April 2026

Gestalt: Steam & Cinder

9.1 hours playtime
29 of 36 achievements
Kingdom Shell

14.0 hours playtime
no achievements
The Devil Within: Satgat

19.6 hours playtime
44 of 44 achievements
Whispering Willows

2.2 hours playtime
15 of 20 achievements
Dr Livingstone, I presume? - Reversed Escape Room

4.5 hours playtime
19 of 25 achievements
Out of Line

2.4 hours playtime
12 of 16 achievements
Re:Fresh

1.1 hours playtime
13 of 13 achievements
Planet of Lana II

6.6 hours playtime
18 of 25 achievements
GAME
PASS
Botany Manor

3.8 hours playtime
27 of 30 achievements
The Spirit and The Mouse

5.5 hours playtime
36 of 40 achievements

Gestalt: Steam & Cinder: A distinctly mid metroidvania with RPG elements. The combat on the ground feels reasonable. The combat against aerial enemies does not for pretty much all of the game, because you don’t have enhanced attacks while jumping, and they tend to soak a ton of damage until you get a late-game ability and are close to maxing out the skilltree. The bosses are generally fun but easy. The level design is pretty uninspired, the map can be slightly obscure because entering doorways puts you on a different layer, there aren’t enough interconnects/shortcuts, and the fast travel points are anything but central to areas – expect a bunch of dead space after you reach one. The quests – mainly to kill enough of certain enemies – are bland as can be. The worst thing about Gestalt, however, is the deluge of story through interminable cut scenes and dialogues. A grudging 7/10
Kingdom Shell: A metroidvania that’s somewhat complementary to Gestalt. The combat is so-so but magic gives you additional tools; the level design is reasonable; the fast travel points (saves) are generally more central to areas. The dialogues are short and some are optional, and the cut scenes are more show than tell. My biggest issue was that there’s only one map marker type, which made backtracking more tedious than it should be. 7.5/10
The Devil Within: Satgat: A very solid metroidvania which does many things well that others I’ve played recently haven’t: well positioned save/teleport and respawn points; chests which actually do something worthwhile; bosses that are challenging initially but fair (although the second last boss is a nightmare for timing); a comprehensible map; and an extremely flexible combat system with a meaningfully varied skill tree including useful aerial combat. I focussed mainly on dashing through attacks as a defence, but there’s parries, dodging backwards, blocking, and move-based avoidance, all with associated follow-up attacks if you prefer that. There are downsides, however. Its level design can be a bit lacklustre, and some of its upgrades aren’t necessary for traversal except for one zone. It’s health restoration is stingy - when fully upgraded it only restores a poor fraction. Is biggest gameplay flaw is that ground-based enemies do not leave their platform except if pushed off; a minimal step is sufficient to keep them at bay. It’s biggest annoyance is the voice acting which is just woeful. And its biggest oddity is that it does not have achievements for opening all chests (which require keys, which require beating a tough enemy) or collecting all items or finishing on a particular difficulty level. But despite all that it’s a game that I not only enjoyed but completed. 8.5/10
Whispering Willows: Adventure game where you explorer a haunted mansion and its grounds in search of your dad, with the aid of a ghost in your locket. Atmospheric, occasionally tense, but not at all scary. The map design was occasionally a little confusing (Not only will a doorway will take you to a different layer as with Gestalt, but you need to navigate via your own memory/records). The atmosphere was reasonable in an old-school 16-bit way but the puzzles were mostly pretty ordinary. 7/10 (Steamgifts win)
Dr Livingstone I presume? - Reversed Escape Room: There’s a bit of a disconnect between story and gameplay in this adventure game. You’ll discover a lot of pictures and artifacts and documents, but they have no bearing on the puzzles, and nor should one think too heavily about the justification for why there are puzzles in the first place. The graphics are fine, and the puzzles are ok, though occasionally one does things because they can be done, and not because there’s a clear understanding of why one should begin. One cruelty (which I needed to start watching a walkthrough to realise) was: If using an ultrawide resolution, it will actually lose vertical edges, making at least one puzzle (in the clinic) impossible until resolution is changed to a more standard resolution. 7/10 (Steamgifts win)
Out of Line: A short low-budget cinematic adventure with a (professional) crayon art style. A spear is your good single tool which provides a nice set of puzzles, though only a couple are conceptually tricky in any way. There were also a couple of places where I read the plot beats in advance – one where I said “buddy here isn’t going to live until the end” and half a minute later he was squashed by a box, and one with the forest friends where I said “Dr Eggman is going to turn these all into spiders”, and sure enough spiders occurred. No chapter bookmarks, so hunting for secret cubes is off the menu. 8/10 (Steamgifts win)
Re:Fresh: A 3d collectathon that is mostly easy to the point of triviality, but what saves it is cuteness, excellent aerial movement as you build up the number of jumps and dashes you can take, and a length that doesn’t outstay its welcome. My completion is not really complete, as surprisingly Re-Fresh doesn’t implement a number of achievements that a game of this sort should have – beating the hidden races, acquiring all hats, collecting all solar cells, and maybe others (including at least 1 more quest to use up the remaining collected items). 8/10 (Steamgifts win)
Planet of Lana II: It’s another cinematic puzzle platformer. What stands out for me about the original Planet of Lana (played May 2023) is that it involved an excessive quantity of cinematic travelling between the puzzle platforming bits. This sequel has improved the density of gameplay. There’s still travelling because it’s again going for an epic flavour, and some small interstitial chapters which are mostly travel, but it feels like there’s way more chunks where there’s an unbroken run of puzzles rather than a slog to the next puzzle; and the puzzles are overall good. It’s also a bit scrappier: instead of a more or less linear left-right main journey to the distant end, for much of the game you are dropped in different biomes to obtain something. From about half way on, I reckoned that they were building for a sequel, and the ending makes that rather likely. 8/10
Botany Manor: When I got a mostly blank book at the start, I immediately thought of Obra Dinn. This is, however, a more standard – though good – puzzle adventure, where you grow plants through different methods that must be discovered. It would have been slightly nicer if you could review clues that you’d discovered through the book, rather than needing to backtrack to them. I got it for free, but if you’re going to pay for it, better to get it on Steam, as not only does Epic have fewer Achievements, but their identities are genuinely locked off so it’s more painful to track down if you’re completionist. 8.5/10
Spirit and the Mouse: Another cozy 3d collectathon. There’s a few more challenges in this one than Re:Fresh, as you complete electricity-related restoration to make people happy. You eventually get a dash (but not an air dash or a dash while climbing), but that has a reasonable recharge period, and jumps are contextual when you’re next to a ledge, so there’s not really as great a flow of movement as would be ideal. It struck me that these combat-free collectathon games (Little Kitty, Big City was another) with their expansion of abilities affecting exploration fit somewhat in the metroidvania space. For me, a lasting flaw is it doesn’t wrap up the opening (You go to retrieve a scarf for someone and you don’t get to complete that) 7.5/10

