Try it Tuesday: May 2, 2023
It’s been a while since I’ve put together a menu for Try it Tuesday, and with good reason: March Madness – my month-long subathon – rolled through like a freight train, destroying my sleep hours and populating my back log with an entirely new set of challenges to endure. I’m excited to say the least, but I’m also glaringly aware of just how busy I’ve become.
And of course, I can’t forget that we lost one of our dear cats a week after the subathon ended, in April. I miss Nathan every single day… I mean, it hasn’t quite been a month yet, and I don’t think that kind of loss gets any easier, no matter how you slice it. Naturally, I needed time off – not just to rest up from the subathon, but to process the loss of one of the best cats I’ve ever had the pleasure of taking care of. Love you, buddy. I know you’re not reading this, but I’ll still say it.
Needless to say, March and April came with drastically different sets of challenges that kept me from Try it Tuesday in its classic format, which is why I was more than happy to reintroduce it into the channel schedule this week. The menu was pretty jam-packed, and everything was pretty good, if you ask me. Without further ado, here’s the recap.
Game links with an asterisk * next to them denote affiliate links.
Wrestling With Emotions: New Kid on the Block
* This game was part of a paid promotion. My thoughts and opinions were not a part of the promotion, merely my time spent on the game
Rarely do I encounter a game that manages to actually harness most of the energy and attitude that my channel embodies, but I found a perfect match in Wrestling With Emotions: New Kid on the Block, a tongue-in-cheek dating simulator that takes place in the mid 90’s. The art style is a perfect match for what I go for on my channel, as well as the DIY punk-ish attitude that many of the characters also embraced. Wrestling With Emotions surrounds itself in a parody world of wrestling, which in itself is a parody world of… well, I don’t know what, but what Wrestling With Emotions does so well is that it takes the spirit of what wrestling felt like as a kid, and it puts it into the setting of today. Perhaps I’m not the best person to speak on that last point, however – I didn’t really watch wrestling if I’m being honest. My neighbor Jimmy did, and he had the WWF Wrestling Buddy pillow toys to prove it. In hindsight, a lot of that has a real warm and rosy feel to it. It’s a slice of innocence for a very specific group of people, and I think that’s part of what makes Wrestling With Emotions so great. It probably also is great if you love wrestling today, but something about the 90’s setting really did something good for me. It’s a dating sim at its core, but one that doesn’t take itself too seriously… which I feel like is almost a given with the genre at this stage, but perhaps that is just my perception based on the types of games like this that I’ve played. I typically only choose the super silly ones, and so Wrestling With Emotions was a slam dunk for me, based on my prior knowledge of the dating sim genre. The game also has a lot of inclusive options, multiple endings, and a lot of good clean fun at the end of the day. I’d say anybody who loves a little bit of the weird, a little bit of the cute, and a little bit of the wholesome, might find some joy in Wrestling With Emotions. There is currently, at the time of this writing, only a demo available for play, though if you try that out and like what you see, I’d highly encourage wishlisting the title. Links below.
3 out of 5 slabs
Links to the game:
Road 96: Mile 0
I played Road 96 on a previous Try it Tuesday for a sponsored segment, and really enjoyed my time with it. It was a Life Is Strange-inspired narrative through an alternate universe 1996, so it was also trying to throw a nostalgia bomb at you, and in a lot of ways it worked. The game boasts a robust “your choices matter” style of gameplay, and as to whether or not that’s truly a thing is something I cannot truly say – I believe it would take multiple playthroughs to suss that out. Amidst the narrative choice minefield was also a smattering of various minigames to keep things fresh between chunky bits of story. It was honestly an interesting game that it kept my attention, and more importantly chat’s attention, for the entire time it was featured. Road 96: Mile 0 is a prequel journey to that game that tries in earnest to create some of the same magic the first one had with its signature blend of meaningful narrative, “choices matter” outcomes, and minigames peppered between all of it. I wish I could remember more of what Road 96 the first had to offer, because I feel like Road 96: Mile 0 was just more of the same, and I mean that in a good way. This is probably best played directly butted up against the other game, and if you’re a fan of Telltale or Dontnod’s vibe, then Road 96 and Road 96: Mile 0 are going to be for you. The skating minigame with The Offspring’s No Brakes was an easy sell for me, and cemented it a solid high score. Would love to return to these down the road at some point.
4 out of 5 slabs
Links to the game:
Potion Tycoon
Well, it’s a tycoon game, I can tell you that much! I feel like the success of a tycoon game hinges greatly on interest in the subject matter, in the case of Potion Tycoon you’re obviously creating, and selling, potions of a magical variety, which for me is EVERYTHING. So Potion Tycoon is an easy win for me, even though I feel like I’m pretty bad at this genre of game in general. There’s a lot of management that you have to undertake, which is kind of funny because I consider myself to be pretty good with real-world management of both time, people, and money, but in these types of games I always seem to overspend, undersell, and tire everyone out. I will get good at this. Potion Tycoon‘s biggest fault, I felt, was that the tutorial seemed to whisk itself along almost too quickly for my liking, but that’s a very minor gripe in the grand scheme of things because at the end of the day, Potion Tycoon has everything I think you would want out of a management simulator, and fans of this genre are probably already playing it, or at the very least wishlisting it for future reference. If you’re into the whimsy of magical universes, this is also going to be a title you’ll want to take a look at.
4 out of 5 slabs
Links to the game:
The Last Case of Benedict Fox
Similar to the tycoon game genre, Metroidvania’s I feel hinge largely upon any given person’s interest in the setting. In the case of The Last Case of Benedict Fox, that’s definitely a classic Lovecraftian vibe and setting, which is right within my wheelhouse. Now, far be it from me to be superstitious, but I was playing two different newly released Frogwares titles that dealt in the Cthulhu mythos when beloved pets passed very suddenly, and I’m now super wary suddenly of one of my most beloved of settings, the Lovecraft setting. So booting up Benedict Fox last night felt more ominous than it should have for me, but I digress. It’s a difficult game to say the least, with a beautiful and rich setting that begs to be explored for every secret you can possibly find, though you’re going to struggle with controls and enemies alike while on this discovery mission. I love what Benedict Fox does, though I couldn’t entirely recommend it to anybody at first glance. No, you’re going to need to have a tolerance for challenge, a patience for some unforgiving mechanics, and a sound mind to explore the subject matter, which can get dark at times. But I think that Benedict Fox is a beautiful game that’s going to go down as a bit underrated and possibly overlooked, though not if I can help it. I’d love to return to this and actually complete it. To the backlog list it goes!
4 out of 5 slabs
Links to the game:
