Kupo Cafe Game Awards 2024 Day 3!!
Welcome in, kupo~!! Here are the awards for Day 3 of the Kupo Cafe! Game awards. Find out the moments that touched us throughout 2024!!
The Only Switch Game I Really Played Award - Unicorn Overlord by Vanillaware
Presented by Moguri
If you know me, I only really game on two consoles. The same two that I also grew up with: PC and the Nintendo. This year, I only truly played on game on the Nintendo. One that I heard lots of good thing about, one that I didn't even really know was a game until a month before it launched. One from a studio I heard great things about but never played their games since it was only on other consoles. But this one ticked all the boxes I liked and now is on a console I own. Strategy and tactics, designing troops and placement, building up named and hired characters, and a great sense of art style and animation. Oh, and also good looking food.
That game is Unicorn Overlord.
What initially drew me, aside from the animations and the clips I saw of all the sizzling food plates, was its combat system. As a leading commander, you are in charge of troops of different classes and abilities and you get to order them in a platoon (with the amount of troops you can place being gated by upgrades that cost money and reputation). You get plenty of named story character troops as you play, but you can also hire more people at certain areas.
You take those troops and platoons to an initiated battle level where it becomes a real-time strategy game and you must strategically deploy troops and move them around. There are strong holds, archery towers, optional objectives, sometimes magical shrines that create tornadoes, catapults and ballistas, and geographical challenges that are unique to each map or mission. It's pretty fun and rewarding, until it got hard. I think I was about 40 hours in until I ultimately stopped.
I reached a point where I had to seriously rearrange all my troops if I wanted to stand a chance against the new troops in this arctic region I was in full of beasts and not furries. According to "how long to beat", I was about 8ish more hours from beating the game. I did feel like I was close. But with the way the main story was going, I also felt like I knew what was going to happen in the end anyways. I just ran out of time really investing my personal time into it and needed to do other things. Maybe one day I'll get back into it and finally beat it.
The last thing I wanted to mention - while the main story was very predictable, I absolutely love all the character interactions and some of the side quest arcs. There are so many to do and so many to unlock to where it's hard to pick some favorite scenes of mine. Also because it has been so long since I played. But I have so many clips saved on my Switch and going through them all has been pretty fun. Well-acted and written well too.
Unicorn Overlord. Good game. One day I'll put in the last bit of hours to finally beat it.
6th Annual Oneshot Award for Best Final Decision Award - Until Then by Polychroma Games
Presented by Andrew
Probably the only game on this year’s list that both Mog and I have played. Initially I only started playing this as a solid for Mog, but at a certain point I wanted to experience it for myself.
Until Then is a Coming-of-Age visual novel with light adventure game gameplay that centers on Mark Borja, a unfocused slacker coasting through high school with his small circle of friends and acquaintances. At first, the narrative progresses at a snail’s pace, mostly focusing on how little Mark seems to care about his efforts in school and is not willing to take even a little responsibility for his actions or even how it affects the people around him, bringing the ire class president Louise, and the later unfortunate acquaintance Nicole. As the story progresses, we find out the reasons why Mark has so little motivation to do well.
One of the major factors in Until Then making this list was its art direction. In the last decade, not only has pixel art made its comeback, but is no longer considered a “throwback” art decision, it is merely a viable direction that a game can make in its visuals that generally most people do not bat an eye at these days. While I would not say that I have any particular bias for or against pixel art, I can’t remember the last time I was blown away by the consistency and quality of a game’s direction. The funny thing that I kept telling Mog is that this game reminded me of Final Fantasy 7, in which I knew a scene was important when the art style changed to the Good art. Not saying that the art goes from good to bad, quite the opposite, Until Then oozes style and detail in its pixel art, putting a lot of really fine attention to little movements that make scenes really come alive. This title easily has some of the best art of any game that I have played this year.
Before we proceed anything further with story discussion, I do want to give a spoiler warning for those that have some interest in playing this game for themselves. There are quite a few twists to the story that I feel are best met with no prior knowledge, so be warned that moving forward past this point, I will be discussing some major plot details of Until Then’s narrative.
Aside from a rather dull middle portion where all you do is make Mark practice the piano for way too long and really slows down the momentum created by the blossoming relationship between him and Nicole, I think that after that slow piano-learning section, its plot moves forward quite well, and creates a lot of good interactions between characters. Evenmoreso when the real focus is introduced, a parallel time loop that occurs around the cast. There’s more specific details to this, but I really don’t want to spoil the soup.
