Zelrune

April 2022 Progress Report

I’ve had an amazing time this month, assassinated two (!!!) big games out of my backlog with Okami being a fond & beloved childhood game of mine; and Terraria, a game I set aside for far too long. Townscaper I’ve had my eye on for a bit so when it got bundled I had to snap it up and had a fun 2-ish hours of playtime; it’s certainly better than Islanders. Thinking of games to play next month, once again I don’t really have anything in particular I’ve picked out, I did win a new game from SG, Fable Anniversary, so I hope to play it next month! I’m a bit nervous, some of the achievements looks difficult but I’ve seen it referenced a couple times and people seem to talk about it positively.

Games added to backlog: 3
Games 100%: 5

Edit: Forgot to add my progress bar!

53% (229/430)
21% (89/430)
13% (54/430)
13% (57/430)
0% (1/430)
94.7 hours
One of the most memorable games I've ever played.

Play as the Sun goddess Amaterasu who was called forth from stone into being by Sakuya, a wood sprite and guardian of Kamiki Village, during a time of great distress; the eight-headed demon called Orochi has broken free of their 100 year seal and is smothering the beautiful land of Nippon in darkness. Demons run rampant, plague and illness decimates the city, madness taints the water, nature withers and dies under their touch. Run across the land preforming miracles with your brush and Divine instruments, restore and bloom the guardian trees, release the 13 celestial brush gods from their constellations and use their power for yourself, use your sunlight and strength to banish this darkness and restore this land to its former beauty; this world is your canvas!
“May the fresh scent of flowers protect you always!”

I cannot express my absolute love and fondness for Okami, I am admittingly biased as Okami was my first ever videogame and it introduced me to what is now a huge part of my life. Inspired by watercolors, the sumi-e art style and nature, Okami is a huge mix of several Japanese mythologies and folklore. 25+ hours to complete, while not perfect as there is a bit of issues with the camera angles in tight spaces, the story, art, gameplay, and lore has clearly been crafted with love by its developers from Clover Studio.


Half-Life 2
Incredible sandbox that's easy to sink hundreds of hours into.

Terraria

10/10
100.7 hours
104 of 104 achievements

Terraria is an absolutely huge 50-175 hour 2D sandbox survival exploration with some rather fantastic biomes, boss fights, housing, furniture, weapons, and mounts – the survival mode is optional; as starting the game on Journey Mode gives you access to time & weather changes, enemy spawn rates, item duplication, and a godmode option you can turn on and off.
Starting the game, you create a world, and you choose how large it can be, how difficult you want it, if you want the crimson or corruption, or random. After that, it’s all randomly generated with an ocean on each side, floating islands, a huge dungeon, perhaps some living trees that you can make some rather fantastic treehouses with, and of course, The Underworld. Beating bosses unlocks new content, new npcs, new weapons and mounts, more biomes, and some neat events. Much of the content is optional and I will freely admit most of my time was me building a large apartment complex that went into space; with some individual houses for my favorite npcs in their preferred environments.

While Terraria’s strong point isn’t the storyline, the sandbox aspect is honestly enough to let you roleplay your heart out and come up with your own conclusions. Between fighting off the occasional pirate invasion, flying around with rainbow wings, and occasionally fighting my favorite boss, The Empress of Light, I honestly had a fantastic time by myself without even touching the multiplayer option. Spending 100 hours in this game is easier than I expected, and it’s easy to recommend.

TL;DR – A 2D sandbox game that’s easy to sink 100 hours into, optional boss fights, a rather incredible amount of weapons and item customization, pets, mounts. Fight god, or fish the entire time. Multiplayer is optional. 50 -175 hours to complete.

Half-Life 2
Pretty fun for 1-2 hours, sometimes doors do not appear on houses.

Townscaper

8/10
2.2 hours
no achievements

Townscaper is a cute city-builder, create a town on an island in the ocean, on stilts, floating in the sky; or some odd combination of everything. Sprawling cities and gardens, cozy houses, looming castles, huge apartment complexes, build your town block by block.
Fairly enjoyable, regardless of what you build the art style is enough that you’re going to be satisfied or happy with whatever you make. Place a house; and trees, benches, grass, and other things pop up making your town look lived in. More of a toy than a game, choose colors and discover combinations by building things, building things in a specific order can create some unique areas. My only complaint is that sometimes a house does not have any doors, or the door is in an undesirable location, like the back of the house instead of the front.

Half-Life 2
A pretty ok walking sim that talks about sensitive subjects.

Bottle: Pilgrim Redux

6/10
1.5 hours
24 of 24 achievements

Warning: mentions of alcoholism, depression, gross negligence, and death.

A man seeking redemption for his past mistakes takes this pilgrimage every year, walk with him down the mountain to the oceanside and listen to the story of his wife, how she passed away young from cancer; his difficulty connecting to his daughter while they both deal with the heavy weight of grief; struggles with the bottle; and how he tries to redeem himself from an unforgiveable mistake, year after year.

Bottle: Pilgrim Redux, a lovely walking sim accompanied by decent instrumentals and some rather fantastic graphics. The game is almost completely linear and the storyline is easy to follow along, there are no parts or puzzles to sit around where you can get confused. 1-2+ hours to complete, if you’re looking for a good walking sim to spend some time in, this one isn’t bad.

Half-Life 2
A fun, easy, and short hidden object game with music and cute animations.

100 hidden fish

8/10
0.2 hours
100 of 100 achievements

Find 100 hidden fish in this rather enjoyable 10+ min hidden object game. Everything is hand drawn and you look for 100 different fish hidden in the environment with some classy upbeat music in the background. There are moving animations, such as bubbles and moving mechanical fish, making everything very entertaining to look at. “N” will give you nightmode if the screen is too bright, and you can reset all your achievements by hitting “Del” then “Esc”.

Jaded

Congratulations on the big assassinations! That’s amazing progress this month!

Reading this makes me want to replay Terraria.
It is such a great game. It appears there’s been a fair few updates since I played.. There wasn’t a god mode then I don’t think! :0

Zelrune

I don’t recall there being one either, they also added a bunch of new stuff and a workbench to make even more housing furniture, I love the personal npc houses I made! Tbh I was surprised it received any updates at all, I last played it in 2016 so I was pleasantly surprised there was a bunch of new stuff I’ve never seen before. Journey mode was really nice, some achievements can only be achieved during certain weather conditions and you can change the time of day or move to the next one, made things easier to 100%, for sure.

robilar5500

Makes me interested in Terraria again as well.

Zelrune

If you do opt to play it again I would love to see what kind of houses you make, I had a bunch of fun. For the Witchdoctor I made an underground house in the Jungle, it was a bit difficult finding a safe spot for him because there is this underground jungle plant that can stretch across tiles, but it looked really nice at the end of it, you wouldn’t believe how many books and bookshelves I stole from the dungeons because of the aesthetic.

Cece09

Well done on your progress too. Looks like you got people back into terraria XD

Zelrune

Thank you! It’s definitely a game worth re-visiting if it hasn’t been played in a few years, in 2020 the developers finally considered the game to be “Complete” with the Journey’s End update; although they still did a quality of life update and added some crossover bosses from Don’t Starve Together afterwards. The game is so well loved by it’s creators; it’s a joy to play.

Cece09

I kinda wish it had 100 achievements so it would be almost a perfect 10 100 100

Smythe

100% on Terraria is quite an achievement. Good work!
I’m not sure I could stick with one game for 100 hours.

Adelion

Okami deserves every bit of love it gets.