A very-very late summary of past months because time is flying - May
My last post was about April, so I have May, June and July to catch up with. Summer is not exactly my favourite season, and it usually has its mark on my lower game count - I just don’t like the heat, so I have way less patience and mental fortitude for gaming, or anything really.
I guess I’ll drop the money spent, new games bought kinda thing, even if I buy little, from the bundles the backlog just builds - and it ain’t making me happier to focus on it and its tracking.
2026 May
In May I went for the Monthly in a Month participation, and also tried to get some entries for Infinite Backlog I think (Why not?), so it was a really active month. Left its mark on the next, I guess it was a mini burn-out?
A Guidebook of Babel
Interesting point and click-ish adventure game about a version of the afterlife. Has some feels to it, but it’s mostly puzzles - you have an “event map” of events, where columns mean time periods, and rows are different people. You need to uncover information to build a chain of knowledge/events so you can affect later events through butterfly effect. As it’s also presented in a non-linear fashion, it starts out with story ungrounded and design weird (just look at the screenshots), but it gets a lot better as you get accustomed to it. Good if you want something unique.
CROAK CAFE : FROM POND TO PLATE
Free to play game merge game where you drop food into a “chute”. Two similar items merge into a different one. Combine ingredients to meals your customer orders, get money, pass the level. It’s nice, but I think there’s some inherent frustration with the bouncing items and the random order you get your ingredients to drop. It even has some bossfights with unique mechanics, which is a definite plus. I wasn’t overjoyed with it because of the RNG aspect, but it was mild, the game is relatively easy, and got 100% in ~3 hours while having fun most of the time.
Family Man
After a short prologue, you start the game. You’re Joe, and you owe money to basically the mafia. Get a daily increasing amount, by any means necessary.
Some of your will hate this, as it has a daily time limit, a set number of days to end, and multiple endings that require at least 2? 3? playthroughs. Or three if you mess it up as I did :D
The gameplay is actually fun - there are personal sidequests in the game with “good” and “bad” solutions (and they play a huge role in the ending). There is a morality system (also for the endings), and various ways to earn different amounts of money. You need your time or money to get food for your family, clean the house, and to spend time with your son by getting home before he sleeps. It actually works and is fun, because you get involved in quest lines, you get to know your neighbourhood and you need to plan ahead and think fast. It reminds me of Postal 2 with its neighbourhood and hidden items and shortcuts. Genuinely enjoyed it, but I don’t think I’ll return to it for other endings/achievements with my backlog.
Kathy Rain
I’ll keep this one short. I’ve had beef with the publisher for not giving the Director’s Cut for owning the game, and while I wanted the extra content, I feel weird about having to pay 3€+ (on sale) to play a bit of extra something I already have. Anyhow, ended up playing it,it looks like a good game afterall.
It is a really well made, moody game with heavy Twin Peaks inspiration, and now I kinda want to play Kathy Rain 2 as well :D
MouseCraft
Old SG win - a Lemmings-like game where you use tetris tetraminos to add to the level. Later multiple special blocks appear the game, keeping it fresh and varied (new thing every 8 level or so). It’s on the easier side, has charming graphics and it was overall a really nice experience. Feels like a hidden gem with its 200 reviews only. Had no issues with running it I think?
Poi
3D platformer collectathlon, visit different worlds and get explorer’s medals. It’s a bit by the numbers, and I think it desperately needs a different way to attack enemies than to jump on them (it’s not accurate enough) but it’s not bad. Seems like I missed at least one medallion, either it wasn’t interesting to get, or it bugged out, I’m not sure. Didn’t mean much when there’s still a cheevo for playing the whole game in one-hit-mode. Play it if it catches your eye, it’s an easy-enough game for MiaM, but honestly I wouldn’t buy it if I wouldn’t already own it.
Remember Me
I have to admit, Expedition 33’s French OST had a great affect on me, so I played Remember Me, that takes place in Neo-Paris, entirely in French, and it was a great choice considering the excellent voice acting.
It’s an early DONTNOD game, from the Life is Strange people. It does a lot of things really well, others a bit… meh?
