YvoCaro plays: good indies and Japanese plush

Time to sit down for another YvoCaro plays: as always, these are about the video games I’m playing. These thoughts just spring up in my mind, sometimes game related, sometimes they are not.

It’s only fair to warn you that spoilers might be ahead! By the way, if you like these blurbs of gaming thoughts, you can find the previous ones here.

Lots of Indie gaming

We have been fortunate in getting a lot of review codes for Indie gaming lately. Heartening to see how many good games make it to the Switch and taking into consideration what the price tag is, it’s a good way to populate your device and always have a good variety waiting for you. 

Although I still think that there aren’t enough sim games in the library. Looking at the crowd funding platforms out there, this might be remedied in the future. Just look into how many games on Kickstarter describe themselves as a mix of Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing! They might take longer in coming to the Switch though. They still might make it before Animal Crossing does though ( sorry, couldn’t resist this sour note).

Harvest Moon Light of Hope patiently waiting

I bought Harvest Moon for Switch on day one of release in Europe. The physical game as I wanted to spare my Switch’s memory. It’s still waiting for me: little YvoCaro and her boat have been blown off course during a storm and has arrived in a small harbor town that was demolished by the same storm.  

No memory loss this time, but still the same task of helping the town by rebuilding a derelict farm. I can’t really say yet if I like this game, as she has gotten not further then planting the first crops. I did notice however that in this game, manipulating the land by raising or lowering it is absent. A pity, I liked how that influenced the crops grown. But I believe looking on the web that that part wasn’t very popular among HM players. 

Multiplayer: my Switch was surprised

I’ve made no secret of my Switch being played as a handheld only. If it had a life of its own I’m sure it was very surprised when I unhooked the joy-cons a couple of days ago when I was on the plane. To kill the time, I persuaded my daughter to play Pode in multiplayer with me.

Some Switch connoisseur I am: we tried to play it with the joy-cons held up at first. The game didn’t react like I expected (well, duh! ) until I realized I had to hold them sideways to press the right buttons. By the way, we had fun playing! 

Japanese Gaming merchandise

Our first stop on this summers American trip is in San Francisco and we are staying in the middle of the Japanese part of town. I was overjoyed to find lots of little stores with gaming merchandise. Lots of plushies and keychains, and manga dvd. A pity suitcase space is limited on the plane back, otherwise this Okamiden plush would have been mine!