Board 8 > April Game of the Month Club ft. Penny's Breakaway, Rain World, and Mecha Ball

(+) Yeah! (+)

Aprils Games:
Penny's Big Breakaway (PC/XSX/PS5/Switch)
Rain World (PC/XSX/PS5/Switch/XB1/PS4)
Go Mecha Ball (PC/XSX/XB1)

What is Game of the Month Club?
Game of the Month is a community project open to all B8ers where users share, discover, play and/or discuss a select few games every month. The games featured each month are chosen by YOU the users (and Lady Luck)

The Basics
- Each month will usually feature three games that were chosen via a random drawing from a pool of games that users nominated
- For each game you beat, you get a cool point on our just-for-fun standings as well as a nomination for next month's randomized drawing
- In order to receive the point and nomination, you must beat said game within the calendar month
- If you beat one of the current month's games in the previous month, you can apply for a "recently beaten waiver," but you will only receive a point and no nomination should you do so
- Drawing for next month's games is usually on the 25th
- If you periodically keep us posted on your progress and/or talk about different aspects of the games, then everyone will obviously think you are super awesome!

Nomination Rules
- You get one nomination automatically each month
- You receive additional nominations each month for every featured game that you beat
- Each game you nominate has to be unique from all other nominations and cannot include a game that has already been selected for GotM
- Each game must be a standalone game that can be acquired and played on its own (aka cannot be DLC/expansion that requires the base game)
- Nominations only carry over if you beat a featured game after the drawing for next month's games but before the end of the month
- You also have the option of supporting 1 game each month. Your only limitation is that you can't support your own nomination

Just-for-Fun Top 15 Standings
KCF - 185
gameking - 116
ArkOfTurus - 114
Mr Crispy - 106
Lolo Guru - 71
Cody - 63
Seanchan - 41
KnightOfNee - 35
ViolentAbacus - 34
MegamanX - 28
Wickle - 27
FakeAccount - 26
Arti - 23
scarletspeed - 23
darkx - 19
Kenri - 19

Spreadsheet with history
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1X8E8oqzES42W4S82j7WTfNnzNa8c3uXdSE1rnqYG7WM/edit?usp=sharing

Additional noms this month
Crispy - 1
KCF - 1

Penny's Big Breakaway is on sale for roughly $20 USD on Xbox and PS5
https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/store/pennys-big-breakaway/9phf8szz5nrh
https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP4581-PPSA15256_00-BIGBREAKAWAY0000

Go Mecha Ball is on Game Pass for PC and Console

I was planning on getting and playing Penny this month anyway, so I'm in!

I've been playing Go Mecha Ball, and it's a lot of fun! Some enemies can attack so abruptly and swiftly that I find it hard to dodge their attacks when I am relatively close though.

There isn't any tangible progression that carries from one run to the next. You can use some in-game currency to unlock more weapons/abilities/upgrades that you can potentially access in your next run, so I'm not sure if I will end up beating this since that sort of gameplay loop tires me out eventually.

I played about an hour of Rain World and I'm not sure I can finish it. I dig the vibes and what the game's trying to do but the controls are hideous. I also didn't expect it to be as much of a stealth game as it is.

Gonna give it some more time but not in love with it so far.

Yeah, I played Rain World like two years ago, and I hated the controls/how it felt to move, and bounced from the game within an hour.

Nominate Alba: A Wildlife Adventure

Nothing for me this month.

KCF has beaten Go Mecha Ball

Well that was an awesome game. I feel like it probably isn't a great roguelike though. The in-run currency wasn't very useful. More often than not, I ignored the pre-boss shop since the selection was almost always bad (and overpriced) and put it toward unlocking characters instead. Good roguelikes that have a ton of build options like this make it easier on the player to get what they feel most comfortable or at least have plenty of chances, but that is not the case here.

Unlocking abilities and upgrades (weapons are the exception) may lead you finding something that you love, but it permanently decreases the odds you will get it on a run rather dramatically. There are no re-rolls for when you are offered abilities and upgrades, and the pre-boss shop (meaning you will come across it just four times) often had a poor selection like I mentioned before. I had runs that I had little hope of clearing because I just kept being offered mediocre stuff, or things that were not very compatible with my character or ideal/makeshift build. The simple solution would be to use that currency to allow you to re-roll the shop and post-fight rewards, but alas that wasn't the case.

