Những trải nghiệm khi du lịch Indonesia

Xứ sở Indonesia có rất nhiều điều hấp dẫn, thú vị chờ du khách trải nghiệm. Đừng ngần ngại đón nhận cái mới, khám phá những điều tuyệt vời khi du lịch Indonesia nhé.

Ngắm mặt trời mọc

Địa điểm để chào đón bình minh lý tưởng ở đây chính là trên đỉnh những ngọn núi lửa như núi Api, núi Agung, Bromo hay Merapi... Sau hành trình dài nỗ lực leo tới đỉnh núi, phần thưởng quý báu có một không hai chính là việc được cảm nhận hương vị buổi sáng sớm thơ mộng và đẹp đến mê mẩn lòng người.

Đứng trên đỉnh cao, cả một không gian bao la được thu gọn về trong tầm mắt. Bạn dường như còn có thể cảm nhận được cả mây và gió trời lồng lộng, tâm hồn sẽ được thanh tẩy một cách lạ thường. Hãy cố gắng thức dậy thật sớm để trải nghiệm điều thú vị này nhé.

Thăm đền Borobudur

Borobudur là một kỳ quan Phật giáo lớn nhất thế giới được xây dựng từ thế kỷ thứ IX. “Borobudur” trong tiếng Indonesia có nghĩa là “Tháp Phật trên đồi cao". Quả thật, khi tới Indonesia, Borobudur sẽ là sự lựa chọn của rất nhiều người, đặc biệt là những người theo đạo. Sự hùng vĩ, tinh xảo của nó sẽ khiến bạn phải choáng ngợp và không thể quên. Ngôi đền bao gồm 6 tầng vuông với gần 1.500 tấm bảng mô tả các lời dạy và câu chuyện Phật giáo. Trong đó 32 tượng Phật đầy tôn nghiêm được tạc bằng đá có tư thế ngồi thiền được đặt trên tầng cao nhất của ngôi đền.Vì nơi này khá rộng nên hãy chuẩn bị đồ ăn nhẹ, nước uống để tránh mệt mỏi trong hành trình khám phá của bạn.

Dùng tay để ăn

Món ăn của Indonesia rất đa dạng và phong phú. Tại các quán ăn đều có dao nĩa để thưởng thức. Tuy nhiên, khi đặt chân tới Indonesia hãy thử một lần hòa vào bản sắc dân tộc nơi đây bằng việc ăn bằng tay. Các món ăn ở đây ăn bốc cũng khá dễ. Tuy nhiên hãy rửa tay thật sạch và quan sát người dân địa phương cách ăn để có thể làm một cách đúng nhất.

Xem thêm thuê wifi đi Indonesia

Tắm suối nước nóng vào đêm

Sau hành trình du lịch Indonesia mệt nhoài thì việc được tắm trong suối nước nóng chính là điều tuyệt vời nhất. Suối nước nóng Ciater, gần thành phố Bandung hoạt động về đêm khuya là nơi lý tưởng để bạn cùng gia đình tận hưởng sự thư giãn trong không gian mơ màng, ấm áp. Việc tắm nước khoáng này rất tốt cho sức khỏe, làn da và giúp bạn ngủ say để tiếp tục hành trình khám phá Indonesia ngày hôm sau.

Lặn

Mùa hè còn gì thích thú hơn việc được hòa vào dòng nước trong xanh, mát lạnh của nơi đây.Bunaken là một trong những điểm bơi lặn nổi tiếng nhất của Indonesia hay những hòn đảo nhiệt đới ở Togean là nơi du khách nên ghé qua để được một lần khám phá đại dương. Lặn dưới biển, bạn sẽ được ngắm nhìn quan sát hàng ngàn con sứa lớn nhỏ hay các loài cá vô cùng đặc sắc.

Mẹo đi du lịch mà không cần biết tiếng bản địa

Du lịch có nghĩa là ” đi chơi”, ai mà không thích phải không? Ngoài những “vụ” như tiền bạc, visa này kia để lo lắng thì còn một vấn đề TO ĐÙNG khác nữa mà gọi hoa mỹ là RÀO CẢN NGÔN NGỮ, còn gọi theo kiểu bình dân là “không biết tiếng của người ta”

Bài này mình sẽ liệt kê các cách để các bạn du lịch nước ngoài mà không biết tiếng Anh hoặc du lịch đến một đất nước không nói tiếng Anh. Các bạn làm theo các bước bảo đảm chuyến đi thuận buồm xuôi gió (theo kinh nghiệm của mình), đi sao thì về y chang vậy nguyên vẹn.

