July 2025
Didn’t get much done this month, but I’ve also picked back up editing and switch work shifts so I either haven’t had much time or just far too tired to do much of anything. Probably going to knock out the rest of the Wales Interactive games next month so I can just get them over with because I’m definitely over them.
A travelling saleswoman comes to your door and asks what you wish for. Being the NEET degenerate you are, with a great deal of skepticism, you wish to be popular with women. It soon turns out that the saleswoman is actually a wish granting nine-tailed fox who recently escaped her imprisonment, Kon. The pact is now sealed and your wish will come true… in the form of teaching you through various lessons. The lessons take the form of simple minigames that cover basic hygiene and living skills. The varied minigames are nice though getting to the passing score is easy and there is no real reward for getting a higher score. The more lessons you pass, the more interactions you have with Kon along with costumes. The growth of your relationship is a bit awkward as it seems to go a bit fast, though there is some surprising emotional growth later on… just at a particularly low ceiling. It doesn’t help that your character is pretty insufferable and generic. There are more than a few interactions teased that never actually follow which seems a missed opportunity considering the set pieces are there so you may as well seize the moment. Otherwise animations are pretty nice with decent voice work.
Recommend? Meh. It’s fine but a pretty forgettable experience.
Related to the events of the Security Breach DLC, Ruin, we step into the shoes of an overworked maintenance employee who must investigate an old run-down costume workshop. Trapped inside you realize you are not alone as something is hunting you… and it could be anything!
Much like Security Breach you are not limited to an office, but instead will be travelling through the workshop. The workshop areas are much tighter giving a more claustrophobic and intimate experience.General exploration will leave you paranoid as any costume could be the mimic, while sequenced events will have you running for your life from the mechanical menace. Puzzles were pretty solid but the really weird mechanic in this game is that any interaction has to be manually done. For instance you can’t just click interact on an object but instead have to interact and then use the mouse to twist, turn, pull, or whatever action it needs. It almost feels like they implemented this for VR… that never ended up following through on. It’s not terrible, just awkward. Overall story is pretty solid with plenty of secrets. Though not as bad as Security Breach, you will likely run into various visual bugs. One for me was that the game was stuck in loading while one of the final cutscenes were playing.
Recommend? Yes, it is a very enjoyable and spooky experience. The mimic experience is fantastic and executed well. That being said, I do miss the more classic gameplay of the older FNAF games. So, alongside titles like these, I would like to see more of the classic gameplay to be either integrated or set in some future titles.
Fairly short pixel adventure with a ton of Japanese mythology, yokai, and some real world event influence. You’ll play a young woman who suddenly finds her train ride ended up in an unusual location. Alongside a mysterious partner, she must use her newfound time travel abilities to interact with the mystical forces around her and uncover the secrets of the history in this place and within herself.
Pixel art is quite clean with well coordinated colors to make everything stand out as much as it needs without losing its tone. I was impressed with just how many different things you can interact with and had unique dialogue for. The game is either machine and/or directly translated so the way people talk can be a bit weird and off putting if you’re not familiar/used to it. Even being familiar with it, some of the translated mannerisms of the main character began to annoy me after a while. Gameplay is mostly just movement and very light puzzles so the difficulty is quite low. Vastly enjoyed the supernatural side of this more than it’s incorporation of real life events. Though it can be interesting to see how they connect, I wasn't entirely invested in it.
Recommend? Generally yes. It’s a snack sized game with good visuals and solid writing.
Steam Deck
When I first started my path down the Wales Interactive FMV games, I was only slightly disappointed when I realized they were just a “choose your own adventure” movie. I have since grown my distaste as not only have the quality between games been drastic, but sometimes they just don’t work. I’ve restarted segments in Bloodshore several times over because the movie would freeze and not continue. The weird thing is that the game itself isn’t frozen because menus work, but the actual movie just freezes. Trying to restart it will send you back to a segment far back so making progress between freezes just wasn’t possible. I eventually moved over the game from my Steam Deck and, though still receiving some freeze issues, managed to work my way through it.
To summarize, this follows a washed up actor that signs up for a battle royale gameshow. It swaps between a few groups of contestants, the superficial hosts, and random viewer reactions. It is far from original and wasn’t particularly engaging.
Recommend? From the technical issues alone I cannot recommend this and the story isn’t doing it any favors… but hey at least it seems to be a full story.
Choose your own adventure FMV that has you take the role of a father looking for his missing daughter at a “not quite it seems” hotel. Both the residents and the hotel itself are strange to say the least. One of the better Wales Interactive games but still not quite good. It just introduces so much and utilizes very little of it. Especially with a premise that is meant to create intrigue… you actually need to follow up on it. So much so that the ending kind of feels like a cop out.
Recommend? Not really. The greatest commendation I can really give this game as it features a horror icon, Richard Brake but his role is too small to carry any weight.
System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster
Having played System Shock 2 almost exactly 10 years ago and the remake of the first a bit more recently, I was very interested in revisiting 2 with updated graphics and more. Though I still greatly enjoyed my experience almost as much as my first time, I realized I forgot a lot of the mid to late section of the game and how tedious it can be. Giving you more than a few tedious time consuming objectives really interrupts the great flow the game has going for it. Still, the combat plays pretty great and the overall feel of the game is still there. Unfortunately, though they have reworked some abilities, implants, etc. it still feels like you are unable to really experiment and test abilities without compromising your build. As such I ended up gun focused build despite wanting to finally try out a psi character. One of the greatest issues this game probably has is the UI for menuing, inventory, etc. You have a whole dedicated mode that pulls up everything and makes your screen really busy. Both finding and interacting with these menus is really clunky which can be fatal since it’s all in real time.
Recommend? Yes, if you’ve never played SS2, you should. Especially if you love Bioshock, you should try this as Bioshock took A LOT from this game.
Ah i see you’re a FMV lover, thanks for your reviews on these 2 FMV. Also recommend you Late shift from your backlog !
In truth, I prefer FMV when it’s mixed into a typical game (i.e. Dark Forces 2) so the Wales Interactive haven’t been my entire cup of tea so far. For sure, I plan on playing that and ShapeShifting Detective this month so looking forward to seeing some of their better titles.
Nice to see good things about Secret of the Mimic! When Into the Pit came out, I jumped on it immediately, but this one I haven’t been quite sure about yet. I never cared about the classic fnaf gameplay, but this stuff I’ve been more interested in.
Congratulations on your assassinations!!!! ᓚᘏᗢ
I’m glad you liked Black Forest and got 100%~ I hope you have a fun August as well, with Little Nightmares! I heard a third game was coming out!!
Thank you kindly.
For sure, and thanks again for gifting it. Definitely a nice narrative experience, I wasn’t really expecting much interaction with the world or the puzzles it had so it ended up being a quite nice experience. Yeah, I’ve been seeing a lot of trailers for the third one so I hope Nightmares 2 gives me a reason to be hyped for it.
Have an enjoyable August!