September 2026 Report

I picked this game up during the brief window that it was free on Steam and I didn't have a ton of expectations going into it. I knew it was a text-based, choose-your-own-adventure style game but not much else.

Overall, I was pretty satisfied with my experience. The developers created a very compelling world where there were several very distinct paths you could send your character down that nonetheless coalesced back into a single narrative in the endgame. Unlike a lot of games with a similar story structure, this didn't feel cheap; rather, it felt like your choices up to that point mattered a great deal in how you could resolve a situation that was always going to happen because it was much larger than any one person--even if that person is the protagonist of a videogame.

That being said, I did find achievement hunting for it to be a serious grind. While there were a lot that were fun (each of the three main routes, for example, came with a bunch of route exclusive achievements) there were also quite a few mutually-exclusive achievements that required replaying a substantial portion of the game--even with chapter select. After my first run, I muted the game music (there is no spoken dialogue in the game) and just streamed podcasts while I replayed for all the remaining achievements. On the upside, I made substantial progress in a lot of podcasts that I had been ignoring!

Overall, a very fun game for anyone but achievement hunters. If any achievement hunters are still planning to play this…I salute you! And I recommend you download a nice long audiobook before starting.

Not a lot to say about this one. It is exactly the kind of game that it purports itself to be. I simultaneously didn't enjoy playing it and found it weirdly addictive. The experience between doing a no magic run and a magic run was immense though. I would definitely recommend doing it the no-magic way first if you are going for the 100% because I can't imagine how frustrating the experience must be in the reverse.

I was gifted this game by a SG user (thanks again, Chississ!) and honestly, I really enjoyed it despite it still having a "mixed" rating on steam. That rating is heavily impacted by the number of bugs present at launch and the fact that some bugs continue to exist today. But if we can play Bethesda games despite their jank, surely we can do the same for smaller dev teams.

You can read my whole steam review here, but the long and short of it is that the game itself is very good but the bugs do require a little bit of patience. The main issue I encountered was no longer being able to interact with objects/people after loading a save mid-session. And it was easily fixed by quitting the game and relaunching (you could save the game right before quitting and that save would load without the issue persisting). Definitely still worth playing if you are a fan of the series overall.

I reviewed this game on Steam, so here's a link to that if you want more detail. My tl;dr version, however, is that I didn't enjoy this game as much as the sequel but it was still a fun experience with interesting characters. The gameplay was even more simplified than the sequel (which was hardly a complicated game) and I didn't feel as attached to the npcs as I did in the sequel but definitely still worth the roughly 10 hours that it took to fully complete.

Another game with a much longer review on Steam. I won this in a public, level 0 giveaway with approximately 4500 entries, so I felt incredibly lucky to get to give this game a chance!

My tl;dr review is that this was a charming and beautiful puzzle platformers obviously inspired by titles like Inside or Limbo but with a much more wholesome vibe. I did find that the puzzles were too easy but there was a lot of promise there. I haven't followed the reviews on the sequel but if the devs learned from their experience making this one, then it should be a truly special game.

I picked this game up for free and left a Steam review already. Overall, I didn't vibe with the main game at all--the puzzles were way too simple and I didn't feel any of the emotion that I think the game was trying to inspire. I liked the Jack DLC much better (included with the game) as I thought they hit the emotional beats more successfully.

Another free game, this one is technically not complete since one of the achievements is bugged. I manually marked it complete anyway because I got all but the bugged achievement. Here's the Steam review and the tl;dr is that the game started off well with cute dogs, an excellent voice actress, and reasonably challenging gameplay but quickly became both repetitive and way too easy. It was fun for an hour or two but overstayed its welcome.

I won this on SG (thanks again eeev!) and am really enjoying my time with it so far! I will leave the review until I actually beat the game, but I plan to continue to play this in October. I've already submitted it to PAGY and plan to make it my first priority in the beginning of the month. I won't be able to 100% it since that requires several DLC that I don't own, but I should be able to beat the main campaign (hopefully by the end of this upcoming weekend, fingers crossed!).

I don't have a ton to say on this one. It is a free game that I chose to play because it was one of the community challenges on Playtracker. I do appreciate that despite having many paid DLCs, the devs stated their commitment to make sure all achievements were tied only to the free base game. Unfortunately, there are still quite a lot of achievements for a game that I just didn't enjoy that much. I don't mind pinball in short bursts, but it will definitely take me quite a long time to get through. I've uninstalled it for now and may eventually get back to it just so it doesn't drag my play stats down, but probably not for some time.

And now we get to the controversial review. I'm glad that BLAEO doesn't have down votes because I am sure I'd earn quite a few for this review but…I just didn't have fun with Half-Life 2. "But Tiajma, it's one of the greatest games of all time! It was a seminal entry for the FPS genre!" I know, I know. And I remember the hype when it first came out and marveling over the physics engine. I mostly watched my brother play it as I didn't get a steam account until 2011 but I remember what a big deal it was.

And yet, playing it again in 2026, I just don't think it lives up to the hype. And I love to play a lot of old classics! I'll defend BG1 and 2 with my life--THAC0 included. I'll insist that anyone who thinks VTMB is anything other than a masterpiece is objectively wrong--even if it is being held together pretty much exclusively due to one random guy in Germany. I've poured hundreds, maybe even thousands, of hours into all the HOMM games and the Might and Magic games and continue to boot them back up regularly. Old games are great, even if new players can't always appreciate them the same way as those who experience them live.

But HL2 just didn't hold up for me. I could immediately see why I couldn't remember what the story of the game was---because there honestly isn't much of one. The gunplay felt…fine. The various NPCs were…present. The vehicle portions went on for way too long. I was honestly just bored most of the time. I had to keep convincing myself to launch the game and play for another hour; not because it was terrible but just because it wasn't gripping.

I will go back to finish it, if only to reassure myself that I'm not crazy and the ending didn't somehow save the whole experience. But overall, I think this is a game where nostalgia is doing more than most gamers are willing to admit. Or maybe I'm just weird.