PEGBJRE: Graveyard Shift and Daydreamour
Twenty is coming to an end soon
Graveyard Shift is an infinite FPS title made by Ahmet Kamil Keleş, formerly known as Aslan Game Studio now solo indie developer out of Turkey. Within this title players are the groundskeeper and gravedigger for a local cemetery, when suddenly one funeral on a dreary night goes horribly wrong. With the legions of the dead rising in protest to the burial, only this lone individual can fight them all off with the power of… mushrooms?
Players will be fighting off waves of the undead as they rise, either in a limited capacity of ten waves or attempt to fight them infinitely. To actually survive against the horde, the gravekeeper has a secret up their sleeve; the mushrooms of the graveyard are elementally charged, and can be used to throw and destroy the undead. As indicated at the bottom, there are five elements that players can find, each colour coordinated with a mushroom scattered around the land (and have their own tone when picking them up!). The skeletons are from this graveyard, so they too are elementally charged, but that gives them an inherent weakness — certain elements are stronger against others, such as how water is extremely potent against fire. Of course, fire skeletons take little to no damage from fire mushrooms, so ensuring that they don’t get wasted on like element types is important to survival and ammo consumption. Now to actually fire those mushrooms, players will select the corresponding number of the mushroom, such as 1 for fire, and it will be added to the left circle bomb. This bomb has a limit of up to five mushrooms, and represents the left click; once it has been pressed, the bomb is tossed with the number of mushrooms inside in the direction players are facing, emptying the bomb pool and adding an empty one to replace it. This also means that the mushrooms can be mixed and matched for a multi-fungal bomb if one would be so inclined. To utilize the other bomb, I found that just waiting a few seconds after putting mushrooms in to the left side would automatically add the new ones to the right — there might be a faster and easier way but I am unsure.
The graveyard itself is a mix of cartoony yet creepy aesthetics, thanks to the purple fog covering much of the map while these unsettling skeletons run rampant around the graveyard. Hidden within are power ups that can help runs go move smoothly such as slowing time, infinite mushrooms and a shield to block damage. Being able to navigate the graveyard is key, ensuring not to get caught in to a corner that cannot be jumped out of lest they attack and destroy our fellow keeper.
Graveyard Shift brings to the table an interesting mechanic in its ammo to shake up the standard wave survival titles which allows it to thrive within the gorgeous setting that it creates. The different difficulties allow those that catch on to the mechanics to ramp up the strength and speed of the undead to make planning that much more important, even if the mushrooms feel almost random as they respawn. It’s simple, but thrives within its simplicity to ensure that you have a good time while tossing fungi at these undead to return them to their graves. If you enjoy wave-survival games and want a new environment to explore with this mechanic, you can’t go wrong here.
Daydreamour is a platformer created by Moon Metro Digital, a solo indie studio comprised of Jay Wilson of the United States. Created for the Locally Sourced Spring Bundle initially, players are transported to a daydream in which a small character has been thrust in to a warehouse of some sort to jump their way across, and there are definitely no safety regulations.
This is a small platformer, so forgive me if much of this sounds a little familiar. Armed with a singular button and directional inputs, players will jump their way across ten different rooms laid out in hazardous ways to test the mettle and patience of those that attempt to cross. We’ve got everything one might expect, from terrifying buzzsaws that have been powered to caltrop-spikes that have been fastened to the walls. There are moving platforms, boxes stacked high and empty gaps leading to nothingness below. The one platforming aspect I found most interesting was the ‘jump activated’ platforms, which would toggle their corporealness after every jump, making those sections more about preplanning just how many jumps were needed to ensure the platforms didn’t disappear by the end. All of this and more for our little protagonist to bounce along to.
There’s the cleanliness of the art and sound direction as well to help keep things fresh and easy to follow, from the adorable squishiness that the protagonist portrays after every jump to the satisfying sound each jump makes. The music was AI generated, which means it has no right to be this catchy as I left it on in the background to start this writeup. Couple that with the 1-bit art style and everything just comes together quite well to focus on the fun that is platforming — if you have fun with platforming, of course.
If I hadn’t gotten stuck on a certain falling section involving spikes and wall slides, I probably would’ve finished within a twenty minute break, but that’s the perfect length for this style of title. It accomplishes its goals, keeping its levels tight and clean to avoid unnecessary clutter while gifting the challenge that players are looking for. If you want something to pass a few minutes and would rather play a game than watch another TV show on Netflix, then here’s your invitation.
