Progress report: Fourth week of December ‘21 (a.k.a. Merry New Happy Christmas Year, I Don’t Really Care)
I so totally struggled with that title.
I am proud to say that I’m closing the doors on 2021, having reached multiple goals (most of which I didn’t even know were there, until I realized they’re close enough to go for):
- over 200 completed games (211, to be exact, although I will likely move the beaten games forward, should I complete them later on) ✓
- average game completion on completionist.me at over 90% (currently 90.61%) ✓
- unplayed game percentage down to at least 55% (currently at 52%) ✓
- unfinished game count below 70 (currently at 66) ✓
- 60 games completed per month, two separate times ✓
- being a terrible student (so terrible) ✓
As for the games I rounded out this month’s full sixty with, here they are:
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Burning Daylight
0.9 hours playtime
no achievements
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Coloring Game
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Dummy!
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Evergreen Blues
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Hair of the Dog
0.8 hours playtime
no achievements
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Hotel on the Grate
0.3 hours playtime
no achievements
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Island Saver
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Larry The Unlucky Part 2
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Metonymy
0.9 hours playtime
no achievements
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Reverie
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Runeous: Part One
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Saving You From Yourself
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The Terrible Old Man
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Traum
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TREE
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Ultreïa: Prologue
Burning Daylight - I honestly have no idea why I thought this was going to be a point-and-click. Then, I opened the game, controlled the player character for a little bit and thought “oh, stealth?”, but there is nothing to really hide from, everything is streamlined. In the end, it’s just a “go right… and sometimes in other directions too” simulator, complete with the action button prompt bringing up the Xbox X, despite no controllers being connected. It only crashed on me once, so I should probably say I’m lucky, compared to some reviewers; I think the checkpoint complaint is absolutely valid, though, seeing as even after I’ve completed the game half of them still weren’t unlocked. The message seems to be ye good ol’ “technology bad, reality forget”… if I wanted to feel genuinely threatened by that, I’d go watch an episode of Black Mirror instead.
Coloring Game - Did I ever say something about not buying the DLC after it comes out? Lo and behold, I am completely at the mercy of casual games such as this one, and therefore I have decided to get all the DLCs for this one during the Winter sale. Coloring them in took a lot of time (the paint bucket option is a saving grace), idling out the rest even more so. However, I’m glad I can say that I am another step further towards being done with this franchise.
Dummy! - A very poor, made-for-multiplayer quiz game. It refused to work properly on my laptop, but even after I got it to run on a different PC, it would randomly freeze for no reason, leaving me no choice but to kill it using the task manager. Its loading times are too long for something that should be so lightweight, there’s no option to continue playing immediately after finishing a round and the wins are counted arbitrarily as well (making it more tedious to get the achievement for winning a hundred games). Good to know this went from paid to free, but even so, my advice will be to avoid this one.
Evergreen Blues - Simply put, Evergreen Blues is an interactive musical experience, where you get to choose your preferred lyrics to be sung, as a series of six original songs unravel in your headphones. The music is charming and the vocals accompanying it truly mesmerising. Fragmented as it is for the game’s sake, I would love to be able to keep the music to listen to outside of the experience. Recommended if you ever need ten minutes of relaxation.
Hair of the Dog - Long, long ago, in Victorian London occured a mysterious explosion. Shortly after, our main character visits his uncle only to discover that he was the one responsible for it, through his new experiment. Figuring his uncle isn’t around, the young man drinks the mysterious formula and realizes he got himself in trouble… at least until he can prepare himself an antidote. For a two week game jam creation, this game is stunning. Its pixelated graphics give it a retro feel, it features full, quality voice acting as well as, in relevance to the formula’s effects, real time play - if you’re not looking to finish the game in one sitting, you can split up your sessions depending on the time of day, as the available interactions will differ. This was a solid way to clock in almost an hour.
Hotel on the Grate - If you still remember me calling any game I played in the past “trippy”, forget that. This game is the ultimate trip. Hotel on the Grate is twenty minutes’ worth of absolute absurd, which you navigate as an on-call therapist, summoned to a peculiar hotel where disfigured humans (?) mingle with floating monsters. Likely due to the visual presentation, the game is quite hefty in size, but it’s got a damn good soundtrack.
Island Saver - If you’ve got a hankering for a cute and colorful children’s game, and you loved Slime Rancher, I highly recommend you check out Island Saver. You play as a Bionaut, tasked with revitalising multiple islands by eliminating waste and taking care of the local Bankimals. Even if there’s not much change in tasks between islands, I love how it keeps you going - there’s always waste to clean up, Bankimals to feed… and if not, you can go around looking for collectibles or put some hats on the Bankimals. The game was made in cooperation with the National Westminster Bank, effectively combining the themes of ecosystem care with basic money-managing tips. I can’t recommend this game enough, but even if you’re on the fence because it has DLC, try out the main game - there’s plenty to do there already. While the DLC has never been discounted, I bought it during the Winter sale and can finally say that I’m a 100% done with everything there was to do. Both the DLC islands had their flaws, but I definitely wouldn’t mind if a new island were to be released in the future.