There is some very strong character writing in Until Then, some come across as a little trope-y but real people can come off as tropes as well. I really adore Nicole, and Louise as parallels to real people I have met in my life. I am a little taken aback by having a misperception that Louise would have played a much stronger role in the narrative over Nicole but the extra tension of having a love triangle would have taken away from the real focus of the story. Mark’s close friends, Cath and Ridel are also wrote very grounded, Cath dealing with overbearing, and later abusive parents, and Ridel (dependent on what part of story we’re at) deals with either the success or failure of his artistic endeavors. What I found pretty enthralling was how reasonable and realistic their conversations are about these kinds of topics. The writers made pretty good decisions in not dealing with these issues in an overly dramatic manner, but subdued, and thoughtful.
The singular complaint I have, while not damning, it did change my perspective on the game as a whole. I did not enjoy the ending, and by that I mean it did not land for me, and I do not like the ending they decided to go with. Again, spoiler, Until Then has 3 endings, after getting an ending you replay through a briefer, but different narratives in a different timeline where characters have made different choices, had different luck or sometimes are just different people. I think that aspect is fantastic and I really enjoyed seeing how those story threads played out. For example, in the initial timeline Ridel, a close friend of Mark, is barely seen in the story, and when he is, he is too preoccupied with his success in a film-making project. In another timeline, Ridel is failing in finding outside interest in his project, but in turn is more present in the narrative and is objectively a better friend to Mark and Cath. How Until Then choices to explain these multiple timelines in the end turns out to be some sort of ghost intervention? The ghosts of former loved ones are in this Fountain of Dreams-esque crystal world causing all this massive deterioration of multiple timelines they’ve been meddling with? That’s the culmination of all this great sci-fi drama? Some sad space ghosts? I’m sorry but I have not been this let down about an ending for a while.
Ending aside, and I mean really aside, Until Then is a fantastic story about growing up, dealing with loss, dating, what-ifs and parallel universes. There’s solid music, great art, and it deserves so much more attention than it’s gotten. Sure there’s a little fat that can be trimmed, and a possible ending change but overall an incredibly enjoyable experience. I’m interested to see what this team does next, until then I will await with bated breath.
Most Anticipated Visual Novel Award/The Power of Love Award - The Hayseed Knight by MaxiMJdev
Presented by Moguri
I remember playing this game all the way back in 2018, downloading the first two acts on itch dot io after seeing the creator post about it on twitter.
Now, all the way in 2024 it has fully been released. So many years in the making, I knew I had to play the last chapter as soon as I could. Let me tell you, what a ride.
Much like the other awards for this year's game awards, I wish I could be a better writer to truly explain the ins and outs of this visual novel. So, let me tell you about this but in a very simple way: country hick with innocently-delusions of grandeur of becoming knight gets taken for a ride by this hot gazelle which puts him down a path that, unknown to him, determines that fate of many people's world.
This is honesty one of the higher productions of visual novels I have ever seen done in my years of being so passionate in the field of English visual novels. Not only is everything voice acted, but every single line and scene is directed at a level where it might as well be a whole animated series (or a telenova whenever a certain bard character shows up). The art, the puppetry of sprites, the CG's, and the backgrounds (where some are more than just backgrounds as characters can be behind things) all add this element of polish and immersion where you're not just reading a visual novel but also seeing a story happen right before your eyes and ears. It's amazing that this is all done by a solo developer, which is super inspirational to me who wants to create works like this one day.
What really pushes this beyond all of the visual novels I read this year is the main part of what makes a VN a VN - the story. Again, without spoiling it or giving it away too much, this story to me is all about love. Not just romantic, but love in all forms. Platonic. Brotherhood/Sisterhood. Family. As workers. As citizens and as belonging to certain creeds. It's love that gets the main character into certain messes, and it's love that breaks him out of those messes. And it ultimately influences what I think is one of the better ways to end a game like this, choosing between a love for the girl or the love of the living.
Along with that, I am a sucker for a good love romance story. And boy does this VN have it, so much so that even the narrator writing this story is all aboard for it. While this game doesn't have anything too overly raunchy (at most there's a bath scene), it does have all you want in a well-written young adult fiction. All the main cast plays their role so well that for sure you will smile and blush at scenes.
In contrast, all the scenes that are more serious and push the narrative are also really well done. All the anger, sadness, confusion, and desperation are well-thought out. Every single character is going through something and has their motivation in doing so.
posting for my awards show please ignore also check out my awards show pic.twitter.com/Gabrk8dMLP
— Moguri (@mog_moguri) December 31, 2024
And finally, what really makes and sets this VN apart from all the others is the amount of world-building that contributes to the overall plot. There is an encyclopedia that you can really delve into this world that is inspired by Arabic literature, specifically by al-Andalus which is a Muslim-ruled area of medieval Spain. You don't see a lot of VNs with an inspiration like this, and it was also a new world for me. Not just with that inspiration, but seeing a VN also talk about racial conflict between gazelles and beasts and god-like creatures and deers and robots/golems and so on. What I assume to be a caste system and societal classes based on wealth and family heritage also exists. A lot to keep track of, but even if you are like me who has no understand of that stuff whatsoever, it's still easy to follow along.