Đi theo tour
Cách tốt nhất và bảo đảm hiệu quả nhất trên trái đất là đi theo tour. Các bạn sẽ được phục vụ “tận răng”: ăn gì, uống gì, làm gì đều được lên lịch mấy tháng treo lên quảng cáo banner hết rồi. Ra đường cũng khỏi sợ lạc dù không biết nói tiếng Anh nha vì luôn đi theo đoàn và có người luôn đếm số lượng. Viêc bạn cần làm là nhớ mặt hay màu áo hay bất cứ đặc điểm nào của người dẫn đoàn mình đi mà thôi. Tin mình, dù các bạn có đi Bắc Triều Tiên cũng không bao giờ bị lạc.

Đi tự túc
Thời đại công nghệ thông tin bùng nổ, du lịch tự túc hay giới trẻ gọi là DIY không thành vấn đề nữa rồi. Và đây là những thứ cần chuẩn bị để đến một nơi mình không thể giao tiếp được nhưng vẫn tồn tại:

- Lên toàn bộ trước lịch trình
Các bạn cần biết các bạn sẽ làm gì, đi đâu và thời điểm nào ngay từ lúc bắt đầu bước lên sân bay. Bạn nào mới lần đầu tiên đi máy bay thì càng nên tìm hiểu kỹ hơn nữa. Tất cả tốt nhất ở nhà google hết thời gian mở cửa, đóng cửa, giá vé bao nhiêu. Sau đó in ra giấy hoặc lưu lại trong điện thoại. (Đọc thêm: Cách lưu giữ thông tin khi đi du lịch)

Khi đến nơi chỉ cần đi theo lịch trình đó hoặc nếu các bạn thích “go with the flow” thì ít ra đi lạc có cái gì đó để hỏi người ta. Đi mấy nước mà không nói tiếng Anh ví dụ như Thái Lan muốn đi đến trạm xe lửa tên Ekkamai, hay Phra Kanong làm sao mình nhớ hết. Đặc biệt cách phát âm của mình cũng khác của người ta nữa, lỡ mình hỏi mà hổng ai biết hết thì hóa ra ngáo à? Cách tốt nhất giấy trắng mực đen cho dễ làm việc.

- Đặt trước tất cả những điểm vui chơi
Theo mình cái nào book trước được thì cứ book trước, vừa rẻ hơn và vừa chắc chắn hơn. Thời đại bây giờ trên internet đầy rẫy thông tin, các bạn chỉ cần đặt trước là có thể yên tâm đến giờ đó ngày đó là đi thôi. Các bạn nào chọn Dorm giường ký túc xá để ngủ thì xem bài viết cách bảo vệ bản thân của mình, nhất là con gái để an tâm mà đi chơi, không lo lắng.

- Đầu tư 3G
Hãy mua ngay cái sim card ở sân bay (loại 3G không giới hạn trong mấy ngày đó) để vừa đặt chân đến là tự tin ngay, vì cả thế giới này nằm trọn trong điện thoại của bạn rồi.

Có 3G các bạn sẽ dễ dàng truy cập vào bảng đồ và thậm chí là dùng Google Translate để hỏi đường. Đây luôn luôn là món tiền đầu tư mà mình thấy xứng đáng nhất, đừng chờ đến khách sạn xài wifi miễn phí hay đi quán cà phê hỏi password nha! Tiết kiệm vài đồng lẻ nhưng mang lại nhiều phiền toái về sau, lại còn mất thời gian nữa. Hãy để đầu óc vui chơi thoải mái nhé!
Ngoài ra các bạn cũng có thể thuê cục phát wifi để thay vì phải dùng sim 3g nhé.

