A late ode to January
AKA Where did the first month of the year go???
Beaten in January 7 games
I love this universe that the devs have built. The way they can take an idea of a steam powered robot world and move it between genres keeps the games fresh but familiar. I first played steamworld dig on my 3ds when it came out, and loved the metroidvanian style of it. So it was great to get back to those roots with this game. As usual however, there are some insane achievements, specifically to do with how you finish up. Certain tasks done in the game give you stars at the end. Each star on it own is easy enough, but then the final one wants you to do all 4 in one run. So finish in less than 4 hours, earn a certain amount of money, don’t die and find all the secrets. I had one run where I needed only a few secrets and then to wrap it up with the final boss, but the secrets I needed were so far spread out I could never do it in time, with the clock sitting on 3.52. So I went back to an older save and worked on my efficiency in getting the secrets on my way to other places, rather than getting all the equipment first. And I did it! Nice tough game to start off my year
Ok so I’ll admit that after the rather slow start to my month, thanks to grinding on some longer games, I sought out some ‘quick and easy’s just to keep things going. This was a very one note game developed no doubt as a ‘my first game’ project from some bedroom dev. Plane flies, you click mouse, bombs drop and the city is razed. Repeat 25 times with no real progression or variety. But hey it was easy, so there was that.
As part of my little quest to get ‘the numbers up’. I picked a couple of Bullid games. I’ve played a few before and they were pretty quick and ‘casual’. This and the other game I picked were just silly. Super glitchy and very little by way of challenge to get the achievements.
This one wins the prize for the glitchiest game I’ve played in a long time. It’s a bit of a doctor mario type game, but the pills glitch and disappear so often. And the level counter doesn’t reset when you die, so you can just reset until you find an easy layout to get to the next ‘level’
SO yeah this was also a bit cheeky. I have played this game a lot on my phone, thanks to an early humble android and PC bundle, but never installed it on my computer. But I saw it only had one achievement and it was a quick one, so doubled down on my ‘cheap shots’ day, and added this to the list, for a total of 3 in one day.
The actual game is a fairly decent card based strategy game, and it was a great game to play on the phone. Don’t think I’ll spend more time replaying it on the PC for now though, as there are plenty of other games to kill.
I loved the first game with it’s unique looking puzzles and interesting designs, so I picked this up on the sale. I think they dropped the ball a bit. All the puzzles are the same shape now, and the choice of puzzle images seemed to be mostly grotesque fairy tale type images. So I preferred the first one definitely, but it’s still a decent enough puzzle game, and me and my wife sat and played it together.
This game is a really ‘make a word’ puzzle game. The dictionary is good and the bears add a nice element of strategy with their different modifiers. It alternates between timed levels, where any word will do, and the standard boards, which encourage thought about how to maximise your points and keep an eye on which tiles are expiring. Again, this is one I sat and played with my wife. We haven’t actually got to the end of it yet, but a random lucky unlock of a legendary bear meant we got all the achievements, so it goes on the list for this month.
The funniest part is the little ‘madlibs’ type card they show at the end of the level where they use some of the words you made in random sentences. Some of our results made us laugh out loud. We’ll probably still keep playing this one for a while, and it gets a thumbs up.
Wow January certainly came and went before I could even catch my breath. It started out with the last week of my holiday, which was great. I can't remember the last time I actually took 3 weeks off and just spending time with my family and doing things around the house really refreshed the old body and mind. And then of course work started again and everyone was keen to get things going, so I got loaded up with more work. As such, I spent less time gaming than I would have normally. I also spent a lot of time working on Hitman 2 and to a lesser degree 'Rise of the tomb raider', so there wasn't a lot of game completing action happening, but I have been enjoying the games I played, which is what we all want after all.
7 games done then for the month, although 3 of them were so quick, I don't really know if I should count them on my goal towards 90 for the year, but we'll see how desperate I get as the year winds down. So I guess we'll see how February pans out, but things may well get worse before I get ahead on my various projects and find myself with more free time again.
Other stats
Achievements Gained 235Most difficult (according to TSA) 'Spiritualized' in Joe Danger 2
Games added 20
Number of different games played19
Achievement streak 1344 days
Average Game completion 76%
Total number of completed games 454
Games completed in 2020 7
Sometimes you need some quick and easy games in between. Starting a long-ass game becomes more and more intimidating the older you get (or better: the more valuable your gaming time gets), because one might not finish it… So I totally get mixing in a few shorter games. And they need to be played as well after all :)
Yeah that is exactly right. I also find if I spend all my time just playing one game at a time, especially a long one I start to lose interest in playing. But breaking the time up with different games and genres keeps thing interesting. And yeah, as you say, even the little games will need to be finished one day.