July Roundup
Bored on the 4th of July
Games I beat this month:
Beaten in July 8 games
-
The Room Three
8 hours playtime
10 of 10 achievements
-
Snail Trek - Chapter 4: The Final Fondue
67 minutes playtime
9 of 9 achievements
-
7 Billion Humans
12 hours playtime
19 of 19 achievements
-
Cube Link
6 hours playtime
8 of 8 achievements
-
Delete
3 hours playtime
8 of 8 achievements
-
Quell
3 hours playtime
35 of 35 achievements
-
Super Lucky's Tale
36 hours playtime
58 of 58 achievements
-
Swapperoo
11 hours playtime
23 of 23 achievements
So of course July was the tail end of the Steam sale, and as I usually tend to do, I went through my wishlist and picked up a bunch of really cheap little games for a few cents each. Some of them were in bundles with other games so all told I gathered another 15 puzzle/casual games for about $9. A lot of them are perfect 'coffee break' games. Little brain teasers I can do during a work break. So most of my completions this month were those, being as the 'main' games I have been playing are all longer and likely to take a bit longer to finish.
Asides from these that I beat, I also played a lot of Borderlands 2 with my brother and his girlfriend. It has been a lot of fun and I'm very close to beating it now. I did not get the appeal of the series after playing the first game, but everything improved so much with the second game, I get why people like it now. I'll definitely pick up the third one when it's on steam and has a GOTY version.
In real life, things have been busy with work and the kids and the gardening. Feels a bit like spinning wheels some time, but it's good mostly. I mostly finished clearing the jungle around our mini orchard that the previous owners had allowed to grow unchecked, so the fruit trees will hopefully have a better chance of survival. By my count, we have 3 lemon trees, 2 peach trees, 2 guava trees, 2 avocado trees and something that seems to produce some form of tangerine or easy peel orange. There's also a grape vine and several goosebury bushes, that I had to cut right back as they were interfering with other plans. Hopefully the vine can recover when spring arrives, but the grapes were so sour, it's no great loss, but I guess the birds liked them.
Happy August to everyone. Hope it's a good one
Other stats
Achievements Gained 256Most difficult (according to TSA) 'All-Pro Warrior' in Wolfenstein II
Games added 20
Number of different games played 16
Achievement streak 1192 days
Average Game completion 75%
Total number of completed games 416
Games completed in 2019 55
The Room Three
10 of 10 achievements (100%)
I picked this up on the sale, because I loved the first two games and the price was too good to pass up. I normally consider mobile games to be inferior to 'normal' games, but this is one case where I think it would probably be superior on the phone, with a more 'hands on' and tactile approach. But I'm glad to at least be able to play it. They are perfectly crafted little escape room puzzlers, and the focus is perfectly maintained so you are never distracted by useless things, and the end result if you feel very clever for figuring things out, even if you're aware at the same time that the game was nudging you there. It's brilliant game design, and I look forward to playing the next one in the series
Snail Trek - Chapter 4: The Final Fondue
9 of 9 achievements (100%)
After beating the 3rd last month, I just had to finish the little story. Love the aesthetic and game design. And of course a great sense of humour. I'd love to see the dev turn their attention to a longer form 'sierra' type adventure game. The modern conveniences like the auto-suggestion text box are nice touches that avoid some of the more obvious design frustrations of those early games, but otherwise the design feels spot on.
7 Billion Humans
19 of 19 achievements (100%)
Played the first in the series and enjoyed it, so naturally picked up the sequel in the sale. If the first one was an introduction to 'single thread' commands, this one is very much more focussed on 'multi-thread' programming. Being a programmer in my real life job, I was able to solve most of these without too many problems, but then it has the challenges for time and max instructions, and some of those are brutal. I will happily admit to using a guide for those, and being impressed with how much difference different approaches can take. One day I want my kids to learn programming, and I think games like this will be a great way to teach them.