Ghi nhớ các cột mốc địa điểm
Những cột mốc mà mình nói ở đây là siêu thị, bệnh viện, hay các tòa nhà lớn, quán bar, nhà hàng. Ví dụ như trước cửa hotel mình ở là gì? Con đường đến sân bay có cái siêu thị nào không. Mục đích là nếu mất điện thoại thì còn biết đường về lại hotel hoặc đi taxi nhận ra ngay nếu tài xế không đưa mình đúng lại con đường cũ. Hoặc nói xui là bị “bắt cóc” hay gì gì đó cũng có chi tiết để mô tả lại hehe

Ghi chú các thông tin quan trọng
Tốt nhất những thông tin này nên ghi hoặc in ra làm 2 bản, một bản bỏ vào túi lúc nào cũng mang trên người, và một bản bỏ vào hành lý lớn để có cái sơ cua và cũng nếu có trục trặc thì người ta lục hành lý của mình, người ta biết mình ở đâu!

Giữ liên lạc với gia đình
Ngày nay các bạn đi đâu cũng check-in Facebook hết rồi nên mình không nói. Nhưng có những bạn chơi âm thầm đi không ai hay biết.  Còn nhớ bộ phim 72 hours, anh nhân vật chính bị kẹt trong vách núi mà không ai biết vì gia đình và bạn bè tưởng anh đang thư giãn ở góc nào đó của thế giới, đã vậy anh còn đi solo nữa chứ. Cuối cùng là tự mình cắt tay mình để thoát ra được. Kết cuộc không tệ lắm dù anh bị mất cánh tay nhưng anh trở thành diễn giả đi truyền cảm hứng về cuộc sống cho giới trẻ. Tự nhiên tạo thành career luôn nhưng mà mất cánh tay thì đâu ai ham phải không, đặc biệt là tự mình cắt tay mình nữa hixx (Phim này rất ý nghĩa nên xem nha các bạn)

Kể chuyện dài dòng vậy cũng chỉ khuyên các bạn là nên “để lại dấu vết” vì chúng ta đi du lịch nước ngoài mà không biết tiếng Anh còn tăng nguy cơ rủi ro hơn rất nhiều.

Dù cho biết tiếng Anh hay không biết tiếng Anh, dù có giao tiếp được hay không thì các bạn đi du lịch cũng nên chuẩn bị tâm lý là sẽ gặp rào cản giao tiếp và tâm lý “thử thách bản thân” vì đây là một trong những điểm thú vị của đi du lịch! Ngoài ra thì cũng nên kiên nhẫn, lịch sự. Mình luôn cho rằng mình giải thích mà người ta không hiểu là do mình giải thích không rõ ràng, cần phải giải thích lại, dù cho có nói cùng một ngôn ngữ đi chăng nữa thì cách diễn đạt cũng đóng vai trò rất quan trọng. Nhiều người cứ cho rằng người khác “ngu” không hà, nên phải xem lại bản thân mình nữa. Các bạn lưu ý đừng nên la lối, hay nạt nộ người khác

Review Game Donkey Kong Country

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze on the Wii U in 2014, we gave it a 9.0, for Amazing. Here’s what we said about it then:

“Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is a great platformer full of tense sequences and tough levels. Boss battles are a huge highlight, and it’s packed with hard-to-find secrets and collectibles. Multiplayer could use some improvement, but I found myself laughing whenever my teammate and I wiped out on some of these unforgiving setups. But a rewarding sense of accomplishment stuck with me each time I overcame a new obstacle, and that feeling kept me going all the way to the end.”
The Switch version maintains the difficulty and tough bosses, but adds a more accessible and fun Funky Mode, if you aren’t up for the soul-crushing challenges of some of Tropical Freeze’s later levels.

Tropical Freeze looks great on Switch. The excellent animation moves fluidly while docked or in handheld. I did find myself leaning in close during tense boss battles so I could better keep track of everything happening on screen, but portable Donkey Kong is excellent. I wouldn't recommend taking on some of the harder levels in public if, like me, you’re unable to stifle frustrated sighs even when surrounded by strangers.

The much more accessible Funky Mode is the biggest change to the Tropical Freeze formula, and it’s a welcome one because it makes things easier without feeling like a mode for babies. The precision jumps and timing are still there. You can’t cheese your way through any of the levels or battles, you just get a few extra chances to correct your mistakes. It lets you play as either Donkey Kong or the titular Funky Kong, the coolest of all the Kongs. With his wrap-around sunglasses, belt-fastened jorts, tank-top, and bandana, he’s the cool uncle who knows a lot about living, and a little about love. Thanks to a surfboard that lets you feather your falls, Funky’s jumps are much more forgiving than even the jumps possible with Diddy’s rocket or Dixie’s ponytail helicopter. Funky’s surfboard also makes him briefly immune to spike damage, and brings the total level of tubularness in the Switch version to a place unheard of on Wii U. He also needs no help from Diddy, Dixie, or Cranky. If that wasn’t enough to take the edge off the difficulty, Funky Mode also gives you an extra heart for each level, and hearts to replenish your health appear more often during levels.

