Alright, August, September, and October are in the books, lol. Been a minute since I posted an update here. Highlights for me over the last couple months include The Liquid Jet, Celestial Return, and Warhounds. Mostly, I’ve just been playing curator titles and rolling through some reviews as well.
August
Goblin and Recipes: Match-3 Adventure
3.7 hours, 011 of 012 achievements
It's not a particularly special game, but it was made by a friend and is serviceable. Decent time killer.
FatalZone
17.1 hours, 60 of 330 achievements
This was a fun but flawed bullet heaven game. A lot of great ideas, execution is mid. Worth a look, but maybe only bundled or at a steep discount.
Celestial Return
10.0 hours, 9 of 18 achievements
For sure my favorite game over the last three months. Cthulhu meets Cyberpunk meets Megastructure wrapped in a hard-boiled detective game with structure and gameplay mechanics that take inspiration from Disco Elysium
Mistfall Hunter
12.7 hours, 5 of 20 achievements
Fun game that struggles to maximize its potential. Balance tweaks always break something and replace one thing with another without real resolution. Core gameplay is tight and fun, but the support and season ideas are half baked. Medieval extraction PvPvE with a lot of camping and random low-key cheating.
Shelves and Sorcery: Tidy Up the Enchanted Shop
12.7 hours, 23 of 32 achievements
A quality tidy up game. The cheevos aren't well thought out and expect you to play this three, four or five times which I'm not gonna do, but the game itself IS unquestionably addicitive and strangely fun.
Cavernreach
6.3 hours, 12 of 16 achievements
A fun spelunking walking sim, more or less. Has a bit of a horror driven story to it. Nice experience.
Dimhaven - The Lost Source
6.0 hours, 6 of 8 achievements
This is kind of a Myst-like from the developers of Quern. Very nice game with a lot of intriguing puzzles and a fun story.
Dimhaven - The Lost Source
6.0 hours, 6 of 8 achievements
This is kind of a Myst-like from the developers of Quern. Very nice game with a lot of intriguing puzzles and a fun story.
September
Warhounds
37.8 hours, 21 of 37 achievements
This is a fun Tactical turn-based shooter ala XCOM 2 or JA3. Lot of reasonably innovative gameplay mechanics that work together, a good roster of mercenaries, and a fun story.
Deep Sheol
8.2 hours, 17 of 17 achievements
This is a Lovecraftian boomer shooter with a really cool world, lore, and general concept.
October
The Last Cat in the Universe
4.8 hours, 7 of 7 achievements
I didn't really like this incremental game. Bullshit story hiding behind false sentimentality that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. The gameplay was mostly fine outside of the middle section which was a definite slog.
Void Core
4.9 hours, no achievements
This incremental game OTOH was pretty fun. You are a blackhole consuming everything. Lot of RPG elements.
Arkansas 2125
8.4 hours, 10 of 11 achievements
Pretty decent CRPG inspired almost exclusively by Fallout 1. Decent attempt by a solo dev with a pretty fun world to explore. Quite short, but worth a look.
The Options Menu
0.9 hours, 9 of 12 achievements
I enjoy gaming meta games, and this one was one of the better ones. Think The Stanley Parable as far as influences go.
The Liquid Jet
4.1 hours, 10 of 12 achievements
As weird as it is special. An adventure based on a ridiculous premise that has a surprisingly valid message in the end. A wild little ride.
Tape 101: Liminal Descent
3.4 hours, no achievements
This is one of the better monster-free liminal spaces games. As far as the story goes, it might actually be the best one.
Lullabies Made of Static
2.8 hours, 1 of 1 achievements
This is a weird little walking sim presented as a megastructure game, focused on an interpretation of "Do Androids Dream of electric Sheep?", It's janky AF, but a worthwhile experience.
A Light in the Gloam
4.9 hours, 10 of 21 achievements
A dungeon crawler with a cool concept, decent gameplay, and a responsive and reasonable dev. But the AI usage is excessive. A dev to watch in the future, but this game may or may not be an easy skip for you.
Everybody Loves a Good Hole
3.1 hours, 19 of 22 achievements
Funny name. Incremental black hole game with less intricacy that Void Core, but reasonably fun all the same.
Retirements
- Amber Isle - Boring IMO. YMMV
- Not Quite Dead: Open World Survival - The dev is not very skilled, although this may have some potential in the future.
- False Alarm - Really decent stealth game, maybe a bit too difficult for me.
- Astrosaurox - Tough as nails. Not my kind of game, but it’s one of the better true arcade experiences on Steam that I’ve seen.
- Jono - You just need to look this game up. Maybe the coolest concept on Steam. But I’m objectively bad at platformers, so I will just be a fan from afar.
- Dverghold - Turns out this game is developed by actual white supremacists. ‘nuff said.
- Approved! A Quiet Day of Paperwork - Cool work sim, gets insanely boring after a while though.
Currently playing, plans for the month
I’m in the middle of a Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord playthrough. I imagine I’ll finish it here pretty soon.
I’ve been playing both Vagrus: The Riven Realms and Cast n Chill over the last little while. Vagrus is sooooo difficult and yet completely fun. Definitely a game I’ll keep revisiting in the hopes of catching that one great run. Very Sunless Sea-esque in its difficulty. You’ll get on a good run and make tiny, seemingly innocuous mistake that mushrooms out of control, lol. With Cast n Chill, I really just need to finish building my cabin and cleaning my pond, and then I’ll probably call the game done and dusted.
Other than that, I’ve played through the intro in Dying Light: The Beast. I’ll try to make some progress there.
Slowly playing Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 with a friend. Will continue that here and there.
As for the rest, I would like to fire up Queen’s Domain, MORSE, Deep Dish Dungeon, Baby Lemonade, and REPLACED. We’ll see how it goes. It’s also my birthday month and I have some other stuff going on as well that may or may not make my gaming plans more difficult to attain.