by a bright light in the sky and an explosion at the ranch. Oxa sprints towards the ranch to investigate and make sure things are okay while Gold, dazed and confused as to what the hell just happened and why this crazy lady is running TOWARDS danger instead of AWAY from it, follows haplessly. Don't let the mission objectives in Frontier Guardians fool you; the way you earn moose tokens to buy items and xp to upgrade your character is through killing enemies, not completing objectives. Completing the objective just gets you 100% of your earned rewards instead of the diminished reward you get from failing the mission; if you manage to complete the mission's optional objective, you get extra moose tokens and xp. What that means is that even if you complete a mission, if you didn't kill any monsters, you don't get any xp. That said, completing missions even if you're too weak to get kills is still worthwhile; completing a mission regardless of kills nets you a new secondary weapon to equip, and these can be both powerful on their as well as have powerful secondary effects. The missions involve your chosen character running around in an overhead view, killing enemies, and completing your objectives. In addition to the human denizens of Silver Falls, you can also play as the Metal Exterminators, too, but whereas every Guardian character has at least a few story scenes, none of the enemy characters do. Bummer. The way you see these story scenes is by upgrading your character, and you can see the story completion % on the character select menu, so you'll easily be able to tell what characters are complete and who still has unviewed story scenes. As you progress through the game, you'll unlock additional characters, and there are even more characters you can unlock by using the Code Linker functions and connecting with other Silver Falls titles. That doesn't just extend to current Silver Falls games; Jerrel, the man behind Sungrand, makes sure to keep these games relevant down the line by adding Code Linker content that will be unlocked by games planned for release years in the future; even if you 100% every character now and use code linker with every game so far, there will still be a reason to come back because every future release will unlock more content in this game. No paid DLC, no $5 or $10 per character unlock, and no one-and-done content dump. All of that content is free and trickled throughout future releases, and you don't even necessarily need to buy all of the games yourself; if you know someone who has a game you don't or who has a game that's no longer obtainable thanks to the Wii U and 3DS shutdowns (or ask nicely on the Silver Falls Discord), they can help you unlock Code Linker content using their game. Jerrel could have changed the system to require one unlock per purchase, but he intentionally kept it open for this so as to keep it accessible and pro-consumer; he is truly a man of the people. The highlight of Silver Falls: Guardians and Metal Exterminators S is definitely the character interactions. The LCD games are fun in short bursts, and they're good for high score contests - we've had a few on the Silver Falls Discord - but the real meat of the game and the reason to buy is Frontier Guardians and the storyline. Jerrel writes these characters brilliantly and in such a way that makes the world of Silver Falls feel connected from game to game not just through a shared setting but with consistency and growth from game to game. If you played Undertakers, you met Oxa about a decade before her appearance in this game, and if you play the games set in the 90s or 2000s, you'll see her a bit older, still the same person but realistically wiser and matured. The Code Linker system ensures that you continue to get your money's worth down the line as future Silver Falls titles release. This isn't a big budget AAA game made by a team of two hundred developers and artists; it's an indie game made 100% by a single man, and that shows. It doesn't look as sharp and detailed as Metroid Dread or Pikmin 4. It does, however, have a charm that only a truly dedicated developer who genuinely loves gaming can instill in a game, and Jerrel's passion to the medium and pride in his work show through in the game. That's something no Resident Evil or Dead Space game can replicate no matter how much money or manpower they dump in. Don't skip out on this game. It's a blast, it's got a great story with a genuine small-town feel, and it was crafted with a love and care you won't find in many other games. My Rating - A |
I'm a teacher.And I like to play video games. I like to collect video games. I like to talk about video games, and I like to write about video games. During the day, I teach high school history; during the night, I spend my spare time gaming. Then I write about it. Archives
April 2024
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