The controls are tight and jumps are easy to pull off, but I found playing in handheld mode harder than playing with the Pro Controller. I had difficulty with the smaller shoulder buttons on the Joy-Cons, used to pick up barrels and stunned enemies. Sometimes I’d accidentally throw something because there isn’t as much play in those shoulder buttons. Likewise, I struggled to beat the final boss with the Switch in handheld because picking up and throwing stunned enemies is a huge part of the process. Once I sat down on my couch with a controller, I… still struggled, but less so.

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Difficulty in Tropical Freeze is unrelenting, but almost never feels cheap, with one major exception. One of the later rocket-barrel levels was so frustrating, it’s not only my least favorite level in Tropical Freeze, it’s one of my least favorite levels, ever. You’re required to navigate tiny, deadly corridors using the clunkiest controls in the game. I put it up there with the underwater dam level in the original TMNT for NES. I really hated it, and if I need to revisit it to 100-percent Tropical Freeze, well, I guess I won’t be 100-percenting it.

The boss battles, too, are difficult but fair. I never felt like I died because of some cheap move on the part of the game. I died because I just wasn’t good enough. And I wasn’t good enough A LOT, particularly on some of the later bosses. Thankfully extra lives by way of balloon are easy to come by. Funky sells them in his shop for the low price of just three coins, and there are plenty of other chances to pick up extra chances along the way.

Review Game Omensight

Omensight is a game about furry, humanoid, animal things that are all trying to murder each other for various political reasons. The whole spectacle of it is absolutely adorable right up until the moment that it chooses not to be.

The story revolves around several kingdoms, each made up of a specific species, who have found themselves locked into a huge power struggle. The problem is that there are bigger fish to fry. A giant, apocalypse-inducing demon named Voden is trying to destroy all life as we know it, and that’s where the player character comes in. You are The Harbinger, a silent, goofy-looking, glowing creature who has the power to travel back in time. Your journey is spent reliving the same twenty-four hours over and over with the hopes of figuring out how to stop this huge demon jerk from committing a widespread genocide of all sentient beings.
For the first couple of hours, I had trouble looking past the subpar voice acting. Everyone just seemed like cliché, cookie-cutter bullshit. Then something wonderful happened. With each new story reveal, the characters evolved, and by the end, they proved that their actions and personalities had a genuine amount of nuance to them. I found myself, despite my initial reservations, becoming rather invested in how events played out.

Once you’ve made it past the introduction sequences, you’ll find yourself in a hub world where you can choose to start the day alongside one of four characters. After you’ve gained a key piece of knowledge from one character’s perspective, however, you can show that to others, which will dramatically impact how things play out. Zig-zagging your way across timelines, you’ll eventually piece together the mystery of what actually happened.

Slowly but surely, you’ll fight your way to the truth. Sometimes, this involves doing the “wrong” thing, with the hopes of gaining some new scrap of knowledge, in order to progress the story. Sometimes, this makes you feel like a total asshole. It’s for the greater good though, right?

The combat is your basic hack ‘n slash affair, but there are a few different elements that keep things fresh. If you dodge an enemy attack at just the right moment, it’ll slow down time, but you also have a separate ability that can slow down time even longer, a dash, a grab/throw mechanic, and a few other offensive capabilities. These are all limited by a cooldown timer, so you can’t just spam them. The ways that you mix and match these skills is where the real fun lies. It’s a simple system, but it works.

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Unfortunately, the combat suffers from a decent amount of float, and it can be difficult to tell which enemy you’re targeting at any given time. These same issues affect platforming segments as well, and all of this is exacerbated by the absolutely ancient implementation of a fixed camera perspective.

Just in case I’m not making myself clear, this is definitely a budget title, and it has more than its fair share of rough edges. The actual gameplay maintains a mostly acceptable framerate, but the loading screens dip into straight-up shameful territory. Besides being a frequent nuisance, the animations will freeze, and I was forced to restart the game several times as a result. The weirdest part was that it never happened while I was playing. It was always when I was helplessly staring at a stubborn loading bar. Hopefully, this sort of stuff will be addressed in the planned day-one update, but for now, it’s pretty disappointing.

