April 2025

• Black The Fall
  

  4.4 hours playtime

  14 of 14 achievements

  

• Owlboy
  

  11.1 hours playtime

  1 of 12 achievements

  

• Emily is Away <3
  

  4.6 hours playtime

  5 of 15 achievements

  

• Evergarden
  

  11.5 hours playtime

  16 of 21 achievements

  

• Astalon: Tears of the Earth
  

  36.3 hours playtime

  22 of 30 achievements

  

• South of Midnight
  

  10 hours playtime

  25 of 40 achievements

  GAME
  PASS

• Dungeons of Hinterberg
  

  12 hours playtime

  25 of 50 achievements

  GAME
  PASS

• Blue Prince
  

  55 hours playtime

  3 of 16 achievements

  GAME
  PASS

• Black The Fall: This is another cinematic platformer that’s very clearly influenced by Inside. Thankfully, it has enough innovation to be its own thing, but ultimately it’s… ok. 7/10
• Owlboy: This is tagged as a metroidvania but it’s really not (and is not advertised as such). There’s a central spine that levels basically branch off, but those levels are more or less linear, and any revisiting would be to try to collect some ridiculous quantity of coins in each area for completions sake rather than to progress. The game itself is more or less a shooter with some light puzzling (swapping the buddy you carry alters your gun and the primary/secondary mode may be required to access the way forward) and occasional stealth. All achievements are optional – none for completion – and four of them would basically achieved at the same time. Overall the game is not great, but it has loads of charm to paper over its flaws. 7.5/10
• Emily is Away <3: Visual Novel that really captures the feel of an older internet and some of the pain of youth. 7.5/10, but with a bad taste left in my mouth after discovering that there’s no way to avoid a bad ending on the first playthrough and you have to play it again to get a good one. I can see VN enthusiasts rating it a point or more higher.
• Evergarden: At its core this puzzle game is essentially 2048 merging, but a well-disguised and much much improved and expanded version. 8/10, but am unlikely to play again having beaten it.
• Astalon: Tears of the Earth - a 9/10 metroidvania with a frustrating map screen (even being able to zoom would help). NG+ (which alters room connections and items) is at times even more frustrating given its map still shows some old unavailable connections, and the bizarre decision that saving at campfires appears to do basically nothing in the standard game in terms of checkpointing (and often healing) so you will need to rerun a bunch of rooms when you die (thankfully most unlocks stick, but yellow destructable walls don’t and there’s no good reason they shouldn’t when you get to the point that you can deal with them). Achievement completion is not helped by requiring post-completion grinding to get enough souls to fully level up. 9/10 metroidvanias really shouldn’t hate their players in quite the way that Astalon does.
• South of Midnight: A 6.5/10 action adventure set in a magical-realist Louisiana whose thoroughly mediocre game/level design and heavy-handed writing is lifted by its good voice acting and fantastic music, music direction, and art direction into a “worth playing” 8/10. A triumph of style over substance.
• Dungeons of Hinterberg: A love letter to pre-BOTW 3D Zeldas - lots and lots of variety in “themes” and puzzles of its many dungeons. The town/overworld is nice enough but not nearly as good/fun. 8.5/10
• Blue Prince: This is only technically beaten - I reached room 46 and rolled credits but the real Blue Prince continues. A wonderful puzzle-rich combat-free roguelite meets metroidbrainia. Go into it as blind as possible if you can (Think: Obra Dinn, Outer Wilds, Her Story/Immortality) and prepare to keep notes. 10/10 (yet again a month of Gamepass more than pays for itself)

Games I will not finish

• The Adventure Pals
  

  5.5 hours playtime

  15 of 31 achievements

  

• PLANET ALPHA
  

  0.6 hours playtime

  0 of 16 achievements

  

• Atomfall
  

  10.1 hours playtime

  13 of 36 achievements

  GAME
  PASS

• Adventure Pals: Charming but very gentle hack and slash platformer (I did not get the achievement for losing nine lives!). From the reviews it’s a good fit for co-op with a younger audience, but I don’t need to play more than I have. 6.5/10
• Planet Alpha: Yet another cinematic platformer, and one where not only is there massively excessive travel to gameplay up to when I stopped (the artists were working overtime, full credit to them) but the controls/physics are awkward. If you liked Little Orpheus then you’ll love Planet Alpha but I didn’t. 3/10 for gameplay in my limited time with it (8.5/10 for art direction)
• Atomfall: Fallout 3 but with lovely green instead of horrible brown! I played a bunch, I finished some quests, I unlocked a bunch of routes, and somewhat to my surprise I just don’t care about the game. I want to – it’s made by the same folk who did the Sniper Elite series. Here, the combat is mediocre at best (although the human enemy wariness rather than automatically aggressively attacking is a great innovation though not wonderfully implemented), the world art direction is much much better than the area/level design, and the stealth is between awkward and silly (there’s some chokepoints where stealth really doesn’t work at all and you’re going to have combat while being vastly outnumbered). 7/10, but I hope that it informs future games of this type.