July 2026 Progress Report
Solid month, not upset but I got distracted with Palworld 1.0 update, it’s amazing.
Anyway, August, huh. Wild 2026 is almost over. I’m planning on Chants of Sennar again, it’s a fine game but it doesn’t really do anything to keep your attention so it’s kinda hard to focus on. NEVA, for sure.. hopefully, .hack or the og 2009 Oblivion, battle chef looks fun, and I kinda wanna poke at The Invincible. Sounds like a busy month, but if you’ve even briefly skimmed my previous posts to see my future plans, I don’t really use them as anything other than a vague reference.
Total games added to backlog: 7 (Petit Island, The Invincible, Planet Zoo, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Battle Chef, Gone Home, Inua)
Total completed: 5
35-50+ hours to complete, Amber Isle is a shopkeeping management and Island restoration sim in which your character arrives on the island in search of earning their “Sarname,” a name only earned from doing a great accomplishment or inherited from your family. After finding and taking over an abandoned store, craft and carve items by collecting local materials to draw other potential residents to the Isle, and with your new friends Adi, Maple, and Old Mayor Clawsworth, restore the Isle back to it’s former glory!
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I love this game to bits but wow, does it have it’s bugs! None are gamebreaking or even able to softlock you, but the camera angles can get a bit annoying, and your store can be a mess at times, especially after a shop upgrade and I’d honestly consider the economy to be in shambles. (Granted, that one might be lore-accurate given there are only three Paleofolk, four including you, on the island at start.) but I really like the gameplay loop of collecting materials, crafting a fun and rather large variety of items, selling them, haggling, and then picking a section of an Island to restore. The initial thing that sold me was the character customization options as well as the large availability of what species you even wanted to play as, and Amber Island is just, a really charming game! Just… one that needs a bit more work.
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7-9+ hours to complete, Petit Island is a casual exploration adventure game about a cat named Lily visiting the Island her Grandpaw grew up at, in an attempt to restore his old journal and help him recover his missing memories. Find and take photos with Grandpaws old friends, talk about the adventures they went on together, fish, collect bugs, then return home with a completed journal to help your Grandpaw remember the things he’s forgotten in his old age.
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Overall, Petit Island is a really cute game with a good storyline. The island is small but there are lots of neat things to find, a variety of fish and bugs to catch, scenic locations to explore and secrets to find. There were a couple minor irritants, such as being unable to wear a hat and hold an item at the same time, as well as a finicky gliding system I never was able to figure out, but it didn’t impact the overall experience that much. I particularly liked the Volcano Island as there are some fun secrets on it, but I’ll leave those for you to find.
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Inua
2-3 hours to complete, Inua is a fun narrative game that follows three protagonists across three different periods of time, while you engage in a bit of time manipulation to share realizations and ideas between them to change the course of history. The story is centered around the real life disappearance of The Terror and The Erebus on the famously doomed Arctic exploration around 1846. While the wrecks were officially rediscovered in 2016 and 2014, the Inuit had known their locations through oral history since they interacted with survivors, and have shared it with British and Canadian search teams but were ignored essentially delaying their discovery for about 170 years. It’s a bit of interesting real life history to read up on, but I really loved how the developers made a video game out of it.
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Overall, I really enjoyed Inua not just because of the fun spin on a cautionary tale, but because I appreciated how the developers were authentic with the music and the art, using Inuit artists as well as voice actors and even an author to share this story. The only downside perhaps is that I wish the end of the story was expanded on a bit more, as I felt there was room to make a more satisfying ending, I suppose. Also, I strongly suggest playing Inua in a single sitting if you can, as it’s much easier to follow along and enjoy the game.
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Salvation:Immortale
2-5 hours to complete, Salvation:Immortale is a VN with one ending and I believe is a part 1 of 2, where you follow along a case with Detective Mei Qu who lives in the lovely city of Florence and occasionally takes on cases that interest her; the latest one being issued from the famous Medici Family regarding a cold case that happened fifteen years ago that has since resurfaced and warrants a more through investigation…
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Overall, it’s a fine VN that is definitely a love letter to Sherlock and I was surprised to find it’s fully voice acted! There are some bugs, particularly with loading save files so be sure to make a few, and also with using your mouse wheel to backtrack which tended to not only freeze the game, but corrupt that save file for me. The story itself was fairly ok, but I had more enjoyment with the twists than anything, with only a few odd translations. The ending was kinda abrupt which makes me believe that there will be a part 2 in the future but I don’t see any news on that at the time of this review.
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Gone Home
2-5 hours to complete, Gone Home is a walking simulator where you play as Kaitlin Greenbriar, who after spending a year away for College, finds herself exploring the new house her family moved into in an attempt to figure out where her family is after being unable to contact them. Explore every room and piece together what happened, find out why everyone is missing and what happened while you were away.
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Overall, Gone Home is a fairly solid walking sim with no monsters or anything chasing you, just a creepy atmosphere that keeps you curious and on your toes from the start of the game to the end. There are plenty of secrets tucked away rewarding you for being nosy and encouraging you to poke around, and when the main game is beaten I’d definitely recommend playing the developer commentary mode right after! It offers some really cool insight to the games development along with fun details and secrets you may have missed during your first playthrough. I didn’t find any bugs but I did find that I liked the game more than I thought I would, and hope the devs makes more games like this in the future, the incredibly subtle music along with the heavy rain and distant rolls of thunder nailed the atmosphere!
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