PEGBRJE: GourMelee and Miles Infernum
Food and Violence, Violence and Food.
GourMelee is a co-operatively competitive mini-game series made by Anthony Tesija, a solo indie dev based out of the United States, and featuring music by Visager and Nik Tesija. In this daring game of cooking, players will be teaming up to compete against each other to see who has the best skills to tame the flames of the kitchen.
Each game involved in the GourMelee will have players performing a relatively simple cooking/eating task utilizing the joysticks and triggers of a controller. There’s a variation of Hungry Hippos where players are shoving food in to their mouths until they explode, rhythmic beating of rice, chopping vegetables while also running away from the other knives, and even sushi practice which was by far the most brutal of games to attempt. Chopsticks are hard enough for the uninitiated, gameplay chopsticks are on another level. Once a winner has been decided, the game flips the page to the next level and begins again.
Now some may notice that many of the games require a lot of dual movement and attention from the left and right side of the controller, such as how the left and right hands are controlled by each side or the running veggie and knife are two different sides. That’s the ‘twist’ of GourMelee, and where the co-operative aspect kicks in; each ‘player’ actually represents two people playing on a single controller. Each side is another hand, able to focus on the one aspect they are given rather than the two if only one person was attempting this, and I should know seeing as I tried it. Not all the challenges are like this, some can be done solo quite proficiently, but it is obvious that it was designed for two thanks to how split the attention can be at times. It adds more than just a layer of complexity in game, but also outside of the game as players try to figure out the best orientation to be able to hold the controller together, which can lead to ridiculous moments of people accidentally ripping the controller from their partner’s hands.
GourMelee is the perfect kind of party game; simple to pick up, easy to understand and can double as an icebreaker for everyone that may not know who the other is as they team up with people to win. The aesthetic is adorably simplistic and clean, allowing for players to understand who they are at all times while creating this quirky atmosphere. It’s definitely going on a list of games I’d like to try with others once the pandemic stops, and is a fantastic game for anyone searching for a game for all ages to pick up and try. If you loved Mario Party but wished it was only mini games, and those mini games only revolved around food, then this game might be exactly what to try out.
Miles Infernum is an isometric shooty-shooty made by Badjano Entertainment, the devs that gave us Nine Nines just last page. However, this game is nothing like the previous entry, for players are a small elite soldier that has been sent to Hell in order to eliminate every last lost soul.
Created for the PROCJAM, Miles Infernum is a procedurally generated survival shooter as players are attempting to survive waves upon waves of demonic creatures trying to rip them to pieces. Armed with an arsenal of weapons, the player will be jumping and jiving across the infinitely scaling map to avoid the wave-spawning demons as they show up. Lava also runs rampant, so movement is doubly important to avoid the attacks and the hazardous flooring. This gives way to the jumping mechanic, which isn’t just usefully for dodging but also for scalling the terrain, as there are many rockier parts of hell that give a textured feeling to the world. Getting on top of the mounds is quite fun and a good vantage point to witness the monsters below, and constantly maneuvering around them makes for a safer experience since the monsters aren’t the brightest and don’t always jump over the mounds and will just chase.
There isn’t much to Miles Infernum besides this fun little gameplay loop, which is fun — don’t get me wrong — but doesn’t seem to go from there. It achieved a fantastic goal as a game jam title, and was expanded on a bit to add more layers to it, but seems to be in development stasis with the last update seen in 2019. Will it continue onward with other features? Up to the developers, really. They have achieved a very fun small product, so I’m curious if it ever goes anywhere past this.
Today’s games were tinier, and I’d normally add a third but thanks to my inability to remember to download the titles plus some real world stuff, this will be it.