Outside of the interesting narrative structure, there’s not a whole lot here that you haven’t seen before. Everything, from artwork to combat, is presented in a way that’s just barely competent enough to keep things interesting. You can see how all of the elements have been shoddily pasted together, but when all is said and done, it’s still somehow a great fucking game.

Omensight is a fun fantasy romp starring fuzzy animal things. It’s endearing in a way that, considering its flaws, it has no right to be. With a little more polish, this could have been a great game. As things stand now, it’s still a pretty damn good one. The story kept me invested, and I found myself smiling more often than not. If you can see past the rough spots, you’re in for a treat.

Review Game State of Decay 2

State of Decay 2’s open-world battle for survival against a zombie menace is the right kind of post-apocalyptic fun. It creates plenty of high-stakes moments, punctuated by the relative calm of foraging for supplies while always looking over your shoulder. It’s a potent mixture for a while, until the combination of repetitive missions and annoying bugs eventually dulls the joy of squashing heads, even when your co-op entourage rolls deep.

Just like in 2013’s original State of Decay, in State of Decay 2 you can freely switch between randomly generated survivors in your post-apocalyptic community – and you’ll regularly have to, because they can only be pushed so far before their stamina starts to give out. Or worse, you did something stupid and got someone permanently killed, taking their unique traits and whatever leveled-up skills they’ve acquired with them. You’re not able to customize their names or looks at all, which is a shame, because if XCOM has taught us anything it’s that it’s fun to tell your friends and co-workers how you got them killed. But that fear of loss (you can’t reload from an earlier save!) adds some significant weight to the struggle that plays out on one of three open-world rural maps, as you scavenge the region to build a shelter and work to cleanse the land of a disease known as the Blood Plague.

Unlike the original, though, State of Decay 2 can be played in its entirety (after the tutorial) in four-player co-op, which even works cross-platform between PC and Xbox One. The joining parties enter the host’s game and get to bring back all their looted spoils (aside from resources) plus bonus rewards to their own game. It’s a near-universal truth that games like this become more fun when played with friends, and that holds very true in State of Decay 2.

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There’s not much more to the generic post-zombie-apocalypse story than the quest to wipe out the Blood Plague – at least not that I’ve encountered in a single playthrough on one of the three maps, the Plateau – but there’s some background radio chatter that suggests a bigger world of survivors and organizations out there that could someday make an appearance. Everything else is told on a smaller, more personal scale: individual characters will have their own quest lines assigned to them, such as one woman who wanted to track down what happened to a police officer friend of hers in a series of missions, and when you eventually appoint a leader to your group, their randomly determined class appears to influence how your story ends. (Mine was a Warlord, as opposed to Sheriff, Trader, and Builder, which as you can imagine ended with lots of shooting.) But generally it’s a sandbox-style RPG where you’re tackling dynamically appearing quests as people call for help, and you make your own story in the way you deal with them.

While zombies are so omnipresent in the open world that you can hardly swing a dead cat without hitting one, they’re spread thin: next to something like Dead Rising 4 or what we’ve seen in those Days Gone trailers, the number of “zeds” you encounter in the open world at any one time is positively quaint. It’s rare to see more than a dozen at once, and the so-called “hordes” that appear on the map are limited to five or six. It’s enough to keep you on your toes, but individual zombies are more a nuisance than a threat.

Fortunately, the moment-to-moment combat against the rank-and-file undead is simple but satisfying. Melee never really evolves beyond button-mashing while keeping an eye on your stamina meter, but you can unlock some specializations that allow you to quickly throw an enemy to the ground and leave it vulnerable to a delightfully gruesome head-popping execution move. And, when you score a critical hit and knock its block off with a single swing of a bat or swipe of a machete (instead of bludgeoning them four or five times first) it’s a tiny moment of power.

Guns, which include all the expected pistols, shotguns, rifles, SMGs, and grenade launchers, feel good to fire thanks to nice loud sound effects and recoil that make them seem powerful. Ammo is scarce enough that shooting feels like a last resort, but when you skillfully execute headshots (the zombies’ spongy bodies soak up precious bullets) you’re rewarded with a chunky effect and a one-hit kill on anything shy of a hulking Juggernaut.

