exploration

Out and About sees you visiting your grandmother and learning about the real world plants that surround a mountainside town.

A natural disaster strikes while you’re visiting your grandmother. In the aftermath, you’ll find a lot of fallen trees and hard-to-follow paths, but this encourages you to explore and talk to the other people in town. As you wander, you can take pictures of plants and use those pictures to identify them. These plants are based on real plants, with the idea being that you can casually learn about the natural flora in your own travels.

Once you have taken a picture of a plant, you then get a bunch of information on what to look for to identify it. Often that’s petal shape, leaf shape, and stem shape. You can then tick these off to decide which plant is which. You’ll then get a little information on if it’s safe to eat or use in some way (or if it’s poison). There are also sorting tables in Out and About that give you a plant part (leaves, for example, or petals) ..

Beatbuddy: Tale of the Guardians sets you free in a sumptuous underwater kingdom where every plant and sea creature adds to the music.

It’s been a very long time since I last played this charming rhythm game. Originally released over a decade ago, the game charmed me with its lovely music and the way in which everything in the game would bring something new to the music. Even if it’s a laser hazard looking to make your life a bit more painful, it’ll bring some sort of riff from an instrument to the game. This means that, the more danger you’re in, the more complex and satisfying the music gets. So, it leaves a smile on your face even as you’re threading your way through dangerous places.

Beatbuddy is also pleasant to look at while it’s sending you through challenging seas. The game’s underwater world does an excellent job of continually surprising you with striking new places to see and creatures to run into. I love the constant variety in the locations, and really enjoyed taking in ..