games: Poker Quest
Being unable to focus on much, I've been giving time to Poker Quest. It's interesting and pleasing and I like the card mechanics, and maybe I'm not especially experienced at this subgenre of roguelike, but it seems to me to suffer from brutal resource poverty. The damage ramps up way faster than you can gather items and upgrades of any worth. A hit can take almost all of your health, and if you make it to a campsite you can heal 15% of it back. Every step of progress across the map costs food, and if you run out, every step starves you 20hp, which you will especially regret if you chose to eat some for 10hp earlier. The hardest things to find are defense items, because the shops tend to be full of three-handed weapons you can't afford. I genuinely don't think it's possible to beat a run, not without extraordinary good fortune. And maybe it is the frustration that keeps bringing me back; like Bennett Foddy says, mountains become real.
Poker Quest, CW fictional pet harm
For an example. Usually I play the starter character, the Knight, because he is the only one who starts with a shield. But I tried a run with the Huntress. One of her items is her dog Duke, who does not take cards, but stuns the enemy for the cost of one food, the dearest resource in the game. Because this is her only means of defense, this predictably ended with the Huntress starving to death.
About to take another step and automatically lose, there was one other remaining option: Just as regular items can be scrapped for pocket change, Duke could be scrapped for 5 food. Grim, but abstract. Until you click it and the game brings up the battle screen. Facing down a sad dog whose only action bears the description, "Duke whimpers with his tail between his legs. He doesn't know what he did wrong." Clever, game, but also fuck off. Especially since we're here because none of the enemy bulls, goats, boars, horses, or giant lobsters we have to cut through ever drops food. Obviously I aborted the game before seeing any more of that.