Enough about that though because when looking at it as an arena combat game, it is amazing and one of the best games that I've played this year. It's fast, frentic, flexible, and has great ground and air control. You have three major ways to approach combat: collision (rolling), guns, and abilties. You will need to use all three a lot, but characters, personal preference, and whatever the RNG allows you to build will obviously lead you to favor certain battle strategies. I don't know how many runs it took, but this is what I beat the game with (I don't remember the specific names of anything except my character):

Character: Prot0N (collision-centric)
Abilties: Spin and forward stun quake
Weapons: Longshot (that could actually be its name) and laser rifle

I was constantly rolling (I probably spent 60% or so of the run in ball form) and led with collision and used my abilities when I had a lot of enemies bunched together (spin) or to get the jump on armored/jumping/deadly enemies (quake). If there were one or a couple of the lesser enemies, I would tend to pick them off from afar with the long or laser rifle. My hyper-aggressive approach did make me more suspectible to taking damage, but I wasn't really in any danger of dying on my final run. I found that it was better for me to hit hard and fast than risk seeing my health constantly chip away by being cautious and drawing things out.

I'm still debating if I want to buy and play Penny now. I feel like I've played a bunch of platformers this year, so I'm leaning toward taking a break (no pun intended) from them for a little while.

I will nominate
Ghost of a Tale
Manifold Garden
OTXO

Played an hour of Rain World. Made no progress, and still barely understand the game!

Still enjoying it, and planning to continue, though.

I spent another hour with Rain World, made it to the second area, killed a lizard which seems to be inconsequential since you seemingly can't eat it, and futzed about for like an additional 45 minutes. There is a serious dearth of spots to hibernate in Industrial Complex and sometimes the little yellow navigator thing will just point you the wrong way! Fun! I think I'm getting near the third area but I haven't discovered it or its karma requirement yet.

I'm not hating the game but in general I can't be bothered to deal with stealth in games so the moment "just run past everything" stops working is probably when I drop this.

Started on Penny.

I'm unsure what to think so far. The game looks good, with nice bright visuals, and the soundtrack is pretty good too, but I'm not convinced about the gameplay. It kinda reminds me of Sonic games, where, everything feels good when you keep your momentum going but then kinda feels not great when you slow down. Each level has 3 optional big cogs to find and 3 optional tasks from the NPCs (things like collect x objects, collect x objects in y time, bring thing to other NPC in y time, etc.). I've basically stopped going out of my way to get those.

Well that ringing endorsement and comparison to a franchise that exudes quality makes my purchase decision easy.

Beat Go Mecha Ball

Really fun and hectic gameplay though it could use more variety for a roguelike.

Yeah I'm definitely not going to make it through Rain World, the amount of grinding you have to do to progress the game is just not fun. There's an accessibility option hidden away to completely disable the karma gates but at that point it's just like. A platformer with bad controls? So I'm not sure it's worth my time to play it that way either.

Made it to the drainage system in Rain World. ...Probably not gonna beat it, yeah.

If that's your second area you probably made things a lot harder on yourself by going there this early

Kenri posted...

If that's your second area you probably made things a lot harder on yourself by going there this early

It is, but you don't actually get upgrades in this game, right?

That's my understanding yeah. Like I think it's fine to be there now, industrial complex is just considered an easier route for beginners

I played a bit of Go Mecha Ball, and man, I cannot understate how terrible it felt for me. Play slow and I was getting chipped to death. Play fast and any touch on a boost pad would send me flying. The fucking laser shooting thing that's shielded in the front... I just never really felt "in control", which kind of sucks.

I reached the first boss twice, both times I couldn't buy anything at the shop beforehand. Promptly lost to the boss because I simply didn't have enough health and I would eventually get swarmed. I guess I got to unlock some new weapons and abilities but that is not my cup of tea for progression.

I'll give this at least 1 more go but this feels like one I'm going to bounce off pretty hard.

Penny's Big Breakaway beated!

Just copy/pasting from the Beat a Game topic...

Fine enough but mostly it just felt like a 2nd tier N64 platformer, so, not a Mario 64 or a Banjo-Kazooie but rather a Chameleon Twist or Glover or something like that. I just never fully connected with it, and the lack of camera control made judging some jumps more difficult than it should have been.

The game is all about trying to maintain speed and combo through the whole level but I never felt like I had the mastery of the controls to pull that off. Instead I was taking it slower and trying to find some of the secrets and that typically made things feel even worse.

I also encountered some glitches in the later stages. At least 2-3 times either I fell through the floor or the camera just warped someplace else. During the final boss battle, I died multiple times on the 2nd phase (where you're riding along this ramp) when it just would decide I was going too slow at a loop...even though I have no control of the speed of my character at that point.

Ultimately, it was not worth the $20 I spent on it. This is a great example of a "wait for it to be on Game Pass/PS++" kind of game.

I gave Rain World a go...

What the fuck is that game? Time limits for exploration. When you die you lose "karma" and apparently there are karma gates?!? Not very good controls. Complete lack of direction.

It reminds me of playing Out of This World on SNES, a game that was thrown in when my dad bought the console from a coworker. I had SMW, which is big and bright and fun. And then I had Out of This World, which was weird and odd and completely incomprehensible to an 11 year old. The number of times I died to that fucking beast that chases you at the very beginning...

I pretty sure that's a "one and done" for me. The backlog is endless and I couldn't find anything here that made me want to keep trying.

Seanchan posted...

What the fuck is that game? Time limits for exploration. When you die you lose "karma" and apparently there are karma gates?!? Not very good controls. Complete lack of direction.

It's definitely a "straw that broke the camel's back" situation for me. I could deal with like 2-3 of these but all of them together just make the game too burdensome.

For whatever it's worth you can disable some of this stuff in the options (I think you need to do it from the start screen) but as you said, the backlog is endless and there are more enjoyable games to play.

I have a feeling that this will be our fourth(?) 0-fer

Maybe I'll turn off karma gates and just brute force my way through it lol

Ended up buying Unicorn Overlord. Seems very bad for my prospects of going back to Rain World.

Speaking of games with recruiting tons and tons of characters.

Nominate Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes

Gave another try to Mecha Ball. With a better understanding of strategy (play slow, use collision first, guns as backup), I was able to actually make progress and got through the first 2 bosses. Died during the 3rd wave of stages.

Still not really feeling it, and the way I need to play to be successful feels like the antithesis of what the game would like for you to be doing.

I might give this another run or two before the end of the month but it's nothing I'm prioritizing.

Monthly Progress
Penny - Sean
Rain -
Mecha - KCF, JONA

Nominations
Ark - Eiyuden Chronicles: HH
Cody - Alba Wildlife
KCF - OTXO, Manifold Garden, Ghost of a Tale

Supports

Nominate Umurangi Generation

It's a well-regarded photography game that's super cheap on Steam until the 22nd

I'm on world 3 of Penny's Big Breakaway

So I tried Rain World again and used the accessibility options to turn off the karma gates so I could get into the next area without grinding. After the game chastised me for destroying its difficulty curve (what difficulty curve?) I found that the next area is completely pitch black. In a normal metroidvania game I would assume that means I need a power-up but here I assume it's just some more bullshit you're expected to endure. Thanks but no thanks!

Drawing in a week

Change to Lucah: Born of a Dream

Might as well nominate something from the bundle.

Nominate:
Half Life 2: Episode 2
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

Oh geez. Should I commit to trying to beat Lucah, a game I played and dropped? Maybe...

Support Lucah: Born of a Dream

I am hoping to finish PBBA but not sure. Have some personal stuff happening.

Monthly Progress
Penny - Sean
Rain -
Mecha - KCF, JONA

Nominations
Ark - Lucah: BoaD
Cody - Alba Wildlife
KCF - OTXO, Manifold Garden, Ghost of a Tale
Kenri - Umurangi
Sean - Half-Life 2 EP 2, Wolfenstein II

Supports
Kenri - Lucah

Drawing in two days

Nom:
Princess Peach Showtime

Support:
Alba

Started Penny. Not impressed so far.

I switching from OTXO to Pyre

I will also support Wolfenstein II

Monthly Progress
Penny - Sean
Rain -
Mecha - KCF, JONA

Nominations
Ark - Lucah: BoaD
Cody - Alba Wildlife
darkx - Princess Peach Showtime
JONA - Evil West, Tales of Ken
KCF - Pyre, Manifold Garden, Ghost of a Tale
Kenri - Umurangi
Sean - Half-Life 2 EP 2, Wolfenstein II

Supports
Cody - Umurangi
darkx - Alba
KCF - Wolfenstein
Kenri - Lucah
Paul - Peach

Nominate: Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and Chaos;Head

Last call for noms, changes, and supports

And your May Games of the Month are...

Ghost of a Tale (PC/XB1/PS4/Switch)
Evil West (PC/XSX/PS5/XB1/PS4)
Umurangi Generation (PC/PS5/Switch/XB1/PS4/Meta)

Congrats to myself, JONA, and Kenri for having their games selected!