The Hayseed Knight has been so many years in the making as a passion project, and I'm glad it is fully released. Not many games make it to that stage, especially as a solo developer. So kudos to that. And definitely give this a read, one of my best reads this year.
Best Game to Discuss with your Father-in-Law Award - Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts by Game-Labs
Presented by Andrew
There are many games that call themselves the “Ultimate” of something, the ultimate driving experience, or the ultimate VR girlfriend. Well few video games actually attempt to achieve the relevant dictionary definition of the word “ultimate”, meaning “the best or most extreme of its kind”. One of those games is Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition, in which it is the best Fallout experience to date, on the other hand, we have Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts being the most extreme version of a naval design simulator that chooses to render the creations of the player.
Okay let me explain and extrapolate how I got here. I have been a fan of Hearts of Iron 4 for awhile now, and one of my favourite aspects of its gameplay was the naval mechanics. I enjoyed designing ships, building and deploying battlegroups and seeing my navy tear through any opponent that faced it though. There were two major problems thought, the naval gameplay had its limitations. You could design a ship but the ship creator was rather bound by the relatively simple research tree, there was no distinguishment between different sized guns, just Heavy and Light, and they scaled to levels of 1-4, ship classes are simplified and there was no really active gameplay but setting your navy out to see and see how the engagement report turned out. A lot of build-up to just go into a set-it-and-forget-it mode. This never really sat well with me, as I liked to invest a lot of time in this, but would receive very little feedback besides a report at the end of the engagement. The other major problem was that, like all games, I squeezed all the fun I could out the confined gameplay. HOI4 was starting to feel stale, and I had done all I wanted to do in it.
I had read about Ultimate Admiral for a long time at this point, so when I learned that it had finally come out of early access. So I did what any other gamer would do, I called up my FIL. After explaining to him my situation, he began to give a long list of things that the game excels at and some of his own opinions on its shortcomings. So I thought I had nothing to lose, so I went ahead and checked it out.
Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnaughts is that goes to the extremes of a naval design simulator with limited political and ground warfare mechanics, an almost inverse of what HOI4 was doing at this time. It focuses on the minutiae of ship design, not only shiny stuff like gun size and armor thickness, but like crew quarter size, gun caliber, funnel placement, and every type of secondary gun and barbette under the sun. After you are done design your ships, again divided by the traditional categorization of ship type: destroyer, light/heavy cruiser, battlecruisers (my beloved), and battleships. But really outside of displacement (weight) and cost (ha!), there is no real barrier to stop you from making something really optimal, and or something horrific.
The main draw here is that ship creator, so the afterthoughts that is the campaign is a more or less tolerable single player mode. You choose a country, there’s some finangling of a quite sparse and archaic menus with pretty limited active choices, increasing funding towards your research, merchant marine, and naval academy, but besides that it really is just rolling dice. Something good happens, something bad happens, but most of all nothing happens. That is until you are involved in a war, and then everything is happening.
So after lovingly designing your ships, its time for a trial by fire, it’s you versus whatever the AI has decided to cook up, usually its the ugliest thing imaginable, but don’t doubt that the AI can come out swinging. I have been caught off-guard too many times and underestimated my opponent, to harrowing results. When not choosing to auto-resolve, you can take control of your battlefleet and give commands. It’s hard for me to describe how controlling ships feels, because you have alot of tools at your disposal, but especially when handling multiple groups, the battlefield can feel hectic. You can have different groups, screen or follow certain routes, adjust speeds, and auto-evade torpedoes. I think the degree of freedom is a double edge sword as I find myself over-adjusting during an engagement rather than sticking to a plan. I think my poor maneuvering has led to more deaths, than the enemy being materially superior. That is to say, I do not want to give a definitive opinion on its controls, as I feel like I am still learning something new everytime I play.
If you have a general interest in naval history circa 1890 up to the age of the naval air carrier group, Ultimate Admiral should be on your radar. I know it’s on mine.
What the Hell Just Happened Award - Starstruck: Hands of Time by Createdelic, LLC
Presented by Moguri
Do your failures define you?
The obvious answer is no. But what if you were an unwise youth with very little life experience trapped in a small sleepy town where everyone is just a little messed up? And something almost parasitic starts to infest the town so much so that time travelers space astronauts from the future have to intervene as the entire galaxy would be at stake?
What would your failures say about you then?
Starstruck has been on my radar every since I originally played their first demo and even wrote about it on my now-defunct blog back in 2020. Four years and more in the making, and now it's here! And it's as weird, as silly, as dark, as charming, as creepy, as heart-warming, and as "what the hell" as it was back in the prologue as it is now. Starstruck is Earthbound and Mother meets Whiplash if it were an internal struggle directed by Stanley Kubrick. Every single chapter is such a trip to where sometimes I just had to sit down and ponder for a bit before moving on.
