Friends, let’s start with a weird one.
100% Orange Juice is a digital board game featuring various anime-esque characters. I could have sworn they were all taken from a specific anime, but I can’t find any details about that. Instead, they seem to be characters from the developer’s previous games. So, I guess it’s Mario Party but with maybe 1% of the recognizability.
Steam says I’ve played this game for 40 minutes, and that sounds about right. What I got upon starting the game for the first time was a roll-to-move / roll-to-attack random-fest that didn’t have any strategic depth at all. Maybe if I’d been familiar with its cast, I might find some enjoyment at seeing them in this new scenario, but I don’t know who any of the characters are, and 100% Orange Juice doesn’t seem interested in introducing them.
I find this game’s existence fascinating. I was all ready to tell you that I didn’t understand why this game was made – it doesn’t seem to have any interesting mechanics or ideas on display, and its assumption that I’m familiar with its various main characters means that it’s not doing a good job at driving me towards any of the previous games. Of course, that was when I was under the assumption that this game was free, since that’s what I remembered. It turns out that I actually spent money on this! How horrifying. It was probably less than $2, but still. I’m still not ready to say that it’s a cash-grab, though – there was enough polish on display that I can at least respect it as a finished product, even though I’m not exactly looking forward to spending a lot of time on this one.
Friends, I get the feeling that I’m going to wrap this one up quickly. But a promise is a promise, and I promise to at least get enough time on this one to see if there’s more depth to the proceedings than I saw last time.
WilyEngineer 