May 2025
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Submerged: Hidden Depths
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Rusty Lake: Roots
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Glass Masquerade
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A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build
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Hidden Folks
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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
50 hours playtime
33 of 55 achievements
GAME
PASS
,
- Submerged: Hidden Depths: Second in an exploration/puzzler series in a drowned world; I didn’t play the first. Reasonable environment art and acting, but gameplay is fairly straightforward, and lacking challenge. 6/10
- Glass Masquerade: Stylish jigsaw game with irregular pieces. Glad to have played but probably won’t play the sequel. 7/10
- A Good Snowman is Hard to Build: Cute box-pushing puzzler. Finished the main game but not the bonus. 7/10
- Rusty Lake Roots: Second in the weird weird Rusty Lake series. Old-school flash-type adventure game with weird but fair puzzles. Between this and its predecessor Rusty Lake Hotel, there’s a real feel that there’s a hidden (and unrevealed) substrate of lore underpinning the weirdness. 8/10
- Hidden Folks: So much better than every other black and white hidden game of this type that I’ve played (100 cats, etc). There’s animation and (mouth-made) sound effects and puzzles. I did use hints (a circle showing the vague region) for a handful of particularly resistant items. 8.5/10
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33: Art direction and music and voice acting is immaculate. Story makes more sense than it would first appear. And while I’m not particularly one for JRPGs, I enjoyed this, and the influence of Fromsoft definitely helped with that (Sekiro parrying and grapple, hidden paths and sidetracks between combats). 9/10
Games I will not finish
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A Hat in Time
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Escape First Alchemist
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Remnant II
29 hours playtime
20 of 65 achievements
GAME
PASS
- A Hat in Time: First level I played, I thought “They rather liked Mario Sunshine and Galaxy and Odyssey”. Second level i played, I thought “…and they really liked Psychonauts”. And that stuck - different levels can be quite varied,. But the camera is horrid often enough, as it doesn’t permit nearly enough z-access pivoting to see up/down when needed, particularly while jumping. And the coin collecting is unfun. I want to like this a lot more than i do. 6.5/10 but it has charm.
- Escape First Alchemist: I enjoyed it well enough, puzzles are fine, but the narrator is (deliberately) obnoxious. And when I needed to quit out, I was back at the beginning when I restarted, and the narrator is so obnoxious and I didn’t feel like replaying. 7/10
- Remnant II: Fun with a team, combat feels good, and bosses tend to be a nice puzzle on how to stay alive while dealing enough damage. The levels are rather flabby despite some soulslike influences in design. It’s rotated out of Gamepass and we didn’t like it enough to buy it separately. 8/10 for bosses; 6.5/10 for everything else.
Congratulations on all your assassinations!!!! ᓚᘏᗢ
It sucks you didn’t enjoy Submerged, though I’m admittingly a huge sucker for the post apocalyptic vibe. What gaming plans do you have for June?
Yeah a post-apocalyptic world/aesthetic can be nice to explore. Unfortunately, I didn’t find submerged hidden depths in S:HD’s gameplay ;-P As an example, the red towers you climb to show collectables mostly being a couple of ladders, lifts and/or ledges awat from being completed – it would have felt so much better if these were a challenge. Glad you liked it, though, and congrats on completion.
My time to play this month is rather constrained, but have been back on Book of Hours (my listed play time is over 100 hours, but that includes a number of restarts and a bunch of time spent paused … and am considering whether I should replace my spreadsheet with a more manual set of notes). There’s also my outstanding PoP list, but am not sure how much more I’ll complete from that. Hope my PoP picks for you were ok.
Your picks were fine, Horizon Forbidden West was my VL pick from last cycle and I’ve been determined to go at it since + TCG card simulator + Skyrim fiasco kinda took over so my completed pop games this cycle have been suffering ahaha.
This comment was deleted about 2 months ago.
If you have a chance, maybe try the Alpine Skyline level in “A Hat In Time”?
I liked the first level but it felt a bit confusing and all over, the second had its cinematic gimmicks which landed for me but I can see how it wouldn’t land for everyone. The third leaned more into horror, wasn’t a bad level but also not the strongest. But the fourth level is so, so, so good. It’s a lot of interconnected sky islands, each one with its own mini-platforming challenge, but there’s a lot of ways to move between them, it’s really satisfying. The game is worth for that level alone.
Thanks for the recommendation. I hit a closed gate over the bridge at the start of Alpine Skyline - should I look again, or do I have to complete something in another level for it to unlock?
(Oh yeah, by “level”, I meant World 1 level 1 … but the influence of Psychonauts really ramped up in World 2 =)
Yeah, it’s hard to deny the influence of Psychonauts in the whole of Level 2 …. it has good moments – I particularly enjoy the “Parade” sections, lots of verticality and alternate routes, but the train levels or the studio stealth parts aren’t that great ….
I just checked the wiki and it seems you need 14 Time Pieces to enter Alpine Skyline, and the Hookshot Badge to progress beyond the entrance. You can get the Hookshot Badge on Subcon Well (Act 2 of the third level), it’s quite a short Act if I’m not mistaken
Ok in that case I have the requirements and missed a hookshot opportunity somewhere. Thanks for checking
Thanks again - I played a bit more (completed 3 of the islands, though didn’t have a lot of time to play anything this month) and it’s certainly more enjoyable than the previous levels but even so the camera continues to be rather a pain in the neck at times. Glad to have tried, but still at a DNC for me
Yeah, the camera is a prick from the beginning to the end hahaha it was one of my main complaints about the game once I beat it. Glad you had a chance to experience Alpine Skyline thou, I really like it