adam1224

I hope this one will turn out well, I tried the blaeo generator, that makes the good presentation doable in reasonable time
So here comes January, a really active month, Battle Chef Brigade being the best of it! (then others in the reverse order the recently played page gave):

Battle Chef Brigade

28.2 hours, 17 of 25 achievements

The Queen of the month - mix some monster hunting with nice brawling mechanics, a match 3 game on crack and steroids, throw in some anime style and you get Battle Chef Brigade.
The game has so many lovely characters, great voice overs, art style that is just pleasant to look at it while still super colourful and a robust system for the actual gameplay.
The game in short: For most of the campaign you play as Mina Han. You can equip 3 combat items, 3 ingredients, and 3 cooking accessories.
Then you go out and collect plants / fight and kill monsters ( combat - 4 direction, normal and spell attack, directions modify them into 3 types of attack and 3 types of magic). The ingredients are presented, with few exceptions, as in a 2x2 grid, having flavour gems (and later bone and poison) in it - it can be just two, or all 4 slots used.
You store these ingredients in the pantry and use it for cooking. You choose which ingredient you drop into the pot and what part of it - you can not rotate it before. But after it is in the pot, you can stir it - choose any 2x2 part and rotate it freely, potentially making matches. The goal of each cook-off is to score the most points - in general, using the theme ingredient and having the proper flavour (most level 3 flavour gems have to be a specific one).
But here comes the kicker - some ingredients have level 2 gems in them, but also bone. Or poison that you want to remove. Some items promote gems as you pick a plant, other items give extra points for meeting extra requirements (ie. use 5 pieces of any ingredient). You can use sauces to recolour gems (only the top ones, so time to stir them properly!) Also as the kitchen equipments, you can use a slow-cooker that auto-upgrades taste gems slowly, specific pots that can only combine one colour gems but uses only 2, match-4 ones that promote to level 3 instantly, or the combo pan that will make "hotspots" in your pot after finishing a combo, that promote the gem being there - so better stir one there that fits the required taste :D
As you likely can see, I love this game. It has such an unexpected depth to it - what to hunt, what to throw into the pot, then stir it fast to make the good matches, then calculate with the combo and rotate gems there, then quickly put the dish onto the chopping block to remove poison, then throw into the slow-cooker while you run out to hunt something for the next dish (eventually you need to prepare 3 dishes against the clock!).
It's cool, it's fast, it's clever. A totally awesome game.


Frightened Beetles

0.1 hours, 5 of 5 achievements

A short, nice free to play game that is more of an easy 100% than anything bigger. It has nice, low-key funny style to it, it was a good recommendation from discovery queue.


RED

0.5 hours, no achievements

Another free to play game made with combination of gamemaking tools/engines, and it's weird. Edgy, 13-year-old-loves-it anime story, a relatively complex but not too responsive combat and movement system, where enemies can stunlock you while breaking out of your attack of the same kind. Another discovery queue recommendation, but I really don't recommend playing this after my experience.


RESIDENT EVIL 2 / BIOHAZARD RE:2 "1-Shot Demo"

0.7 hours, 6 of 6 achievements

To be completely honest this was absolutely for the 100%, also a bit of curiosity. With everything at minimum the game looks almost like the original (as far as I can tell from videos) and I was just more or less indling around, really wasn't in the mood of actually getting zombies in my face :D


The Flood

0.7 hours, no achievements

It was calming, but somehow nothing stick with me from it except that it had nice music. Expected it to be more interesting, but it was just another free to play game that haven't really deliver much, while at least avoided being bad.


Half-Life 2: Lost Coast

0.9 hours, no achievements

"This game is awesome and stuff"
A small, demo-like level with source engine. The old, good usual Half-Life 2 pewpew. Kind of made me want to play more :D


Tick's Tales

2.5 hours, 11 of 11 achievements

A pretty good point and click game. Has a lot of the oldschool whimsical, cheeky style of the genre, while it could be a bit longer or more "complex" - it lacks the bigger picture - type of storytelling, but overall a nice indie P&C that is very affordable.


Rogue's Tale

1.4 hours, 0 of 130 achievements

This game is somewhat infuriating if you ever plan to progress in your game, the RNG is at 11/10. In one run I fought a single snail and finished the dungeon and finally could see the town (to die in next dungeon in a few steps, a trap dealing 80% of my hp damage), while in others a single ork killed me with me not even being able to scratch it, or a giant spider ate me. All of these in inescapable situations. Maybe it's just me getting too old or haven't played a really hardcore roguelike, but having these fuck you situations in a first 1, maybe 2 minutes of the game with having no player agency above them - no class, build, skills, items, spells or other tools - really makes me not want to play it ever again


Highschool Possession

1.6 hours, 2 of 2 achievements

A great game with complex choices, jaw-dropping art style and it even prepared a tea for me.
OR
I skipped through it because it was mind-numbing and stupid but hey, technically 100%. Really wouldn't recommend it though.


Tengami

1.6 hours, 4 of 4 achievements

To keep this short - looks great, the way and style of controlling is nice (mouse, folding animations) , it could be a bit faster as there is quite some time in it when one just walks. Pretty ok.