They’re not quite as fragile as something out of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but weapons do break after use, first turning yellow as a warning and then red for unusable (requiring repair in a workshop), which occasionally left me desperately improvising my way out of bad situations. You’re never entirely defenseless, thanks to an invincible backup knife, but it’s obviously less than ideal for taking on multiple enemies. That unpredictability adds some flavor to the repetitious business of clearing out zombie infestation after zombie infestation.

Driving around is a lot of fun, too, but not because cars handle well. To put it mildly, they do not – but to be fair they’re mostly beat-up vans, trucks, and sedans, with only a few muscle cars and armored vehicles mixed in. But thanks to arcadey physics they’ll always right themselves if you flip them, so you’re free to try some stupid stuff as you’re plowing through zombies and opening your door to whack them as you pass by without damaging the car’s body. It’s unfortunate that your co-op partners can’t lean out the windows and shoot at zombies while you’re at the wheel  – their participation is limited to opening their own doors, if they have them.

At the same time, you have to be careful: a limited gas supply (and absolutely terrible gas mileage) adds some tension to every excursion – you don’t want to have the tank run dry just as you spot a horde hanging around with a Juggernaut, for instance. Having to keep your cars in good repair adds another layer of tension, and it’s a challenge to have to work your way out of a predicament by scrounging around for a gas can or repair kit. Also, trying to hoof it home when you’re injured and low on stamina is a big pain, especially at night.

As you use your characters, they’ll develop their skills: running a lot will build up their endurance, fighting will unlock stat boosts and upgrades to melee and shooting, and a variety of other skills like gardening, chemistry, and computers will give you access to an upgrade tree of mutually exclusive character development choices that can lead to new crafting or support ability options. These can really add up to make a character into a killing machine when they’re maxed out, so it’s worth making sure you play as a variety of characters to level them all up. Of course, this also raises the stakes of holding onto characters, as all their stats go down with them if they die.

One of the first things you do in State of Decay 2 is establish a home base – first in an abandoned home but later in a larger, more interesting location like a strip mall or theme park.
The board game-style management, in which you choose which buildings to place in a set number of slots, was never all that fun for me because it doesn’t leave a lot of room to experiment. Even the largest bases I was able to find had only a few slots to build on, and most of those were taken up by essentials like beds for your people. (You could go without those, sure, but then you’ll spend all your time dealing with morale levels in the toilet or insufficient manpower.) After placing those and maybe a farm to reduce the amount of food you have to constantly forage for, you’re left with space to build only one or two crafting buildings at a time. Tearing down an arsenal to build an auto shop or an infirmary to build a workshop takes way too long to be worth messing with, since construction can take upwards of 30 real-time minutes.

Review game Moonlighter

As a couple of green slimes distract me, a flying razor-blade golem slaughters me on the third level of the aptly-named golem dungeon. My bag full of expensive iron bars and golem cores spills onto the ground with my life, with the exception of the five treasures I meticulously chose to place in the top row of my inventory grid. I was one room away from the boss before being unceremoniously tossed face-down outside the dungeon entrance. It sounds like a frustrating, wasted day, but that it isn't is my favorite aspect of Moonlighter.

I put those five remaining items on sale in my store the next morning, which nets me 20,000 gold. It’s a good profit for the current state of my shop. Moonlighter uses this slap on the wrist style punishment often, admonishing me for my arrogance without making me feel too sorry for it. The permissive attitude fits with Moonlighter’s (relatively) short completion time, making for a quick dip into the roguelike genre rather than the usual swim through a riptide.

Freelance hero
Moonlighter is the unlikely intersection between roguelite dungeon crawler and shop simulation that many will recognize as inspired by Recettear, the 2010 indie game from Japan that originally popularized the combination. Will, the protagonist and proprietor of Moonlighter, spends days tending his shop and nights exploring the town’s procedurally generated dungeons. Some town elder named Zenon predictably cautions Will against his heroic dreams, encouraging him to keep his nose down and make a living. I say: You do you, Will! Live your passion and don’t let any old guy stuck in his ways tell you that you have to work in customer service the rest of your life!

