September 2026 Progress Report

15-20+ hours to complete, Dreambound is a LGBTQ+ VN with three routes and nine endings, play as Noah, an artist and painter who lost his inspiration and has been depressed since his boyfriends death years ago, rarely leaving his home to see the sun. Everything changes one day when Noah is forced into a lucid dream, where he vividly witnesses his fathers death by a shadowy reaper and upon waking, finds his father died in a similar way that is connected to a recent string of unsolvable murders, all of people he used to know. With the help of his childhood friend Kaine, Noah returns to their childhood town in an attempt to catch this killer, and hopefully, rediscover his love to paint again.

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Dreambound is very, very good, and the music in particular was really notable. If you tend to follow a guide, I strongly suggest Kaine -> Ivan -> Crow for the best story experience and doing their good ending as the first thing when you start their route, but you do you. Kaine was admittingly my favorite, he’s so sweet on Noah and has been for over a decade so I can’t help but cheer for the typical childhood friend endings. As for cons, I’d say I wish I visually saw more paintings that were just verbally described after Noah made them and Noah’s art was more involved in the story, and that there was more hand-wavy-ish dream logic magic nonsense than I liked. Overall though, Dreambound is a really easy recommendation and now I just want more games and books with artist protagonists.

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16 – 30+ hours to complete, Tavern Master is a building and tavern management simulation with three maps to build in, one being DLC. While I would not consider this ‘cozy’ it is pretty chill, as there are no time constraints and it’s very easy to play. You build a tavern which starts out small, and you expand on it overtime to add things to partially turn it into an innkeep, adding rooms, baths and beds that npcs can buy for the night. There are a lot of decoration options for wall types, floor types, and a very solid selection of decor items including various rugs and paintings, with the game usually letting you pick the color of most things if you don’t like the base. Eventually, it’s possible to fully automate the tavern, however, the player still needs to start the next day after the current one ends so it’s not possible to idle it, as well as schedule events.

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Most of the cons are superficial, I really disliked the look of the most expensive tables that give you the most reputation since the tablecloths are crooked and messy and I’m quite salty about the grass from my outside garden turning into wood flooring after I bought a cellar, but the biggest con would be that the game gets really repetitive near the end. Researching becomes quite tedious and after you’ve automated everything, there isn’t anything to do except watch the npc’s after you are done decorating and finished all your floors. In addition, when a fire breaks out from a knocked down candle, the game forcibly pauses and you have to find a npc and click on them then direct them to a water bucket to put the fire out, and I really felt that should have been automated as there was usually a 6% (increases with each light you add) chance of that happening every day which was kinda annoying. Overall, it’s a fine tavern sim I would still recommend, I just wish the end game was handled better as it really just felt dragged out.

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15–25+ hours to complete, Beastro is a cooking roguelite where the meals you prepare for your chosen Caretaker each day determine their abilities, which appear in combat as colored cards that can be used to attack, heal, and combo together during battle. You play as Panko, a talented chef in the tiny port town of Palo Pori who has lost track of his teacher during an invasion. Remnants, hostile creatures that have entered the world of Solido through spooky doorways, have begun attacking the various regions and it’s generally up to the Caretakers of each area to fight them off. Unfortunately the Remnants are no pushovers, and once the Caretakers learn that Panko cooks with a flame spirit that can imbue warriors with magical abilities through his food, they inevitably make their way to Palo Pori.

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Overall, I had a pretty good time with Beastro. The cooking and card-based combat work well together, and figuring out which meals to prepare and how their abilities could be combined made for an interesting gameplay loop. As you explore through the different regions, you meet new Caretakers, find new ingredients, and gain more skills to make better food for your next adventure. I also really liked the amount of petting and general animal interactions avaliable in the game, as a lot of them were terribly adorable. There are a lot of shops and interactable NPC’s, including ones to make what dishware you are serving food on and general blacksmithing to upgrade your oven and make new tools.

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Unfortunately, this is not a perfectly enjoyable game. I do have some complaints about the story pacing, as two Caretakers were introduced so late in the game I barely had time to say “Hi, what do you even do?” before the final boss and subsequent end of the game that same day. Also, I do want to say the final boss is a huge difficulty spike that honestly kinda shocked me, as the game was easy enough I only failed two times during the combat portion, and then I lost five or six times against the actual final boss, which was kinda wild. I hope they add a difficulty adjustment in the future, because the huge healthbar and boss mechanic was kinda diabolical and not what I anticipated or wanted from a cozy cooking game.

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5-8+ hours to complete, Neva is a hand drawn sidescroller game with puzzles and combat. There are two game modes, Normal and Story mode, the latter where you can’t die or get injured in combat. Play as Alba, a woman who cares for horned wolves and after a traumatic encounter with strange monsters who are consuming the world around them, is left with a single cub, Neva. Raise them, feed them, teach them and as they grow older, fight with them to protect the forest against these strange, shadowy monsters before everything becomes completely corrupted.

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Neva is gorgeous, the music is good, and the puzzles are fairly simple as is the platforming, the combat is smooth and easy to pick up and learn, and If you played GRIS, I would really love to say, “you would also like this”, and give Neva a glowing review but I really, really despised this type of ending. If I have known beforehand, I wouldn’t have played or bothered to add Neva to my wishlist, and I hope the implication of what I’m saying gets across, but if not, I will share some major spoilers, since it’s something I wished I knew before downloading. So, warning – The game is about cycles, and the first cutscene, is also the last. Neva dies. I really felt like I wasted my time since nothing changed!!! Cutscenes that ‘make you lose’ are the absolute worst. It’s a lovely game, but if you don’t like upsetting things, I strongly advise not to play.

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