HurrJackal1
January 2026
-
Super Win the Game
-
Gato Roboto
-
AER Memories of Old
-
The Complex
-
Blasphemous
-
BOOMEROAD
0.4 hours playtime
no achievements
-
Arrog
? hours playtime
no achievements
(Humble)
-
Before I Forget
? hours playtime
no achievements
(Humble)
-
Fate of Kai
? hours playtime
no achievements
(Humble)
-
Grotto
? hours playtime
no achievements
(Humble)
-
The Wanderer: Frankenstein's Creature
3.4 hours playtime
no achievements
-
Onde
-
Unparallel
? hours playtime
no achievements
(Humble)
-
A Game About Digging A Hole
2.9 hours playtime
4 of 10 achievements
GAME
PASS -
Dome Keeper
1.75 hours playtime
9 of 47 achievements
GAME
PASS -
Dome Keeper
27.8 hours playtime
41 of 86 achievements
GAME
PASS -
Blueberry Garden
0.9 hours playtime
no achievements
-
A Fistful of Nothing
? hours playtime
no achievements
(Humble)
-
Heeey ParkBoy
? hours playtime
no achievements
(Humble)
I finished a number of games that I’d stalled on, and went through a bunch of downloadable no-key old Humble games from Humble Monthly. Also picked up Gamepass again for a month because Star Wars Outlaws was released, but didn’t get very far into it, and might not.
- Super Win The Game: Retro metroidvania, and not always in a good way – controls and tools are reasonable, but some of the endgame is way underclued, and I ended up looking up a bit rather than living with the frustration of exploring way too many walls and floors. 7/10
- Gato Roboto: Fun old-school metroidvania – maybe Metroid II inspired. You are a cat in a mecha-suit, but can leave it to explore (but can only take one hit then – you’re a cat). 7.5/10
- Aer, Memories of Old: Incredibly mild action adventure. You can do things in pretty much any order, but within the Temples things are basically linear. Flying was surprisingly awkward particularly when trying to land. There are better games with flight, and better games with puzzles. and better games with both. 6.5/10
- The Complex (Steamgifts win): A FMV game. I never bought the lead as a scientist, much less a brilliant one. It’s not just her acting, either. The character has a baffling lack of common sense (standing on a rotating chair instead of dragging something stable such as a lab table or a box; or leaving a door open to gawk when she knows there’ll be imminent danger). Other acting was all around good. I noticed a few inconsistencies with the real world - in particular the beach more likely to be UK than SE Asia, MI6 is external (MI5 is internal), and arrests are performed within the UK by Special Branch. At least one available instance of unnecessary light murder involving a hole. Ability to skip previously viewed scenes is appreciated, and makes replays quite quick. Found all but one ending (Second Chances) on my own, though 21/196 scenes remain unseen (not all scenes are particularly different, however). It’s not good, per se, but it is very well produced fun. 7.5/10
- Blasphemous: I originally put this down after a few hours, and having restarted I can see why - it’s a Metroidvania with some heavy Fromsoft influences, particularly Dark Souls, and combat is fairly laborious for quite some time (until you get the right items and upgrades, at which point you can melt things pretty easily including the final boss). I then confused it with Dead Cells, thinking of this as a roguelite. No - it’s a metroidvania with an eventually highly interconnected map, fair boss fights, fine retro 16-bit era style graphics, and a bunch of obscurities. And the obscurities can be to the point of hostility: I locked off the DLC by not doing things in the correct order, and Prie Dieu (bonfire) teleportation – essential to minimise backtracking – is unlockable for 20000 tears, but you’ll be led to spend it on upgrades instead unless you know about it – which I didn’t discover until I was basically at the end of the game, 15+ hours after which I could have gotten it. 8/10, add +0.5 if you unlock PD teleportation early.