Will’s dream is unlocking the fifth dungeon door in his hometown Rynoka by obtaining four keys held by giant monsters in the basements of four other dungeons. Each day is split between the two primary objectives: adventuring and merchandising. At night, I enter one of the four themed dungeons, beginning with the golem dungeon and progressing each time I defeat a boss. The enemies on each floor have attack patterns that I was quick to learn, but become more challenging to track as ranged beam attacks intersect with the cadence of golem soldiers swinging swords. I was tripped up regularly, but rarely to deadly consequence.

Each dungeon, though generated new every day in roguelike style, is only three floors deep before the area’s boss, a longer fight that focuses on recognizing and anticipating a suite of dangerous attacks. The three floor structure makes death fairly stress-free. Dying on the boss’s doorstep means only 10 to 20 minutes of setback.

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Combat itself is fast but not frantic. Each room takes a quick second of evaluation to determine who should be taken out first. I alternate between rolling away from attacks and darting in to poke an enemy to death with my spear. A combination of ranged and melee enemies in a room means a bit more rolling or darting behind rocks and obstacles to dispatch sword-wielders first. Moonlighter has keyboard support but recommends using a controller, a suggestion that I’ll echo for the sake of precision. The combat is all about moving around the room efficiently, easier to accomplish with analog sticks than keys in my opinion, and I get a flash of pride any time I manage to roll and dance circles around monsters without taking any damage.

Back in town, Will has the option to invest gold into Rynoka to bring various merchants in. The blacksmith upgrades weapons and armor with two possible upgrade paths for each item. The witch sells gear enchantments and consumable potions. A retailer, hawker, and banker make up the rest of the possible Rynoka main square. The depth and variety of combat upgrades are modest, another earnest but cursory exploration of dungeon-crawling.

Running the shop is not so tedious as a chore but not quite demanding enough to pose a challenge. In the morning, I put my hard-earned haul on display and set the prices for each item before opening for the day. Customers come and go, examining the merchandise for fair prices. Villagers react to each item they examine, hinting whether the price is fair or outlandish. As the short day changes from morning to night, I run about adjusting prices to customers’ taste, restocking, and standing at the register to press a button accepting each villager’s purchase. I occasionally have to sprint out from behind the counter to waylay a shoplifter by slide tackling them before they can make off with my
There's not much to the pricing game. My time was best spent pricing high and backing down until customers were willing to buy. After finding an acceptable rate, I didn’t have much incentive to ever change it, typically selling each of my items at their most recent purchase price. The most satisfying moment is when, after backing down my price several times, a customer finally gives a good reaction and walks to the register. The profit earned is a more enticing reward than ‘winning’ the interaction. Discovering which items are most valuable entices me to hunt down precisely the monsters that drop them and adds higher stakes to properly managing my inventory while in the dungeon.

Pre-shop shuffle
One of Moonlighter’s best systems is one that I initially wrote off as a gimmick: its inventory management. With limited space in my bag, prioritizing which items are worth holding on to and bringing back to the shop is key. On top of the usual inventory Tetris are the many item curses which dictate where in the bag they must be placed or effects they have on the items around them. One item curse sends an item adjacent to the cursed one back to the shop immediately after being placed. Other curses destroy adjacent items or turn them into a different artefact entirely. There’s a sense of pride in clearing half my inventory with intelligent use of curses, and losing a well-planned layout is more of a tragedy than the lost profit.

Moonlighter is, as far as roguelikes go, a quick jaunt. With four main areas and one final dungeon, my progress was only diverted to deal with my obsessive trips back to town to sell a pack full of loot to buy better weapons to fly through the dungeons faster. Despite its standard difficulty being called “hard” (and hardest being “very hard”), it isn’t excessively challenging. I say so with confidence because I’m typically a complete embarrassment in hack-n-slash combat, but even I made progress at a steady clip while turning a tidy profit. I died a couple times on “hard”, but more often due to negligence than difficulty, and I was never set back by more than an (in-game) night. The forgiving death penalties are as much part of Moonlighter's personality as the muted color schemes and plucky soundtrack.

Moonlighter is meant to be completed and set aside, not mastered and repeated like other, harsher roguelikes. Neither of its activities, the dungeon diving or shop management, are as complex or harrowing as other examples of either game type. I expect some will see this as a shortcoming. Personally, I seldom have the patience for obsessively deep hack-n-slash combat or ultra data-driven shop management. Moonlighter cuts just beneath the surface of both genres to let me enjoy the flavor of a roguelike without a lifetime commitment.