Contract

1.7 hours, no achievements

Tread with care. Starts out pretty cool, but around the final missions, and the levels after them started to get kind of bad. Stealth is weird and requires enemies to face the other way, but characters spawn with random directions - sometimes the first guard sees you, another time the whole level's 3 rooms has guards facing the other way. This especially hurts with the machinegunners who sometimes just kill you in one shot. Also for whatever bloody reason the silenced pistol does 0 damage to dogs. And actually silenced pistol is the worst - you get nothing out of a stealth kill, but if you melee-kill someone from behind you get more ammo. (melee also 1hit KO) - so instead of spending 100k on a pistol I should have just buy a machine gun and use that, or melee when it's available.
The game's basic idea of fast-moving, melee+pistol kills and contract killing was nice, but the issues with its RNG would put this into the "rather don't play it, but I won't stop you if you want to" category.


Crow

2.6 hours, no achievements

Controls a tad weird with mouse instead of touchscreen (mobile port) but it's a very good game. Some exploration parts, fights with flying around collecting energy / dodging enemy attacks, choices leading to different skills unlocking and different final fight. A very pleasant surprise.


The Bottom of the Well

2.8 hours, 12 of 12 achievements

Another free to play discovery queue recommendation, one of the best ones.
Choose your own adventure-styled survival game (Bombing of the city, some survival afterwards) , where you pick your stats before the game starts, affecting parts of the story. The game takes place as a recurring dream, there are some overarching points throughout the individual paths/dreams.


HEADLINER

4.3 hours, 20 of 29 achievements

It's like Papers, Please light (very light) - more of a visual novel than actual game - you decide what to make out of this. Whatever the game does, makes it pretty well, I think it's just an important, less active gameplay that should be noted.
The gameplay is each day getting a few articles, and you need to decide which ones go into press - sometimes you have a minimum or maximum limit on their numbers, but your choices will affect how an emigrant question,a genetically enchanced vs "purists" issue will turn out, and how active the police will become. You see the effects on your way to home from dialogues, and you have a spouse and daughter who have their own issues and goals, and reflect on events and on your choices. Nothing managing money like in Papers, the game is making decisions, stamping stuffs, see what happens, talk to family.


Khaba

4.8 hours, no achievements

Decent mirror-puzzle with some quite unoriginal story to it. It's .. fine. Through on a level or two I had to restart because I could pull mirrors out of bounds :D


Day of the Tentacle Remastered

15.0 hours, 58 of 58 achievements

I'm a bit sad that I got to its end while using a guide, turns out I was so very close to solve some puzzles, just some little differences in through (dress up the mummy first and make it go, or make it go first) prevented me a goooood while ago and then I completely forgot about the game. It was really entertaining, and far from having as much moon-logic as I thought it has.


Beyond the Invisible: Darkness Came

6.2 hours, 15 of 15 achievements

Standard HOG #2348914.3 with very few hidden object scenes, it's mostly item hunting and using. Also needed 3 playthroughs for 3 difficulties.


Slash or Die

9.4 hours, 10 of 10 achievements

I'm really looking forward for Slash or Die 2. The base idea is great, has a dark fantasy aesthetics to it (similar to Dark Souls) , plays pretty well but oh-so grindy at the start - you can die very easily, and in the first location's 2nd wave there are already enemies with 2 health, while you do 1 damage and the dash has a 2-3 second limit to it because stamina. After upgrades it's a lot of fun.
bad things:
final boss still has a bug after years of promising to be fixed that makes him invulnerable
I'm pretty sure the ghosts' hitbox is all kinds of fucked up
the game randomly (Not using the ingame option to close? idk) resets progress completely.
barbiarian is fucked at multiple levels for multiple reasons, hardest and kind of unfun character to play.
good things:
it fixes everything - you can file-edit souls/levels for yourself to give extra or to give back whatever you lost - and the game has no other progression system to it. While starting out from a bad state and unlocking stuffs is great, for fun reasons I would recommend unlocking 2 damage and 2 stamina before start, you can save maybe a good half an hour unfun trying with it without being overpowered.


Tiny and Big: Grandpa's Leftovers

28.1 hours, 41 of 53 achievements

Turns out I was about one-two hour away from its ending when I stopped a good while ago, so I thought I'll retry it.
The gameplay is still phenomenal and super creative, giving tools to shape the levels and try many approach, it's all-around a great indie game.
( I'm not fond of heights, and this game has parts like descending in a temple from maybe a couple hundred metres, with well-presented depth, I felt uneasy because of it so many times. I love jumping, flying, freedom, but the falling part is always creepy :D )


Cece09

Thats alot of games done and interesting colours

adam1224

I will likely experiment with them, I just like warm, softer colours that are still readable and this was a good first try :) Maybe I will make it a bit less intimidating with a gradient next time :D

Cece09

Well good luck getting the perfect colour that represents you.

adil

Haha, that RE2 demo has its own achievement? They’re going too far.

Vito

That’s a lot of games! Keep up the good work :)

Traqie

Wow, great progress adam, keep it up, proud of ya 👏
Ehh I expected Headliner to be a little more than that after looking at screenshot.

Mskotor

Welp. No idea you wanted to not spend a lot of time, writing this post :D’

So many games D: