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"From out of the dark"

From Out Of The Dark

From out of the dark is a collection of 6 songs finished during the infamous Covid lockdown of 2020, drawing musical influences from many different genres and based on different themes close to my heart.

Some with a narrative, others about how I felt a particular junction in life, playing music, writing and recording songs has been a great outlet for me and helped me deal with and express myself in a productive fashion.

With no single genre over the six songs I decided to put them out as From out of the dark, to show how something good can come from the darkness. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed making them.

I appreciate so much all the friends and family who have helped critique these tracks ready for public consumption. Thanks also to my younger sister, Hannah, for providing her vocal talents and lyric writing on two of the songs.

Please listen below and follow me on all of my social networks using the links above.

Matt x

#Pullblox


Pullblox is definitely up there with the games actually worth paying the asking price for on Nintendo's fabled eShop. £5.49, it's again a little more than I like to pay for downloadable game (I am a stickler for wanting a hard copy and hoarding them all in my 'collection'). Pullblox just feels like a quality made game, like something Nintendo themselves would create on their own machines. The sounds, graphics and gameplay are all immaculately presented in this lengthy puzzle game for your 3DS.

The aim of the game, as is a little too thoroughly explained to you by a Pullblox veteran, is to save children from the world of Pullblox who have, thanks to a mischievous scamp, gotten themselves stuck at the top of towers of blox. The towers start of flat, but by holding B your character can pull the blox outward, aiming to find a route up and rescue the child on top.

Sounds easy right? Err no.. Pullblox soon becomes devilish, and if your not awake it can really be quite hard. Even levels rated 3 stars (out of 5) can be fiendishly tricky to wrap your head around. 

As you progress more features are added such as manhole covers - working like warp points, and colour buttons which fully eject all blox of a certain colour. These features make sure the game has some added longevity, increasing the difficulty at a good rate, without changing too much too quickly.


It's an addictive concept, but also looks great with the 3D on or off. The Pullblox levels are all laid out splendidly, with some of the earlier rounds resembling different day to day objects. It's bright and colourful and is just a happy game to play. Rather than play it all straight through, it's been a game, for me at least that i've kept returning to for short bursts. 

Intelligent Systems have added even more content to the already lengthy main game by adding in a Pullblox level creator. This is a superb addition and is great fun! It's easy to use and let's you use all of the features present in the main play-through of the game. It furthermore allows you to share these levels via a QR code generator. So far, I have made a Tetris themed level, a Mario puzzle block, and my girlfriend made a Tardis level. It really is good fun and extremely creative.


To sum up then, an ingenious, colourful cute puzzle game with loads of content and superbly presented. There's really hardly anything bad really going for it, and as long as you like the cutesie style (though I can't imagine a COD themed version..) it should be something you get immediately for your 3DS library. Expensive compared to puzzle games on mobile devices, but it's just completely worth it. 

9/10

(First screenshot taken from http://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-3DS-download-software/Pullblox--298087.html#)

#SteamWorldDig


£7.99 on the Nintendo 3DS eShop, SteamWorld Dig was another game that was just a little more expensive then I care to pay for a downloadable version of a game, and as such I ignored it for a while. 

As time went on, I kept seeing more mentions of the game around twitter and gaming sites. It was getting 90%+ reviews in a number of places and people seemed genuinely excited by this new game in the SteamWorld universe (there was just one previous, SteamWorld Tower Defense, a strategy game made for DSiWare). And after developer Image & Form bothered to reply to a tweet I made about feeling intrigued by the title, I decided to take the plunge and support a friendly developer along the way. 

I was definitely glad I did. 

Set in a Old West meets Steampunk one horse town, you take the role of Rusty, the son of a minor recently missing down the mines in Tumbleton. It starts of gently enough, with a mix of Platforming meets Metoroidvania style exploration meets Boulderdash, chipping away at the rocks to obtain gems to get cash to upgrade gear to chip harder rocks, to get gems to get cash to upgrade gear and so on... 



Very quickly, it becomes very intriguing. The map you make will be truly unique as you dig through the Earth creating your own levels, and with only a small backpack and oil lantern to begin with, as well as some water powered abilities later on, it also very much becomes about resource management and deciding when to return to the surface to sell your finds and refill your lantern. You may have just reached a really exciting looking cave, but have absolutely no room for any more loot. 



Luckily, instead of trawling back to the surface every time, Image & Form have included teleports which are sometimes found, but can be bought and placed around your mines for easy access back to the surface. 

As you dig further and further down, through the varied environments which change when you reach the next 'level', you discover more and more about your dad's disappearance, learning that he'd been tinkering with steam based machinery and inventions, all of which is, luckily, tailored to Rusty's exact fit, meaning you can equip exciting power-ups for more varied exploration and combat. Yes, there are indeed monsters down there with you, some of whom are fiendishly difficult especially when supplies are running low. There's also a big variety of the bad guys, from hard shell turtle like creatures, to suicidal zombies. 



The story and gameplay are excellent in this game. It is a little short, but seeing as the map is pretty much unique every time there's great opportunity for a replay or two down the line. It also looks fantastic - the videos on the eShop just don't seem to do it justice. The way Rusty moves and reacts to different abilities is superb, and the environments and the rest of the characters are all just as exquisitely designed and drawn. 

Another 'buy' then it would seem for the eShop, which has been a little slow of late. I look forward to more games of this caliber popping up, as well as the next entry in the SteamWorld series. 

9/10

(Pictures taken from the official SteamWorld Dig site at http://steamworldgames.com/dig/)

Conduit 2



Sadly, the best part of this game is the first level. It’s kind of down hill from there on I’m afraid, but not so much that it ruins the whole experience.

The game looks stunning (the water effects in that first level are luscious) and it really pushes the Wii to its limits. The story is lame, though kind of cheesy lame which makes it bad, but enjoyable. It see's you visiting a wide variety of both alien and terrestrial locations.




The game also arms you with a mix of alien and terrestrial weapons. It sounds cool to be using lots of funky alien weaponry to blast your way through Conduit 2's interesting environments, but in truth it's a lot more satisfying firing an semi-automatic from good old fashioned Earth.  

The missions involve you collecting alien spirits, which apparently give you extra powers to defeat the games ultimate bad guy. This would be a good Zeldaish method of progression... Except there was no noticeable evidence of these rewards aiding combat in any way. Imagine getting to the next temple in Zelda and NOT getting a shiny new item to use? Yeah...  

This makes working through the game quite repetitive, so it's a good job it's nice to look at as you'd probably give up well before the ending if it wasn't

And if you get to the ending, you'll see it's predictably quite tacky, the incredible looking cut scene feeling far too short with a shoehorned plot device to make way for a possible sequel. 

This review sounds much more harsh than I originally intended, as I actually had fun playing through this game despite it's pitfalls. If you’re willing to take the rough with the smooth then this will make for a fairly enjoyable play, on a format that had a tendency to be ignored. I'd also recomend a Wii classic controller for the most fun. 

6.5/10

(originally posted on Tumblr a long time ago. Edited and reposted in October 2013)