Won’t finish

Ghost 1.0

5.0 hours playtime
8 of 119 achievements
Orbi Universo

7.5 hours playtime
18 of 80 achievements
Toodee and Topdee

5.4 hours playtime
4 of 21 achievements
Cobra Kai 2: Dojos Rising

2.6 hours playtime
14 of 55 achievements

Ghost 1.0: The reviews for this game on Steam are Very Positive, so it clearly is doing something right for a lot of people, but I’m not one of them. This game’s innovation is that you can take over other robots and act and fight using their capabilities. It’s largely combat oriented, with level and arena design as bland as bland can be. Some consider it a metroidvania; others consider it as more in the roguelite / action platformer space. From what I’ve seen I’m more in the latter camp. A subjective 6.5/10 (Steamgifts win)
Orbi Universo: Manage resource flows to build your civilisation and deal with threats. I’m glad to have played it, and there will be those who after a more abstract crunchy Civ game who will really enjoy getting into the weeds with understanding the systems. 7+/10 (Steamgifts win)
Toodee and Topdee: A puzzler where you control two characters, one who operates in overhead view, and the other who operates in side-on view with gravity. It starts out well, and is worth a play, but it does get to a point at which co-ordinating the pair becomes very fiddly and timing-sensitive to the point of frustration. 7.5+/10 (Steamgifts win)
Cobra Kai 2: Dojos Rising: Basically, a mediocre old-school 3d beat-em up. In theory you can play more strategically by carefully choosing the moves you use, but with a horde of enemies to face, I frequently found myself reverting to reasonably successful button mashing. 6/10 (Steamgifts win)