Beating games is okay, but you can always do better Amitte’s profile

I like a lot of things most people seem to dislike.

I can also get snappy if our opinions clash - in case that happens, please tell me and I’ll try to adapt.

If I don’t have anything cool to say, I’m probably playing: Coloring Pixels, Dot to Dot Puzzles

For my ABC Challenges, go here: General, Hidden Object Games, Point and Clicks, Visual Novels.

Monthly themes I took part in: May 2019 (actually totally forgot about that one), July 2019, August 2019, May 2020, June 2020, July 2020, March 2023

See dem sweet Steam stats here.
PlayStation stats are here.

イムハ on Steam Amitte on SteamGifts

Progress report: April ‘23 (a.k.a. Nothing, Merely Tired)

Like a wise man once said.

100 hidden dogs - Doggos indeed. This one changes perspective throughout the image, as well as feature moving parts, which… don’t do the job of covering stuff up well, I think. There are a bunch of cats and snails drawn that are pretty darn distracting, though; not to mention a few things that could be seen as dogs, if the dev or artist didn’t insist on drawing all findable dogs the same way.

Buddy and Lucky Solitaire - A solitaire game with the twist of emulating the experience of playing in multiple locations in the city and in nature. The solitaire itself lacks an infinite undo feature, which I presume to be the main reason behind my final playtime (not that the devs did it on purpose, seeing as the game didn’t have an undo function at all at first), but then there’s also the aspect of being able to pause your game and look around the location, with most of the game’s achievements being all about spotting certain things within them… I dunno, that’s just a weird little thing taking up too much space in my opinion.

Kawaii Neko Girls 2 - See Kawaii Neko Girls.

PARADISE CLEANING - Married Woman Cosplay Life - - Genuinely wasn’t expecting there to be more, I suppose this is turning into more and more of an elaborate marketing scheme by the day. (Even though the game this is based on doesn’t seem to be coming out in “English” soon, they’ve got a whole new game still in the works, alongside its own PARADISE CLEANING counterpart. Update: As of the time of revision, the original game for this installment of PARADISE CLEANING now has its own Steam page.) Having looked up the game this is based on, I guess the theme checks out, though I’m still confused as to why the couple seems to always be having sex in some kind of void (lol). It’s probably also worth mentioning (late, but still) the laziness in one of the objects you use for cleaning still making a reference to being on a ship (the very first PARADISE CLEANING game had this theme), not to mention showing the girl off at the side of the menu when she’s the only one in the whole game (again, the first installment actually had multiple girls). Oh well, guess this is another cheap ero series I’ve started buying my way through.

Sweet Car Wash - A SG win, yaaay! (I should really be playing more of those.) Anyway, this is one of those small, easy and sexy? (YMMV) puzzle games, so there isn’t really anything to say about it. It’s good for a chill evening, I guess?

See you next month…

23 days ago 5 comments

Progress report: March ‘23 (a.k.a. No Thoughts, Head Empty)

I got back into watching anime! It’s been fun so far, but my self-inflicted insistence to watch everything with no subtitles (unless they’re in Japanese, I suppose; it’s good that I prefer slice of life stories) makes me want to watch a Chinese or Korean series, just to be able to take a break. (There are a few Korean series in particular that I’ve enjoyed over the years, they just hit different.) Other than that, not much of note: school, school and more school. Not even Easter’s gonna heal these wounds.

Here are this month’s assassinations:

100 hidden mushrooms - No, really, what else do you want me to say about these?

Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink - Another one of those HOGs that animate the character models to look like they’re speaking… I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t feel like static sprites are lacking in emotion, so much so that I would rather have a creepily animated one. Oh well. This one’s set in a vaguely German town and despite the steampunk theme, I don’t feel like it pulled me in very much. I remember liking Modern Tales: Age of Invention more (I suppose you could say the plot/setting is sort of similar?). The voice acting is also of dubious quality, though that can be explained as someone down the line lacking time or money - the additional voices were provided by people on the dev team… and it’s impossible not to hear. I don’t necessarily think it was a bad game, I’m just really “meh” about it.

