86maylin

2025 July update

Most Enjoyable

Most Looking Forward To

Anime! Oi history!

10 minutes of playtime, no achievements
Personal rating: 1/10, Date of finish: July/02
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Incomprehensible writing, character's eyes changing colors between outfits, actual real time waiting when you make a choice which is boring af and nonsensical story/abrupt ending, just really bad. Game's muted as well and no sound or music. Dunno if it's a change by the devs afterwards since from some of the discussions they used other people's music without permission/license. Just a really bad game. lol

Nemo Dungeon

1.9 hours of playtime, 11 of 11 achievements
Personal rating: 7/10, Date of finish: July/9
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This is a neat little dungeon crawler game with 3 characters to choose from, the sword guy, the other sword guy and the mage. I tried all 3 and can confidently say that the first guy is way better than the other two because of his abilities. Being able to deflect bullets with the first ability, destroy area bullet with his third ability, and his fourth ability which is aoe drain health from enemy, the fact that it stuns the enemies and give you health is super strong. I managed to beat the game several times on that guy while the other two I die cuz of lack of health. :P Other than the balance, the only thing I don't is you sometimes get stunlocked when you get hit so you just keep getting hit if there's multiple bullets/enemy in your way. But I thoroughly enjoyed the game, and since it's not a huge grind on the achievement it didn't overstay its welcome, which is nice. :) Would recommend.

Doors

1.1 hours of playtime, 6 of 7 achievements
Personal rating: 7/10, Date of finish: July/12
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So, I've got 6 out of 7 achievements in this game, why did I mark it as complete then? That is because the last achievement is unobtainable. And not just speculation like the Stanley Parable one, but actually unobtainable since I got curious and looked into the files(since I'm a Unity dev myself), and unless I missed something the devs didn't put any way to get it in the game. It's not directly triggered in code, there's a script that triggers achievements by name which is used to trigger another achievement but I look through the gameobjects and didn't find another copy of that object. So I can quite confidently say that I have completed this game. :)

Yes, that's the biggest impression that this game's gonna leave me, that I got curious poked into the game and I quite like that. But for the actual game, I'd say it's not bad! It's a series of logic puzzles of "x amount of doors are lying which lie which tell truth and you have to find out the correct door to go through" and they did get my brain going for some of the harder ones. :3 The atmosphere is also really nice and spooky, gave me chills while there's never a jumpscare(bar one that's semi-loud and jumpy-ish but not a real jumpscare). Only complaint I have is the sound effects when you go through a door is a bit loud, other than that I recommend this short little game, tho if you're a completionist stay clear cuz you won't get 100% on this one. :P

Forward to the Sky

1.8 hours of playtime, 12 of 12 achievements
Personal rating: 5/10, Date of finish: July/25
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Hmm...I can't say this game is bad per se. It has its quirks like movement being slow so certain sections that require backtracking is tad tedious, thankfully there isn't much of that. Combat can get some getting used to and I don't like how damage locks you in place or pushes you, but it can be fun to dance around enemies if you adopt the cautious play-style. And the voice acting and story are just...ok, I guess. The voice acting and dialogues were a bit cringe at times, and I didn't care for the story much cuz...it's nothing new or interesting. All that aside tho, the game is pretty charming with the art style, and the level design is pretty fun with every level pretty much focusing on a new mechanic. And it's really short, so I'd say it's a pretty nice game. :3

Clawfish

33 minutes of playtime, 14 of 14 achievements
Personal rating: 5/10, Date of finish: July/25
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It's a game where there's fish trapped(?) in claw machines, and you have to release all the fish there is. Really short game as the full game is even less than the 33 minutes here, probably about 25 minutes of gameplay. Why did I have the extra 8 minutes? Well, the first time I booted it up and walked around the place exploring and releasing a few fishes that's hidden around the map in buckets, it was all really nice and relaxing. When I play a few times of the claw machine and tried to take more coins, the buttons suddenly don't respond anymore, and I can't interact with anything. Naturally, I quit out the game and reopened, thinking it'll just fix itself since a lot of issues are fixed like that in other games, only to find out shockingly: This game does not have a save feature. It does not save your game progress and you will have to restart the game every time. I know it's just 8 minutes, and I know since this game is so short it honestly doesn't matter, but it still made me annoyed that I stopped playing and only picked it up 2 weeks later. It would be nice if the game warned you of it, or idk actually implement the basic function of saving one's game? It's especially weird in these kinds of "collectithon" type games since the whole point is collecting and seeing your collection/progression.

As for the actual gameplay, I like it. It has very authentic claw machine vibe where the claw is quite slow and a bit clunky. Read a few reviews saying it's a bad thing, but I actually think the dev got the feeling down perfectly, even to the slow waiting of the claw to go left, back and open the claw when you miss. lol And I like that the two later machines has their own limitations to make the gameplay slightly different. The game is, just really short tho. 2 bucks for 30 minutes of gameplay is not a lot and even tho I don't normally think much of price/time, the game feels more like a demo than a fully fleshed out game, especially with empty unused claw machines just being there. And I would've liked if you can see the fishes in their unique self swimming in the machine, and also what fish you're actually grabbing. But oh well, I did enjoy it, just felt like it could've been more is all.

Grotto

7.5 hours of playtime, 21 of 21 achievements
Personal rating: 10/10, Date of finish: July/27
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When I first started playing this game I was drinking, and in my slight intoxicated state all the weird visuals, the eerie music, strange booming god voice that talks to me through the fire and all the creatures that comes to me, it's surreal and almost like a fever dream, but also grounded in its own raw way. The latter half when shit really hits the fan, I was sober and clear headed, so the gut punches were much more memorable.

The ending left me with the same bitter sweet distraught feeling as when I finished Cyberpunk. In this game you play as a silent prophet set in a pre-historic time, and the only gameplay mechanic is forming constellations from stars, and giving those constellations to people.

But as the first character that comes to you says: "People are dif-fer-ent. You give 3 people 'blue'. The one who lives by the sea will think it means water, the one who lives on the mountain will think of sky, and the last one becomes sad, just because." It gave me that helpless feeling like Cyberpunk gave me, because when the characters misinterpret your intentions, you can only just watch things go horribly wrong without a way to stop it.

There's also the fact that it doesn't shy away from the brutality of it all. The violence, inhumane and nastiness. But in that time, it is just like that, it's treated as normal, and I loved being placed into such a different world from our own. Ofc, I did get the "good" ending in the end, but there's no real good ending here because of all that has happened, just like there isn't one in Cyberpunk.

If you have the game in your library I strongly recommend giving it a try. It's such an unique experience that's so unlike any other games I've played before, with a stunning art style and vibe to go with it. And if you like narrative games and/or choose your own adventure stories, or wouldn't mind going into a game just for the experience, I'd also recommend it to you. Really, I just want more people to play it cuz it seems to underrated.

  • Play a game you won on SteamGifts


  • The Darkness II
    The Darkness II

    0 hours playtime

    0 of 50 achievements

  • Fall of the New Age Premium Edition
    Fall of the New Age Premium Edition

    0 hours playtime

    no achievements

  • Beastiarium
    Beastiarium

    0 hours playtime

    no achievements

Time played 206 hours 34 minutes
Achievements gotten 122
Games 100% completed 4

Bit of a late post. Was back to my parent’s place at the start of August, and when I came back I found out that the SSD of my PC(the one that Windows is installed on) died so my PC is unusable. :< Had to take it to a repair shop and since I don’t have a car I had to carry it by hand. That situation was both emotionally and physically exhausting and I’m still winding down from that. PC is all fixed now tho so should be good to go thankfully.
I’ll probably take it easy this month with pagywosg and new games. Still need to catch up on Infinity Nikki new update since I’ve did mostly dailies only on my phone. There were good things last month tho. I uninstalled DbD, again, which is pretty nice since I don’t enjoy the game anymore and it even often makes me mad, more playing to get the cosmetics/events. Another wonderful thing is I finally got back into Cyberpunk 2077 modding. I’ve had a lot of bad associations due to fandom drama on it, but time did heal them and I got back to making stuff and learning new knowledge, which I enjoy so so much. :) So likely I’ll be focusing on Nikki and modding for August.

fernandopa

So interestingly, I had Grotto on my Humble Trove. But unknown to me was that the Humble Trove edition was only the Prologue. So I booted it up, played it for maybe an hour or two, and absolutely fell in love with the gameplay mechanics, the setting, and the narrative. Only to be greeted with an early ending. Man, it was so gut wrenching to realize I was only playing the prologue hahahhaha sad but true. Still trying to get my hands on the full version, but it’s indeed a rare gem.

86maylin

Ohh, I didn’t realize that Humble Trove games can be just demos, I thought they’re all completed games.
I’d say if you liked the prologue, considering buying it in a sale or something. It can go down to as low as 1 dollars(at least for my region) so definitely worth keeping an eye on. :3

fernandopa

I also wasn’t aware of that restriction with the now defunct Humble Trove (RIP) - learned the hard way hahaha

Grotto is definitely in my ‘would buy on sale’ list, along with Balatro, Lies of P, Subnautica, Animal Well, UFO 50, Void Stranger …. I just feel really bad buying more stuff when I already have so much to play. As I make a bigger dent on my backlog, I’m sure I’ll end up playing the whole thing eventually :)