September Doodles 2025
After month’s of not drawing anything, September gave me the time I needed to actually squeeze out a few illustrations, even if they did leave me feeling rather rusty…
Onechanbara - Bikini Samurai Squad
I have a backlog of absolutely incredible games and for some reason I choose to play Onechanbara - Bikini Samurai Squad... I can only imagine how bad this game would have chugged on original hardware, god bless the backcompat program. For a budget titles theres a lot of things I like, in terms of design in Onechanbara, I like the fact I can level up my characters from storymode in survival mode for example, and the soundtrack is legitimately sick. BUT, the boss fights are pretty all over the place in terms of a diffulculy, some of the arena encounters drag on way too long and the open level design doesn't make a lot of sense to me given you always have to progress through them in a linear fashion. That said, as a distraction during a stressfull week of work, it worked perfectly.
Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3
I rented this title a lot as a kid and playing through it now I can really appreciate how well it plays with the limitations of the original Game Boy. The sprites are big and expressive, the pace is leasurely, while the soundtrack often sounds like a bunch of farting it very much suits Wario as a character even back then. I feel that its a bit of a shame that so many indie games have taken inspiration exclusively from the later entries in the series, Wario Land is a really nice little explorative platformer and I hope someone makes a solid spiritual sequal to it some day
Woodle Tree 2: Deluxe
I enjoyed the original Woodle Tree for what it was, Woodle Tree 2 is a more ambitious sequel but it makes things a little messier. I kind of wish the game stuck with the more level/sandbox based design of the original as opposed to an open world as it doesn't add much other than wasted time, a frustrating unreliable draw distance and a more erratic frame rate. There is definitely still fun to be had here but a little more polish and tighter design this could have been a pretty fun little title.
A-Force ~ Armour Force
I had no idea what to expect going into A-Force but damn if it isnt one of the most impressive gameboy games I have seen from a technical standpoint. Its a shame it comes at the cost of frame rate in the later levels and that the big player sprite has such an awkward hit box.
Cloud Master
The boss sprites in this game are so damn cool.
Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land
Fun, easy breezy little platformer as I suppose almost all Kirby games are. Sometimes it's nice to just play through something simple and I tend to find Kirby titles always seem to make good "inbetween" games.