- Boomeroad: Free, fun, and fundamentally broken (It was released by Bandai Namco as one of three short experimental developments), with the boomerang allowing you to path pretty much everywhere, which can avoid significant challenges by allowing you to bypass sections, walk on walls, etc. Maybe a more rigorous playstyle is necessary for best scores in the endgame time attack mode. 7/10
- Arrog: A snack of a surreal puzzle story. I got it from Humble as a non-steam downloadable game. At times it feels to me a little like Gorogoa in ambiance, although it’s a very different and inferior game, and its puzzles are simple and pretty uninspired. Not worth what they’re asking for on Steam, and even at the max 50% discount it’s very hard to recommend. 6.5/10, but only if it’s ever at like 80%+ off
- Before I Forget A gentle game, I guess technically a horror walking simulator. Not long, but slightly too long for what it wants to do. 7.5/10
- Fate of Kai: Fun little visual – and I do mean visual – novel, in comic book form, mostly moving ideas into thought bubbles to change the course of the story. 7.5/10
- Grotto: Unsettling visual novel (more or less). A while back there was a trend in RPGs, triggered by the move to fully voiced lines, towards massively simplifying player choice in dialogues, whether using standard modes (eg: Nice, Nasty, Humorous) or overly compressed summaries. The result was that what a player thought their character was going to say could be diametrically opposed to what their character actually ended up saying. Grotto deliberately lives in this uncomfortable space, as you provide star signs as symbols to answer visitors’ questions, with often painful and disastrous results. I do wonder if there is a more “optimal” sequence of choices, or if like Witcher 3, there are generally no good choices, just differently bad ones. I probably won’t replay it to see, though – the tale is told. 9.5/10
- The Wanderer: Frankenstein’s Creature (Steamgifts win): Slow-paced adventure / walking sim, based on Mary Shelley’s work but directly from the Creature’s perspective . Of what I saw, the game omits some of the events of the book (I needed to redo most of a chapter, and you could have different outcomes for different sections – not sure how much that affects things). The experience was ok, but it had an excellent painterly art style, and an ending that almost stuck the landing but didn’t go as far as it needed to (if it had, it would been gimmicky but greater). 7/10
- Onde (Steamgifts win): Somewhere between a platformer, a rhythm game, and a puzzler but not really any of those. Guide your blob from bubble to bubble through a semi-abstract aquatic world. Soundtrack is 1980s Euro electronic music - think Jarre and Tangerine Dream. I got hideously stuck at one point (Leaving the white “sun”). And even looking up a walkthrough video didn’t help. Then I quit and re-entered and things worked straight away (though in windowed mode), so it may have been a bug. Objective rating 8.5/10, but be prepared to assume that problems might be the game’s fault and not the player’s.
- Unparallel: Vanishingly short sokoban variant, with the conceit that you can see invisible things in mirrors. Could have been the base for something more complex and longer, but what was released was one-note. 6.5/10, but still worth a play because it was so short
- A Game About Digging A Hole: A 3D game which does what it says in the title. About as long as it needed to be. I actually took way longer than I needed to because I thought it was a slightly different game than it was and was definitely overly conservative in the first hour or more. The upgrade curve feels a bit off. 7/10
- Dome Keeper: A 2D digging game, overall worse than Wall World. Beaten, but only a couple of times, and it’s a roguelite so there a bunch of upgrades… which I probably won’t end up getting. 6.5/10
- The Talos Principle 2: I found this way easier than the first game, which I stalled on. Part of it might be more experienced design, part of it is definitely that the new tools often make things rather obvious because of their properties vs what is in the level. Many levels I could basically run through, including late game ones (Area 12). I rarely got seriously stuck, and only needed to skip a handful of levels to reach the end. I might go back and see if I can hit the optional content some time. 8.5/10
- Blueberry Garden: Eat fruit for effects, and collect items to get height to turn off a tap, all while trying to do everything before the water rises. I’ve tried starting a few times, and I’ve just never been able to enjoy the timed aspect / sequencing puzzle combined with the somewhat awkward physics. So into my DNFs after over a decade in my library. 5/10 for me – I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad game, and maybe some will rate it a few points higher.
- A Fistful of Nothing: An overhead-view stealth game where you try to get through corridors past bad guys to reach the lift to the next floor. A little too much trial and error, geometry that’s way easy to get caught on (body vs door size doesn’t help), and … text … with … no … option … to … make … it … pass … quicker. 2/10
- Heeey ParkBoy: Cute but dreary. Water seeds, grow flowers, play them music to eventually generate more seeds, pick and sell flowers, and buy upgrades to make things faster. It kinda sits in the same space as the pressure wash cleaning games, but with more annoyance. It’s possible that with enough upgrades it would become rather more fun, but I won’t be spending the time to find out. I got as a Humble download, but it’s now free. 5.5/10
Deleted
This comment was deleted about 1 month ago.
Incredible progress, and even better when I recognize so many of the games as ones in my beaten list, or backlog, or wishlist, or playlist. I particularly liked your comments about Arrog (would never have touched it if it wasn’t included in Humble Trove, and maybe would have been better that way), Grotto (only played the Humble Trove demo but loved it, the uncertainty of what you’re doing definitely hits), Boomeroad (I only played Doronko Wanko from the 3 technical demos, but had a lot of fun with it) and Blasphemous (really, really high on my backlog). Congrats!
Thanks. If you end up playing Blasphemous, you unlock the Prie Dieu (bonfire) teleportation by donating a total of 20000 tears in the church – I’d suggest doing it as early as possible even if your other upgrades suffer a bit; DLC might be more accessible on NG+, and likely still requires a walkthrough unless you’re improbably lucky.
It bothers me when such an important mechanic is hidden that way, but I’m glad I saw your review before I started it. Thank you!