Cube Link
8 of 8 achievements (100%)
A well worn puzzle concept, taken to the 3d realm. Join the matching colours with non-intersecting lines. It works alright I guess, but a lot of the time, it felt like the solutions could be more elegant, so where you end up with the entire cube covered, rather than having optional routes and squares in many levels. Some of the times the solution I used on a level felt wrong because so much space was still free on the cube. Anyway, it was part of a steam 'complete your collection' bundle, so it was pretty much free, and I guess for that price it was worth it.
Delete
8 of 8 achievements (100%)
Another little puzzler, this one was much better. Similar to minesweeper, or hexcells, you're presented with squares the give information about which squares around them are 'dangerous'. This has a few interesting twists, and I liked the fact that each level was solvable without guess work.
Quell
35 of 35 achievements (100%)
A simple concept. Move the ball to gather all the droplets in a minimum number of moves. Levels range from stupidly easy, to really long winded. And then they also added hidden collectibles to each, for an added challenge. Not bad, but not revolutionary by any means. It's part of a trilogy, so I guess there'll be more 'quell' in my future.
Super Lucky's Tale
58 of 58 achievements (100%)
Got the DLC for this in the sale, so finally felt like I could focus on it a finish it. The game is a fun little PS2 era type 3d platformer, where you gather collectibles and enter levels from a 'hub' level. So similar to Yooka-laylee I guess. The hardest achievements are probably from the DLC, specifically a couple of 'no death' challenges for certain levels. Which was more frustrating than it should have been thanks to some random elements. But the worst achievement is probably the one for gathering 100 000 coins. I hate when developers add things like that into a game to inflate the 'game time'. So after you've beaten the game you must now add another 5 or 6 hours of repeating the same action just to complete. Anyway the actual game is fun and great for kids, so I would still recommend it.
Swapperoo
23 of 23 achievements (100%)
Oh look, another little puzzle game! This one takes the match 3 concept and adds a nice twist with tiles that can only move a certain way, and tiles you can click on to erase. There's also puzzle levels to solve in a certain number of moves, and some silly story I didn't quite understand. Anyway, does it's job pretty well, so I'd recommend
Do you go to vacations? Because I wonder how you keep that streak going. Also do you always keep some easy game in back hand in case you encounter a particulary game where you have to invest like 20 hours before even reaching the point of achievements being obtainable?
Also, I was interested in Snail Trek as it looks like a fun and small adventure game. But I am slightly annoyed by the game being seperated into four different library entries. Really wish they would make one compendium game with all four parts unified.
I have gone on vacations, but I have taken a laptop with a couple of small games. First time it wasn’t ostensibly to keep the streak going, but more in case I needed to do any work, as I was working for myself then, which meant no official holiday. Then last year when we went away, I took it along as a media center and of course it was used to keep the streak going. I jump around a lot between different games, it’s rare that I’ll start one and play if exclusively, so there’s always a couple of short puzzle or casual games installed that I’ll play during lunch break or in the morning. The evenings are usually when I’ll play the longer games, where I might not get an achievement at all during a play session. I guess the fact I have 350 games installed on my computer is a testimony to my lack of ability to only play one thing at a time.
And yeah I think it was a sneaky move on the snail trek developer’s part. As they are cheap games, and pretty short, but splitting it into four stretches the value a little bit extra. Maybe if he makes more games he’ll consider doing a longer one and putting it into one game. He’s definitely got the spirit behind those games, even with some of the funny ways you can die and the points system.
Wait, where was there randomness in the DLC for Super Lucky’s Tale? I beat all the levels in both DLCs and don’t remember any randomness.
In terms of the boss fight and wrigglemania, there were random enemy placements and the random ‘safe’ floor spaces. So I’d have a good run going, then it would get messed up. It wasn’t a huge problem to just beat the levels, but trying to have a no hit run, there were just too many times when I’d get screwed over by an enemy spawning on top of me, or the safe floor tile being out of reach. Maybe it didn’t help that I was generally playing with the kids, and needed to concentrate on it more.