The worldbuilding is fantastic. Both as looks, and as a setting. You play a bit too much in sewers and corridors, but the game made sure to show you much of the world in different ways. The story is pretty good, but I have a feeling that the ending doesn’t really land - it’s interesting, gives a lot to think about, but the main “story” mechanic is remixing memories… so it’s like timetravel, change thing (a memory) in the past, to change the person’s current thoughts. It’s a bit rough, and I’m fairly sure I’ve convinced somebody that their very living spouse is dead, and that just…works? Also the ending has horrible consequences, but we don’t think about it, task done, happy end :D
And a short note about the “combo-lab” where you build your combos - the base system is like an Arkham-version (controller X to punch, Y to kick) that works well, but the combo building is a system that’s surely advertised with an asterisk (*) after it. You get combos like X-X-X or X-X-Y. You GET attacks from leveling up, like a punch that heals you, a kick with extra damage, and you just organise them into your framework of set order and number of attacks. Ofc your can have a long combo to punch hard or heal big, but technically you change the effect of the combo, not building the combo, as I expected.
Shelldiver
SG win from DancingXmas.
A simple, cute, light, laidback incremental game that’s a joy to play and can be finished in ~5 hours. It’s not super varied as you shoot different stuff to collect new materials to buy more, but it’s active, it’s fun, it’s without any dirty tricks. Simple in the best way possible. Highly recommended!
The Exit 8
SG win from SzymonL
I have little to add after its store page description. Got forward in the metro tunnel. If all is okay, go forward. If something is off, turn back. Do the correct choice 8 times, get to Exit 8 and leave. Took me a leisure hour to get to the ending, finding all the anomalies can take a bit more. (You need them to spawn, and you need to notice them. Easier with a list/guide).
It was alright, and as with Shelldiver, it’s very open and clear about what it is. Well worth getting if you want it, but it’s really not a must play (what a recommendation lol)
The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales
The Bookwalker is basically a point and click adventure game hidden in different shapes and forms. You enter books in an isometric view, run around in real life in first person, but everything comes down to choices/actions, I think nothing is timed. Game has combat, but it’s really forgiving, most fights can be optimised, and even if you die-die, there is no punishment and the enemy may keep its damaged state too.
The story is interesting, but because of the different books and wildly different chapters I wasn’t as involved as I would be in a proper beginning-to-end story, I’m not a fan of stitched together storylines. I really enjoyed the individual chapters, but it was hard to care about the overarching story of the main character, he was a bit meh. But the world itself is intriguing - unsanctioned writers entering books, and smuggling out items to be delivered in special chests, delivered to shady people? That’s cool!
The Ascent
This game is baffling.
A semi-mediocre action RPG where EVERY SIDEQUEST leads you through areas where enemies are respawning when you look aside, sometimes crossing regions where everyone onetaps you. I was level 14, doing a “suggested level 6” quest, and the path lead to a region with level 20 enemies that oneshot me. WTF??
The map has floors, and even with an EXPENSIVE fast travel system (the maps are HUGE and filled with enemies), you can’t travel between floors. So you get close to the elevator, shoot yourself through the mobs, get up/down, maybe fast travel again, then shoot yourself through the mobs to your final destination. Then do it again backwards, to hand in the quest. It’s so incredibly stupid, that you get exhausted by the combat, because there is no breather, and you die quite easily. There are no health potions you can carry, there is basically no loot worth taking other than upgrade materials, the same few weapons and augs are dropping throughout the game.
And for a game with this chaotic and badly planned combat comes:
A very solid cyberpunk story,
Fantastic voice acting
Shockingly beautiful, high fidelity art of all characters (only seen in cutscenes/zoomed in to a useless degree)
One of the best cityscapes in the background I’ve ever seen
Complex worldbuilding and lore
All of this makes me think that The Ascent is either built on an already existing IP I don’t know about, or making it into an ARPG was a late thought. It feels criminal how wonderful its “supportive” elements are, and how little thought was given to the main gameplay loop, it’s a shame.
Shape of Dreams
The most single-player MOBA-like roguelike I’ve played.Tons of unlocks, entirely different characters with fundamentally different gameplay and style, and even these characters have at least two (or three?) different builds, not to mention the extra abilities and modifiers you can collect through your game. Attackmove, animation cancels, skillshots, sidestepping enemy attacks, crowd control, challenging bossfights - it’s just great, absolutely deserving its 94% review rate
Feel free to ask more, I don’t want to bore people who got this far with further mechanics :D