HurrJackal1

February 2026

  • Indika: A game about a nun who can hear the devil in an alt-universe Russia. The nun is likely schizophrenic, and what is real and what is not – and to what degree it is not – is unclear, particularly once another character joins. The game design is also somewhat schizophrenic, and bounces between 3d cinematic adventure and 2d retrogame. I guess the ending was probably intended as an artistic decision, rather than being a case of “fuck it we’re done/out of funds”, but it does leave things on a real anticlimax. 7/10 or 8.5/10
  • The Henry Stickmin Collection: A remaster of a series of old Adobe Flash choose-your-own-adventures, which get progressively more elaborate as they go along. Funny and absurd, but replayability (to see all paths and collect all stick figures) is made more annoying than it should be by not being able to advance quickly through seen scenes, particularly where stick figures are only briefly shown in a long scene. 7.5/10
  • Q.U.B.E. 2: A post-Portal puzzler. Its first half is very unpromising, as things are so very straightforward where you can only interact with particular specified locations with your limited abilities. It does get better halfway through where puzzles open up to better require combinations of abilities, and the final couple of levels really do require thought. 7.5/10
  • The Loopler (demo): A roguelite/semi-idler with a very generous demo. You have a racing car that goes around a track. Things may well change by the final game (and with unseen unlocks), but it feels like there’s currently a golden path strategy, with many of the other offered mechanics unable to scale as needed.
  • Book of Hours: Be an occult librarian - researching books, making items to help you research books, and exploring the rooms of the library. I finished the game with the baby ending (screenshot, very mild spoiler warning) – the Cultist Simulator equivalent is far easier to get to. Real endings require more work, so I may be reporting having beaten this another 1+ times at some point. As for the playtime… I spent a lot of time both in restarting the game, and paused (but still playing much of the time). At its core it’s a crafting game, where some of your inputs are time constrained. Funnily enough, one of the closest games mechanically in feel is the Logistical series. What finally cracked it for me was to use the exact correct colours in my spreadsheet: I was using approximates, and that added enough friction/confusion. But the game is more than just its mechanics; it’s also a game where you get snippets of lore, to piece together the secret histories of the world, and to provide hints as to what you can craft and how. I really – really – like Alexis Kennedy’s approach to writing these here as well as in Fallen London/Echo Bazaar, Sunless Sea, and Cultist Simulator, but less so his approach to game design which can tend towards the grindy. Book of Hours is, however, his most approachable work so far (Travelling at Night is likely to be even more so), and there are a bunch of systems in the game I have barely scratched the surface of. 9/10++
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