October 2025 Progress Report, Oops edition!

This is the first time in 2025 my games added was more than my completion rate! Alas, nothing to do but by best for November.

I played a ton of Cyberpunk (at 157 hours!) and I’m finally getting into the DLC - or trying to! I have a lot of quests outside the area and while I’m definitely making progress according to my achievements; I really don’t feel like I am - especially story-wise. Idleant is an adorable game that I honestly didn’t expect being the best game of the month for October since I was under the false assumption Cyberpunk would be completed by then. (Before I took a week off gaming for IRL.) But the whole game being hand-drawn and general easy game play was such a vibe.

Next month! Plans are once again me going at Cyberpunk. I would like to play Royal Alchemist, and either finish Winds of Anthos, which is absolutely going to be a negative review, or that SAO game I technically finished the base game on but stopped at getting into the DLC. I’m almost done with Super Neptunia RPG but the bugs are kinda crazy and making it hard to play the game, and I’m so thankful that’s my last Nep game that I’m going to play in this lifetime! As a treat if I can get it in; Dungeons of Hinterberg! A gift from a friend I’ve been wanting to explore.

Total games added to backlog: 5 (Idleant, Meteor Actor, Royal Alchemist, Caravan SandWitch, Story of Seasons: Olive Town)
Total completed: 3

76% (393/518)

13% (66/518)

5% (26/518)

4% (23/518)

2% (10/518)

7.8 hours

11/11

Idle an ant colony, hand drawn and SUCH a gem.

5-10+ hours to complete, Idleant is a super charming hand-drawn idle game about running an ant colony across two terrariums – one serving as the colony’s main home and the other as its Hunting Grounds. You start the game by purchasing ant eggs, waiting, and then watching them hatch before venturing out to forage. Eventually, you earn enough food or resources to acquire a Queen, who produces eggs for free and becomes the heart of the colony. Progress comes from the size of the ant population and purchased upgrades. The main Terrarium can be expanded four times, each with its own redesign increasing in size and complexity, while the hunting ground can be upgraded five times. As you grow, you earn Prestige points that can be spent to unlock permanent passives and bonuses, such as improved food quality, a higher ant population cap, opening the background window, bees (Bees?!?!), and getting a radio. I especially enjoyed “Ant Lofi Study Beats” and the hilariously titled “RIP the Queen by Princess n394,” a classic.

Overall, I had a great time idling with Idleant. You can leave it running in the background or minimize the window using F11, and I ended up finishing a pen and paper drawing I was wanting to do for a bit, while also getting 100% achievements. I didn’t experience any bugs (except the ants, hah), and the game is just quite a nice little polished indie gem. No cons, but I would have liked to see more life in the Terrariums; some idle ants wandering away from the main path to the Hunting Ground and exploring, or escaping, would have been amusing and made this game feel more alive. Highly recommended!!

ᓚᘏᗢ

Second in a series and is basically the middle part of a book, part one is not on Steam.

Meteor World Actor: Badge & Dagger

7/10

5.8 hours

10 of 10 achievements

11 – 13 hours to complete, Meteor World Actor is a fully voice acted Noir Detective VN set in a Dystopian city, but combined with the fantasy genre adding races such as Elves, Pixies, etc… and magical abilities! Centered around the National Police Agency’s 13th Division, a dead-end office full of oddballs and misfits that can’t be easily placed in other departments; Ruka is worse than your average cop. Hardly tolerable to his own co-workers, regularly insubordinate and barely hanging onto his badge with his laziness and terrible track record; but at night he turns into a serial killer, investigating a Cult Massacre closed case that happened ten years ago. While hunting down and executing cult members is not the least of his problems, Ruka needs to be faster and more ruthless to destroy the organization quickly – he’s only got about a year left to live, after all.

I really enjoyed playing Meteor World Actor: Badge & Dagger, the voice acting was pretty high quality and the writing was top notch! Initially I didn’t like the protagonist very much and was annoyed at once again reading about a perverted living garbage detective, and while Ruka is that, he’s got some serious character depth and background that got me really interested in his character. There are a few cons though I absolutely need to mention, Badge and Dagger is a SEQUEL, the second game to a series, and the first one is not on Steam. You don’t need to play the first game to play this one, but after playing, you will certainly want to! Secondly, this game is completely linear with only one route, unless you install an 18+ patch which unlocks another character’s route that was removed from the game. Overall, I still suggest picking this game up, the quality is too good, but do beware the cons before buying.

Honestly, I'm just as surprised as you are.

Caravan Sandwitch

5/10

10.3 hours

26 of 26 achievements

6-10 hours to complete, Caravan SandWitch is a futuristic, environmental exploration adventure where you play as Sague, a young pilot-in-training living with their father in Space City. Their normal student life is thrown into chaos when they receive a distress signal from their sister, Garance, who vanished six years ago into the desert of their home planet, Cigalo. Determined to find the signal's location and learn if their sister is still alive, Sauge leaves their parent a note and immediately sets out on the next ship home. With the help of their hometown childhood friends and a kind elderly neighbor, set out across Cigalo’s ruined ecosystem and scorching desert to trace the source of the transmission!

Initially, I really enjoyed Caravan SandWitch, the first few hours looked really promising – there was an interesting storyline, a huge, blacked out map promising a ton of new areas and secrets, colorful and wonderful graphics with positive environmental messages and inclusive characters – but that excitement faded as I slowly realized how much backtracking I was in for! There are 7 total chapters in the game, each marked with a new vehicle upgrade that would grant you a new solution to different obstacles. The issue is that most factories and buildings actually can’t be fully explored until chapter 6, leaving you with two choices; either focus on chapter sensitive quests and save explorations for the last chapter in the game, or revisit locations 4-5 times and gradually uncover secrets and leftover scrap. Neither of these options were super appealing to me, and it was made worse by the heavy-handedness of the questlines. While I deeply appreciated the environmental messages against strip mining, solar panel production waste and destroyed ecosystems; the hostile and unsubtle tone convinced me the writer despises money and the general concept of anything that isn’t a homely countryside where you garden and everything is made within the community pushed this into an overall negative light for me.