Chime, Swarm Arena & Amnesia

Welcome to the world of video games! I am here tonight, taking a break from Amnesia to present three games I have recently acquired. One of which is, of course, Amnesia. The more promotion I can deliver for the game, the better it is for Frictional Games and their future projects! Today I will present you Chime, Swarm Arena and Amnesia: The Dark Descent, all bundled with a really simple video and small impressions of each titles for your pleasure. To top it off, as I am a gentlemen, @Xiao asked me for something and I am here to deliver. You will learn more at the complete bottom since, as expected, we always keep the best for the end. Let's begin!



Let's begin with the worst acquisition out of the small list of games we have today. Swarm Arena is a game released by the independent developers known as Dedication games. It plays like every small arcade shooters, much like Geometry Wars or Super Stardust to name two popular names in the genre. The games promises some interesting ways of 'shooting': You're 'character', per say, consist of a circle or a core, which is surrounded by needle-shaped things. The swarm created by your little friends will serve as your only means of offense. When you hold the shoot button, depending on the current power you are equipped with, the needles will either spin in a circle or scatter around the play field, eliminating the opponents and their own swarms of little guys. Using an attack reduces your field, something we could call a magnetic field which keeps your friends around you, thus making it more difficult to maneuver around while keeping them with you.

While fairly simple, with an interesting and unique concept, Swarm Arena is just plain boring in my opinion. The trailers did show quite an exciting game, addictive and filled with variety, but in all reality, most of the modes will play just the same and the attacks you have aren't any more varied either. You just spend your time flying here and there, shooting, rinse and repeat. I do not recommend this game to anyone actually, unless you're really out of your mind and definitely want the game. I would expect the local multiplayer to hold more entertainment value, but with my extremely active social life, I do not have a local friend to try it out with.

With such, please try to enjoy this very basic video I have made of a mode where the sole purpose is to gain a score, trying to compete for the best score of the leaderboards. What you will see is what you get, even in 'The Path', which serves as the main campaign, in which you basically do the same but in separated goals.


Swarm Arena - Gameplay



With the previous disappointment that Swarm Arena was, Chime is welcomed with arms wide open. Strangely resembling Lumines and being a copy of an old game which I cannot remember the name of, Chime shines out there nonetheless with its appealing look and very well implemented music mechanism, on top of requiring very good strategic thinking.

Chime is a block puzzle in which you are given pieces after another, which you then need to place on a field. The goal here is to create quads, which will fill over time and eventually become a block. After a set time, the block will 'disappear', allowing you to place further blocks in the area. Creating quads isn't as easy as it may sound though, as most of the pieces have quite unique shapes for the most part and at least one entire piece must be used for the quad to take form. The main purpose of these quads is to cover as much of the field as possible and, once the field is covered at 100%, you are granted the next level in the level in question. Let me explain a little bit: The game has a few different levels, each of which consist of different levels within themselves, augmenting the difficulty with each field covered at 100%.

Musically, each of the blocks dropped will create a sound when the timeline passes over them. A quad will also create different sounds, and in the end, with a well covered field and the ability at creating several quads at a time, you end up with a beautifully relaxing song playing. Chime truly shines among the music based puzzle genre and at $5, it's a no-brainer for people who might be interested.

Here I have a small video of one my attempts which, as usual, was quite poor in quality. I was good at Lumines, but I am far from having developed enough skills to quickly cover a field. With that in mind, the video is cut into several parts, but each parts were taken during the same playthrough. Unfortunately, I only did it with one level due to being lazy and overly obsessed with Amnesia.


Chime - Custom Gameplay Trailer



Speaking of the devil, I wanted to make sure you would see this logo, hence why it is bigger than the others. Promoting Amnesia has been a goal of mine for a while now, and I believe I did fairly well, although I could have done so much more for it. Nonetheless, I still got tons of people from my job to download the demo and at least try out the game, everyone who works with me now knows about Amnesia. I hope I have gotten some of you to at least try it as well, whether you liked it or not isn't important, but rather trying it and giving the game a chance is what matters. For this, I would like to thank everyone who took a look at the game and NoobFeed as a whole to have let me give Amnesia some of the spot light it deserves.

Amnesia came out as a big deception when playing.. just kidding lol, the game is amazing. The game delivered to my full expectations so far and even more. While navigating as Daniel through the eery hallways of the castle, one must pay attention to several details in order to survive, which is a big improvement over the Penumbra series and its reputed glow stick, which provided infinite light for the users. In Amnesia, the oil lamp actually requires oil, therefore it cannot be kept on at all times and constantly needs to be refilled. You also have access to some Tinderboxes in order to light up the several candles and torches on the walls, but these are limited as well. What exactly does this mean? Daniel appears to be frightened by the dark, as we once used to be when being kids and as many people still are when growing older.

This is precisely when we learn that a Sanity meter isn't there just for entertainment purpose, but serves a vital element in your survival. Staying in the dark for extended periods of times, witnessing phenomenon and staring at creatures will quickly lower your Sanity and once it reaches the status known as "...", you can be considered barely alive. Daniel starts being light headed, seeing blurry and having difficulties walking, and the worst is that it can go further to the point where Daniel will simply crumble down to the floor and have to crawl for a moment before his sanity rises a bit. That's all fun and pleasant, but how joyful it is with creatures around? Even with a stable sanity, you cannot escape most of the creatures. Escaping is your only method of even hoping to survive an attack, but how can you escape when you are crawling on the floor when lightning fast creatures are after you? That's right: You can't.

But how do you hide from monsters? By remaining in the dark and being still, that is. Now mix all of this together and you will learn that more often than not, you are on the edge of insanity. This complex yet simple seen feature delivers quite a punch in such a psychological horror game and is one of the most welcomed. To top it off, Daniel cannot remember a single thing of what happened, thanks to Amnesia itself, and to make it even stranger, you will find notes left behind written by none other than yourself.

I did not want to record a video of Amnesia until finishing it, but thanks to Xiao, I just had to. I came across the so-called "Hatch puzzle" and it struck my mind that Xiao asked me what happened after the hatch puzzle and I am here to deliver this video for that purpose.. but I too, can be evil, so you do get to see what lies beyond the hatch, but how much can you see exactly?

With this video which is taken from the same area as the hatch puzzle gameplay trailer, I wanted to show what the gameplay looks like and what to expect from Amnesia, all while showing how the story unfolds before your eyes. This is a lengthy video as well. Oh and yes, I did record while in Eyefinity, and wanted to brag a little bit about the fact that Amnesia works wonderfully well on my setup, I just had to slip this in. Enjoy!

NOTE: As a side note, Jen and I are currently both playing the game and as expected, we came up with almost the same area for the video. Vote me for president ;D (just kidding jen ;p).

WARNING: This video may contain spoilers for some people. While I tried to avoid the obvious, extremely tensed moments that should be experienced no other way than by playing the game, I still find it important to deliver this warning. This type of game shouldn't even have a video to begin with and should be left where it's best at: Experienced by playing it.


Amnesia: The Dark Descent - The Hatch