The spirit looked upon its mountain and was pleased. Snow-covered the peak in a thick glacier, which melted in sparkling rivulets where the sun hit it. The pure water would trickle down the slope, feeding rivers that carried water and streams that fed the forests below. As the seasons turned, the leaves would change, the rivers would freeze, and the glacier would advance. The cycle felt like breathing to the mountain’s spirit. But something was off. The spirit looked down and saw its rivers dammed and forests cleared for luxury cabins. It had picked up a bad case of humans.
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When I woke up this morning I found that the world had changed. The Sun was a little brighter. My coffee tasted a little stronger. My husband’s hair was a slightly lighter shade of brown. I thought I was losing my mind until I checked my email. Dear Customer, you may have noticed a new update for Life™! We implemented a few bug fixes and improvements. Version 1.349 changes are listed below. I read the list and they matched the differences that I had seen. There, at the bottom, was a little red ‘Unsubscribe’ button. I wondered what would happen.
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Chrononaut Cinema Reviews is presented by https://www.skinner.fm and http://hughjodonnell.com, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.
This podcast was originally published at Skinner.FM on Sunday, May 9, 2021.
Welcome to Nostalgia Pilots! This week, Hugh, Jason, and Jurd take a break and discuss what we’ve been watching and playing outside of the Gundam franchise. Enjoy!
The Skinny – Cloudy with a 100% chance of MAYHEM!!1!
Inspired by games like Donut County and Untitled Goose Game,Rain on your Parade puts players in the driver’s seat of a mischievous cloud in a dazzling paper-craft world. Using a set of weather-based powers, players journey through fifty mission-based levels to reach their ultimate goal, the mythical city of… Seattle!
With tongue firmly in cheek, this clever little game delivers on a wide variety of challenges as you work your way across the world. The weather powers are fun to use and are constantly mixed up. Rain soaks people and can be used for other puzzle objectives like growing crops, but can be remixed by soaking up other substances, like oil which can be used to start fires with your lightning ability. Snow and tornado powers also let the player freeze objects or manipulate the environment, although both are unlocked fairly late in the game.
The levels, which range from beaches to grocery stores to the surface of the moon, are cleverly designed, although a few are VERY short. The writing in Rain on your Parade is the real highlight of the experience. It is wickedly sharp and unexpectedly varied in its targets. One mission will have you ruining a pool party by soaking all the sunbathers, but the next will have you delivering coffee in a parody of The Office or pulling off a museum heist. There’s always something new to do, with a clever twist to the mechanics in each level. The sharp, funny writing carries the game as well.
The paper-craft aesthetic of the world is also well implemented and helps to keep the game lighthearted and fun. The player’s cloud, which can be customized with hats, accessories, and a face you can redraw to your liking, is made of cardboard. The human figures resemble Fisher-Price Little People, and the settings and objects have a paper-craft aesthetic. It feels much more akin to overturning a toy box than a GTA-style rampage. This is reinforced by the brief story sections that frame the action as a bedtime story.
While the puzzles are varied, most of the levels themselves are pretty short and won’t require quick reflexes to solve. They mostly boil down to using the correct order of abilities on the right objects to solve a condition, then watching the effects play out.
Rain on Your Parade is a clever little gem of a game, perfect for unwinding, but it sits firmly into its niche as a casual toy chest of an experience. If you’re looking to relax with a bit of silly destruction, I highly recommend it.
The police found the strange device in a raid on a thieves’ den. The antique device was a brass dodecahedron, with lenses on two faces. But the machine didn’t seem to do anything. Until one day a detective idly held it up to his eye and scanned the office. Looking through the scope, he saw a bright red arrow painted on the wall. He put the device down and looked again. The arrow was only visible through the mysterious object. Something in his gut told him to follow it, and it led him to the strangest case in his career.
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She was the terror of a thousand worlds, the creator of innumerable horrors. Her name was spoken in terrified whispers, in mournful howls, or in most cases, not at all. She was the mother of Chaos. She birthed Destruction and Strife throughout the galaxy. And she waited in her lair and listened for news of her children, who never wrote and seldom called. She didn’t really mind. She sat on her rock and listened to the ends of civilization and it was enough. But there was a corner of her black heart that would’ve liked a card on Mother’s Day.
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“You have to stop the unveiling!” I cried. Outside, the crowd was growing restless. “You’ve opened a doorway you can’t possibly hope to close. The action you’ve taken invites a response.” The mayor glared at me with contempt. “This town has invested a lot of time and money into this project. We have sponsorships from three major candy companies, and a whole fleet of news vans out there. Las Calinas is getting into the record books with the World’s Largest Piñata.” “You don’t understand,” I began, but I was too late. I already heard the earth-shaking approach of giant footsteps.
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He inherited the dragon from his father. Or more accurately, the dragon chose him to be his father’s successor. The creature was clearly intelligent, but it made little effort to communicate and seemed to speak no language. It just stared at him with its bright, questioning eyes. There were old stories of knights riding dragons into battle. His father would never speak of such things, and it had made no overtures. The boy couldn’t command the dragon, but being chosen made him want to do better, pursue justice, and protect the innocent. Things were going just as the dragon hoped.
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When she was chosen to be a priestess at the Temple of Darkness, she felt deeply honored and overwhelmed. Of the kingdom’s great temples, it wasn’t so prestigious a placement as the Light Temple or the Water Temple, but she was sure they were going to seal her up in the Earth Temple or make her sweat in the Fire Temple. The other acolytes openly pitied her. It was not a glamorous assignment. But she wasn’t afraid of the dark. But it was a long time and many bruised ankles before she learned the trick of not bumping into altars.
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Hugh J. O'Donnell 