BLAEO — Backlog Assassins Extraordinaire

Mskotor

Next update (works only on profile page)

December update

Over all back log prog ress :

27% completed

58% beaten

1% unfinished

1% never played

13% won't play

Degrees of Separation (Q1 2019) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Co-op Puzzle
6,6 hours | 10 of 10 (100%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- easy puzzles to play in co-op
- good co-op implementation
- nice art style

The bad
- puzzles are sometimes designed in unintuitive way
- some slight collision problems on platforms
- narrator could be so cheesy I sometimes did not want to listen to next part of the story
- character animations can look stiff and wonky

Conclusion:
It's easy game to play in co-op. Nothing groundbreaking, but good enough to play with a kid or someone who's not hard-puzzle-lover.

Story:

Fire girl and ice boy are living in their respectable kingdoms, until they meet each other by accident. After that they start to travel to uncover fate of the previous king, and see if they can remove the barrier that divides them. There is really cringe love story in the background as well.

Gameplay:

Each map has bit different mechanic, but in general screen is separated in two parts - half is in the winter season, and other half is in the summer. There is clear line dividing both seasons, and most of the puzzles involve manipulation of the environment to reach scarves. Winter side will have frozen water that can be walked on, fire in lanterns die making platforms drop, objects can be rolled to make snowballs. Summer side will make it possible to walk under the water, light up lanterns that lift platforms. Some puzzles requires really careful character positioning, and it's not always easy due to rare problems with platform collision detection.

Some maps deviates from the basic concept - bridge can be created on the interface between winter and summer to reach higher places, characters can spawn prison-like-balls to use momentum and shot themselves further or higher. There is no tutorial here, so each new mechanic needs to be figured out on our own. Ropes needs to be pulled to move platforms that are away. Ability to change element from Winter to Summer and vice versa.

There are two possible endings, and one is gated behind collecting all the scarves around the maps. It doesn't change much, so it's more of the hoarding thing.

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Really nice hand-drawn style
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - Environmental sounds are nice, music is forgettable and narrator is annoying
Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - Some small collision problems on platforms, but nothing groundbreaking

End of the year 2019 stats

Beaten 28 games:
- 1 Uplay game
- 1 Android game
- 9 Xbox Game Pass games
- 18 Steam games
Favorite game beaten in 2020: Ori and the Will of the Wisps
Worst game beaten in 2020: The Division
Longest game beaten: Pillars of Eternity - 59h
Shortest game beaten: What Remains of Edith Finch - 2h
In 2019 I’ve beaten 19 games - 9 less than in 2020
- I bought PC in Jan 2020, which finally gave me ability to play games normally
- working the afternoon shift leaves me with just a bit of time in the morning and in the late evening - which is not good for longer games

Methodology:

games bought before Steam Winter sale 2019 count as added in December 2019
games bought from start of Winter Sale 2019 to the end of January 2020 count as January 2020 additions

I do buy games during winter sale to beat them next year, so it makes most sense.

Green columns shows games beaten on Steam, blue on other platforms. They are stacked, so in March I’ve beaten 2 games on Steam, and 1 somewhere else.

I also made graph that shows my progress from the time I started to write down my percentages

Great purge is a time when I removed, in a span of 3 months, 59 games from my account (I was close to 500, so it was more than 10% of my library). It was also time when I really sorted my library and moved a lot from unfinished to won’t play. I removed few at the end of 2020 as well, so 3 years later I’m still barely above 500 games owned :D

I barely bought any games this year, and when I did summary of what I have still to play I also did not buy anything during Winter Sale, as I decided I have more than enough games to play till at least Summer Sale. If not longer.