September 2023 Progress Report

Beatrix LeBeau. A girl with a dream and a job that sends her 1,000 lightyears away from Earth to a planet called The Far, Far Range to become a Rancher of a strange, unusual, and surprisingly profitable species – Slimes. Take control of an old Ranch, fix her up, build your corrals to contain any interesting Slimes you may obtain after exploring this strange Island, and follow the clues and notes left behind from The Ranch’s former owner.

7-40+ hours to complete; Slime Rancher is an Open-World Singleplayer Adventure game with a vibrant, cute, and colorful art style. There are a wide variety of Slimes you can capture and even more when you start dabbling in making your own type of Slime by mixing two together. The Island is big, beautiful, and for the most part, pretty fun to explore with many mysteries. Some cons I would like to bring up, is the incredibly short story mode; you can finish the game pretty quickly, and on accident if you’re good at exploring! Another thing is the game tends to give you access to useful items far too late; by the time I no longer needed to backtrack and had access to all the Slimes I needed to; I got teleporters. After I explored every inch of the island and found all it’s secrets, I finally got the Treasure Crackers needed to open all the previous inaccessible treasure chests discovered.

While Slime Rancher is a really, really good game, I wish there were just some things it could have done better. Backtracking is very frequent, and finding all these neat treasure chests and having no way to open them during the initial exploration was kinda depressing. Regardless, I liked it, it’s a very good game that’s genuinely enjoyable and many people clearly love it too – considering it’s getting a movie adaptation.

A Fox wakes up alone and searches for her three missing pups while a man wakes up in the middle of the night with a strong feeling of nostalgia and memories of his father he’s long forgotten he’s had. A story of grief, reflection, and moving forward… even if you’re not sure you can.

2-3 hours, The First Tree is a bittersweet exploration walking sim with simple puzzles and light platforming sections. There are 5 chapters, each with their own dreamscape-like environment and optional collectables that have a special function at the end of the game. Both the fox looking for her cubs and Joseph reminiscing about his father with is partner is happening in two worlds simultaneously, While the fox is looking for her three missing kits and digging up strange toys and objects, Joseph is dreaming about the fox searching for them and remembering the things about his father in what she digs up, making for a very unique type of gameplay I really enjoyed.

Graphically, the world you explore is beautiful with the cons being too many of the same assets such as trees being very noticeable. The voice acting is incredibly well done with subtitles being available in the setting option. The music felt very special to listen to, as it matched the strange and dream-like environment very well and did a fantastic job in the more emotional moments of the game.

15 years have passed since the Rat Plague was eradicated and Empress Jessamine was murdered. Reinstated as Empress after her mother's death, Emily Kaldwin alongside her Royal Protector Corvo brought the Isle back to its former prosperity and glory, reorganizing the city watch to usher in a peaceful era… Only for fate to repeat itself in a similar but somewhat less bloody method. An emerging serial killer in the Isle is marking their murders as orders from the crown, a coup arises alongside an unknown woman claiming an uncertain blood relation who has a strange, untouchable magic that turns your remaining family and ally into stone. Escape from the castle and commandeer a ship known as The Dreadful Whale run by Meagan, a woman who has her own reasons for helping you regain everything that was lost.

12-40+ hours to complete. Dishonored 2 is a first-person stealth/action game where you play as a supernatural assassin in a mostly open world. 9 missions to complete, with hundreds of ways to complete them. Skill trees and Bone charms offer a huge variety of techniques and abilities to assassinate, murder, or move stealthily through the map; and with characters moving and reacting differently on how/where you confront them, what character you’ve chosen to play, or handled the last mission leads to high replayability.

I really enjoyed most of the time I spent into this game, being sneaky is fun and rewarding, Dishonored 2 is very well polished, beautiful, and the storyline was fun to play with satisfying endings. My only complaint is NG+ doesn’t feel rewarding or worth being called a NG+. “Use it or lose it” mechanics, NG+ Imports only runes spent on supernatural abilities and traits of sacrificed bonecharms. Blueprints are carried over but they must be repurchased. Black Bonecharms and Gold are not carried over, making my second run look very similar to my first since I had to grab most of the collectables for money again.

Abby is a puppet who lives in a beautiful, scenic storybook-like world and works at a lovely circus with the ringmaster and a friendly bear; but sometimes things aren’t so nice, like how the ringmaster locks them up in a cage at night. Abby escapes, and goes on a grand adventure! But the story isn’t done just yet, and the ringmaster isn’t exactly willing to let her go.

2-3 hours to complete, A Juggler’s Tale is a dark fairytale sidescroller with easy puzzle and platforming sections. With a charming storyline and an interesting plot twist, the game is genuinely very nice to play and look at as the graphics and explorable areas are picturesque. Easy to beat, easy to complete, stress-free gaming at its finest.

Aspen is a housecat. They’ve been a companion to the elderly head of house, Bernard, and his two staff members since they were a kitten and watched them be haunted by their pasts. The Mason family has long since been broken and scattered, but with the death of Bernard, the family reunites to settle their inheritances and the mansion left behind. Greed lured them here, but they will find a mystery unsolved and answers to questions they did not want to seek. Someone has to look after the family, and Aspen has always done just fine.

Warning: This game has suicide and self-harm as a topic.
6-7 hours to complete, Cats and the Other Lives is a pixel art point-and-click masterpiece! 3 chapters, this story is one that spans decades that you watch unfold in the present and in visions of the past. It's a bit of a drama, the story is well-written and full of twists and turns. I’m seriously impressed with the amount of work put into this and making the pixel art incredibly detailed. I hope the warning doesn’t scare you off from playing this gem of a game.