Without giving it away too much, you play as Edwin. A wannabe rocker overshadowed by the objectively better musician and band in town. But hey, at least your best friend is super supportive of you. You then assume the role of a galactic time traveler, sent back with your computer robot partner to find the cause of something that caused massive destruction and chaos - something called "The Mold". As now this kind of detective, you continue observing Edwin who helps Dawn perform her song "Break the Mold", a song about destroying people's preconceived notions about yourself.
Hrm, the mold? Break the mold? Everyone is also made from clay, and the town is a diorama? Huh. Could this all be connected somehow?
And then you enter Edwin's mind space after being influenced by meeting the statue of this failed German composer in a boiler room who you learn was also overshadowed by another composer at his time, then weird stuff starts happening. Dark, violent. Oroboros. Literal axe guitar. A port-a-potty.
Real dark side of Earthbound type beat.
The game ping pongs between the cutesy diorama charm to the unnerving, almost esoteric exposition on jealousy and failure as an artist and how one moves beyond it (some in really bad ways and you'll get to see it). There's also a fun rhythm game mini-game that's also really hard. But what I truly love about this game in particular is that throughout all of it, it always manages to keep its charm. The characters are a neat bunch, one that balances out the mental breakdowns of some characters with humor and almost slapstick-style comedy and delivery.
This game has a whole lot of charm, balancing out the eeriness and the pushing of its message. Compared to most other games and developers, this on-the-nose writing can easily be too drawn out or too preachy. But in Starstruck, they really make you part of Edwin's and even Dawn's descent into the madness and chaos that is "The Mold". There's a good balance in here, and one that makes me feel that "cult-classic" kind of vibe to it, something that is done in a way where this does require some analysis to really get the meat of the story, but you can also just experience it and get the gist of it. A game that basically challenges you to think and ponder but doesn't require that from you.
I love narrative games, and over my 20+ years of gaming I've experienced good ones and really bad ones. Starstruck is one of the best ones I've seen, very unique in all aspects. Definitely one of the best stories I've read all year.
Oh, and that ending? Talk about a good last decision to make. Highly recommend.
Breaking the Cycle Award - 1000xRESIST by Sunset Visitor
Presented by Moguri
I have to admit, as I was looking through all my screenshots and footage of this game, I just started to feel all heavy inside and almost started to tear up.
1000xRESIST is just that kind of game. One that deserves all the accolades and praise that it has gotten so far. A game that I wish I could be an even better writer to truly express that this game means to me on both a games narrative enjoyer level and on a personal level.
To me, this game is a reflection of generational trauma and how sometimes the only way to break from it something that requires an immense amount of energy. And as humans, that energy is often found in violence. As much as we want and desire for that to be the absolute last choice, it is also one that is, in a way, the path of least resistance for energy to flow. And as we repress and bottle up the emotions that lead up to it, no wonder why this is the way things go.
I'll do my best to make the rest of this entry spoiler-free, but I highly, highly recommend you experience this game for yourself. An 9 to 10 hour experience that is well worth every minute of it all.
1000xRESIST is a pinnacle of video games as an artistic medium. Art direction-wise, very top notch and shows that you do not need much to really make an impact. It truly feels like everything, from the level and environment designs to all the details from characters to colors and lighting, is where it needs to be. Using 3D space and environments to camera framing to specially lighting and framing effects to their full advantage that in a way that contrasts what modern high-budget triple A gaming does is just so impressive for a game of this scale.
I can talk so much about the story, but there is just so much to talk about to where I won't be able to do it justice. From Watcher's arc of discovery and observation, challenging her notion of existence. To the relationship between the initial group of sisters and how just one decision can question who is one really loyal to. To the main character's parents coming from a foreign land to escape conflict only to find that conflict has found them in both new ways and the same. To how grand disasters and a change of power in reality leads to the same, if not worse, change all in a fresh coat of paint. And that is not even all of the story beats. And don't get me stared on the constant through all of this - between Iris and Jiao. God, I wish that they could be happy together.
What makes this game so heavy on my heart is that this is truly an asian immigrant story through and through. I took an Asian-American Studies class in university - Asian American Literature. That course changed my life. As a child of asian parents who immigrated here in the US, reading other people's story: biographical, autobiographical, fictional, non-fiction. It honestly made me and my struggles feel less alone. While I haven't experienced everything this game talks about, it sure does capture certain emotions and expressions that I have or have read about. Friendships. Parental relations. Belonging. Trust, loyalty. Being fed lies and discovering truths. And such a big one: justice. Right and wrong, and who gets to decide.
I love, love, love this game. One of my top 10 narrative games of all time. One that I will always recommend if you are serious about good stories in games.
What a unique experience.
And of course, always.
Hekki Grace.