Review game Smoke and Sacrifice

Smoke and Sacrifice sees Sachi, a mother forced to give up her son, adventure into a grotesque underworld on a quest that will lead her to a darker truth.

Sachi lives in a perfect, pastoral village. The inhabitants worship a mechanical Sun Tree that powers the community with its benevolent light. Everything’s hunky dory except for one thing: prosperity depends on firstborn children being sacrificed to the Sun God via a big laser. Sachi accepted this when she surrendered her own son seven years ago, but over time she’s come to question the strange mechanics of their existence and the odd behaviour of the priests who orchestrate the ceremony.

Obviously, all is not as it seems. Smoke and Sacrifice soon casts you into a netherworld of vicious creatures where those same priests venture wearing masks and cloaks. This bleak place is home to a smoke-addled, down-trodden underclass – the Drear – who perform the menial tasks required to power the paradise above. Sachi is convinced her son is living among these dronelike people and is determined to discover the truth.

Developer Solar Sail Games drops you into a painterly landscape with no menu screen. Movement is in three dimensions, but every asset is hand-drawn 2D. The art style, animation and writing are reminiscent of the Steamworld Dig series and help to prevent the cheerless underworld from overwhelming you.

That said, it’s grim down here. Survival is the name of the game and you must explore the mire to harvest resources from plants and marauding beasts for weapons, armour, health items, upgrades and repair materials. You’ll also encounter characters and signposts bearing recipes to try out. When night comes, a purple smog billows in heralding nastier foes. Sachi wears a necklace that charges from light sources and provides nominal protection but – as with everything in Smoke and Sacrifice – it won’t last long, so crafting a lantern is priority one. You attack enemies with ‘Y’ and perform a dodge/jump with ‘X’. Hitboxes are generous, but keeping mobile is key, especially against more powerful adversaries.

Items deteriorate quickly with use, and edible goods like fruit and meat will perish. Small green bars indicate their current state and they pulse red before breaking or spoiling. Survival against slime/jellyfish hybrids and giant spinehogs depends on monitoring your inventory closely and repairing gear on-the-fly. Nobody wants their fur-lined boots disintegrating in the middle of the frozen tundra. Nightmare!

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Six different biomes rub shoulders on the map, including grim woodlands, ice fields and industrial zones, each containing specific beasts and fauna. Certain workbenches and forges enable you to craft specific gear and traverse into neighbouring areas. The environments are rich with detail, although they get a touch repetitive. A map and a task screen keep you up-to-date with objectives should you get lost, and exploring the encroaching fog uncovers save terminals and a network of fast-travel tubes, plus chests to store your loot. Saves are manual and it’s vital to save often. You’ll receive a smidge of health if you’re close to death, although take care when enemies are nearby – they’ll be loitering when your save loads and we would often hear the blighters attacking us before we could defend ourselves.

Keeping your kit in ship-shape is essential and more difficult than it need be. Inexplicably, your 4x14 inventory grid occupies less than half of the available screen space when it’s open. That’s 56 slots and, when fully laden with goodies, it can be tough to spot what you’re looking for, especially in handheld mode. As you hold ‘R’ to drag highlighted items across the grid, others shift to occupy the space you’ve just vacated, so ordering equipment is a tedious process. You can ‘favourite’ up to eight weapons and cycle through them with the shoulder buttons while fighting, but some basic sorting options would have been useful.

In a welcome move, the touchscreen is fully supported, and it’s possible to play without Joy-Cons, to an extent. Sachi moves and attacks where you tap, although dodging is unavailable, so it’s not a viable option for a complete playthrough. Inventory management is theoretically easier, although adult fingers will have trouble with the small icons. We also experienced two crashes to the Switch’s main menu during our 15-or-so hours with the game, both triggered by touch input. Not ideal, but you’ll be in the habit of compulsively saving at terminals so you’re unlikely to lose significant progress. Performance is generally steady, with some isolated slowdown occurring in later fiery areas when large groups of enemies begin attacking each other.

Smoke and Sacrifice is an attractive take on the survival genre with a diverting story examining our reliance on fossil fuels and class-dependent economies. Juggling your gear is more finicky than it should be, which is disappointing when inventory management is such a fundamental part of the game. However, if you’re prepared to keep on top of things, and you have the fortitude to brave the oppressive smoke, there’s plenty to enjoy in Sachi’s quest and the core crafting loop.