Kawaii Neko Girls - This one saw an achievement update due to a small DLC release, as well as a sequel release. The DLC is stupid, it’s meant to unlock nude versions of the images, but they also locked one girl behind it (just to spite completionists, I guess). There’s also an achievement for spending three whole hours in the game, which… why. Really, just… why? Most of the game is free and even after the DLC, I was done with everything in about 50 minutes. And don’t even get me started on the donation achievement… it seems a few people thought that to unlock it, you need to buy one of the donation DLCs. I thought so as well at first (even though they also reported the achievement not unlocking), but then I tried clicking around the game, and… the achievement unlocked as I clicked the “donate” button. Way to confuse your players! I bought the donation DLC in the Spring Sale, so as of writing this, I am still waiting for a refund. Hopefully this will save someone from throwing away their money! (Not that I have anything against supporting developers, but I don’t think I’m the only one who enjoys getting to play games specifically like these for free.)

King’s Heir: Rise to the Throne - It’s been a while since I completed a HOG! Like, way too long! This one’s set in England and follows two brothers, who get framed for the murder of the current king. How will they prove their innocence? Well, one of them just so happens to be the heir to the throne! I enjoy this kind of setting and the swordfighting minigame is a pretty cool concept (although the shapes to trace get stupid big very early), but then the devs totally crossed the line with their “finish a HOG scene in less than 20 seconds”… I’m sorry, what? A bunch of the games have one for finishing within a minute, which is tough, but still doable, but 20 seconds? Madness… and the only reason I don’t have all achievements in the game yet. I’ll… be trying to get it.

Pretty Girls Klondike Solitaire - Naturally, I bought this one for the novelty of “anime solitaire? heck yeah!”, even if this isn’t the first game I played from these devs, but… man, was this annoying. They really just slap anime girls (which, fun fact, are all heroines from R-rated VNs) on game concepts that are simple on the surface, only to remove a mechanic or two in favor of artificially extending the playtime. This time around, undoing moves is a no-go, which… is a choice, alright. Easy difficulty is a breeze, but Medium and Hard become tedious for no reason other than the devs want you to suffer. Thankfully, this game didn’t take too long to complete, so… I guess I’ll be a slave to these for a while longer.

Sakura Spirit - Something something about a guy aiming to become a judo master, something match something pray for luck and suddenly, he’s in another world with blade-wielding girls and fox spirits… who are also girls. It’s exactly the kind of thing that dude who’s the first to argue about best waifu or the semantics of “translation” vs “localization”, but also writes “sorry my English not good” at the end of every message would read. The premise isn’t anything groundbreaking, especially almost 10 years later, when half the seasonal anime chart is filled with near-identical isekai stories, not to mention the already cliche and trope-y harem aspect; what makes it a miserable experience is how weeaboo it all reads. Most egregiously, characters address each other using Japanese suffixes, but there are also other words or phrases which are just so anime that there’s no way this was created for any other target audience than the one I just described. Apparently, the first version of this game read so much more poorly than the current one does, too; glad I wasn’t exposed to that atrocity. I may have somewhat enjoyed this when I bought it back in 2016, but now it’s possibly the worst written OELVN that also happens to look decent. Sadly, we’re living in one of those timelines where this universe has expanded beyond belief, and so I guess by proxy that means we’re inevitably exposed to that much more of this crap. I’ll at least try to get through the games I already own, can’t promise anything in regards to the rest.