Larry The Unlucky: Part 2 - In the first game we followed Larry through his childhood, this time around he’s all grown up, taking big steps into adulthood. Again, a simple “escape room”-type game with even simpler achievements. Sadly, the third part isn’t free, but I might get it someday in the future.
Metonymy - Metonymy is a student project… and very hard to describe. With religion as the overarching theme, you follow Colin and Tracy, who seem determined to stop the Choir, which I assume to be the religious cult of the world. On the other side, there’s also Enoch, the seemingly disowned member of the Choir. None of that matters, however, because this game is so short it doesn’t go anywhere. All you do is walk around a little as Enoch and Colin, respectively, and at the end there’s a big rhythm game-style face-off, which is what got me interested in this game originally. Problem is… even on the PC I played it on, it was so poorly optimized I couldn’t play that sequence properly. No idea what makes me feel worse, that or the fact that reviewers claim I would have gotten through it even if I didn’t try. The art style is intriguing, although not fully my taste (the shading on the character models makes them look downright terrifying), the soundtrack is great and the voice acting could use some work. If there’s ever a desire to expand this game, I think there could be something nice here.
Reverie - For the most part, this is a simple game with abstract puzzles (even if saying that seems redundant). To me, it was reminiscent of the old Flash games about discovering all kinds of possible chain reactions to progress. The one problem I had with it was the last achievement, earned for playing the game for eight hours. In comparison, the game can be beaten in just one hour or even a little less (took me just a little under an hour, but that’s because I spent a while fumbling around without getting anything done). Its store page even says that you can leave it open on a second monitor while doing something else, claiming it’s more of a glorified wallpaper. Cool, except not everyone has more than one screen. If I had a nickel for every time a game made me idle it for no payoff other than a random-ass achievement, I would have two nickels. Not much, but isn’t it weird that it happened twice already?
Runeous: Part One - The first part of what was envisioned to become a two-part VN in the past, but seeing as the devs have since moved on to other projects, will presumably never be finished. Runeous puts you in a fantasy world, in the middle of a journey in search of runes, which are supposedly what grants their users power, although I’m not sure how that would occur. I liked the Western cartoon-style character art and disliked, naturally, the fact that this VN was made in TyranoScript. Like many other prequels or introductions, it cuts off at the best part, but seeing as it won’t be continued, there’s now one less thing for me to hold out for.
Saving You From Yourself - This game makes it very clear that it’s not about the process of transitioning, but about outside observation and gatekeeping, yet it gets negative feedback for being transphobic… yikes. If judged by what it is - a gatekeeping therapist simulator - it does its job well. The art isn’t anything amazing and there’s no sound to go along with the game, but it’s short enough for that to not be a big deal. Still, if you or anyone you know can relate to the overarching theme, note the content warning and spend those five minutes on something more fun.
The Terrible Old Man - Based on an old short story from H.P. Lovecraft of the same title, The Terrible Old Man is a short point-and-click that lets you control Joe Czanek, one of the soon-to-be robbers of the titular old man. It’s nothing remarkable, maybe because this wasn’t the best story to retell in game format, but the fact that it came to be during a game jam makes me want to let it off the hook somewhat. The art is particularly ugly, but to be fair, this does drive the point of how ugly the main characters’ deeds are (and even more importantly, that this is a horror story) home.
Traum - A tad too sexually charged RPGMaker game about an underperforming husband. I may have charged through this game using a guide, but I still found none of the characters likeable and none of the scares actually scary… however, I have been aware of this game for years now, so at least now I can say it is done.
TREE - An emotional story of a man and the tree he grew… which loses all the impact when you realize you’re going to have to replay the game for one of the achievements.
Ultreia: Prologue - The first thirty minutes of a little robot’s journey. Nymo, who has recently had to part with a friend is now being called to Ultreia and it’s your job to help him get there. The demo cuts off at just the right moment, and pretty abruptly too; and with the 80% discount the full version is on as I’m writing this, I’m really tempted to get the full version right now. Then again… I might as well hold on until the new year starts, right?
At this point, I really hope it’s not about to become something to recite every year, but I truly want 2022 to start bringing an end to all this misery and suffering. Because of that, I wish you, my fellow assassins, to stay happy, healthy, safe and productive, whether it’s school/job performance, learning a new skill or assassinating your backlog from all possible angles. See you next time :)
Congratulations on all of your assassinations and for being a terrible student! Also on that 90 hour coloring game, woah.
Why thank you, I take immense pride in the latter. tips nonexistent hat
As for Coloring Game, it mostly idled itself out (I really can’t be bothered to play it properly, it’s always been inferior to Coloring Pixels in my opinion) while I watched YouTube videos… a ton of YouTube videos.