The Franz Kafka Videogame - I’ll start by saying that I am not very familiar with Kafka’s works - I only read one book of his (and no, it wasn’t Metamorphosis), so besides “the vibes” I didn’t really get anything (assuming there was anything “to be gotten”). Head to toes, the presentation of this game makes it seem like a mobile port - it’s very clearly split into levels, with the opening screens to each act scrolling only by pulling the scrollbar (as opposed to just using the scroll wheel) and hints locked behind a time limit (super anti-player, but at least you don’t have to pay for them, amirite?). The whole game took me just under an hour (with external hints, that is), but then I had to spend over an hour to get the “use hints on every level” achievement… tell me you want me to play your game for over 2 hours without telling me you want me to play your game for over 2 hours. They manage to hold up the whole refined aesthetic of calm music and muted colors through most of the game… and then the ending sequence, I kid you not, is an explosive guitar track. And then the “Special Thanks to Franz Kafka” shows up… I don’t know, the dissonance is just uncanny. Any idea how Kafka himself would feel about that? ‘Cause it sure feels like one of those things that would make the person roll in their grave.

See you… next month… tired sigh

about 2 months ago 2 comments

Progress report: February ‘23 (a.k.a. Can School Be Done Yet? Please?)

As the title may (or may not) suggest, February’s been hard. I’m supposed to be done with uni in a few months, but the fact that I need to write a bachelor’s thesis to do so is keeping me up at night. Heck, it drove me to a meltdown; can’t remember the last time I had one of those. It’s tough, cause I feel pretty much directionless and yet now that winter break is over, they just keep piling up work…

…but this was supposed to be about games, wasn’t it? Let’s go, then:

100 hidden snails 2 - Woah, finally stumbled upon a sequel. Also, seems like the dev’s tried to improve again. Taking a jab at I commissioned some bees, perhaps?

36 apples - A first-person puzzle game with a minimalistic art style, all about collecting apples. There’s probably an explanation for everything that happened; I admit I didn’t really “get” any of it.

A Taste of the Past - An aesthetic dream come true, A Taste of the Past is a short story about reconnecting with your roots. In a way, I found I could relate to the main character, who’s not much of a cook with a seemingly absent mother. However, this story concerned exclusively Chinese-American heritage, and since I’m not Chinese-American, I’m afraid I can’t say much about the details. While pleasing to both the eye and ear, story-wise perhaps it seems more like something made for the devs’ closest relatives, rather than a wide array of unrelated individuals.

Camp Focus - The third one of the “lo-fi and work” type games I played; I would guess this one is the least fleshed out of the three, but at the same time, I only really turned it on once for its only achievement…

Chill Corner - Another app (rather than game) to use for lo-fi music while working, studying, etc. I have a faint recollection of it initially receiving mixed reactions, especially when compared to Virtual Cottage. I wouldn’t say it came out on top, but it is good. The base game uses enough music to keep you going, but if you’d like, you can purchase more as DLC; the same goes for customizables and even minigames. You get rewarded with in-game currency for the time you spend playing, which you can later use to buy furniture and accessories for the home your character is in. Since I spent all the time running this game while I did my homework or some other chores (promise!), that wasn’t much of a focus. However, at some point, sending/receiving letters/stickers got added, presumably taking from Kind Words, and I admit, that did take some of my attention away from what I was supposed to be doing. I answered some people’s letters, I opened my own heart up a little about the things that have been on my mind recently… but when I unlocked all the stickers and got past the point of having spent a whole day’s worth of time in the game, I had gotten all the achievements. I’ll be back if something new gets added, but for now, it’s been nice. (I hear the devs are working on some kind of a life sim game as well, so I’m waiting to see more of that!)

Kili’s Treasure - Play as Kili, a little girl on a treasure hunt arranged by her mom, present in the game only as the notes she left around the house for Kili to find. You’re going to spend an hour-ish going around the house in search of what to interact with to find another note, each piece of furniture holding some kind of significance in the family memories. Not much more to note, it was simply pleasant.

Mason and Strings - 14 year old Mason really wants to impress her crush, Tilly, so she and her newfound friend, Strings (yes, that’s the guitar’s name) embark on an adventure to help her learn to play… well, guitar. The Adventure Time-esque art style pulled me in, but a few other things outweighed that easily. First, the platforming; it’s not ideal, and although an update added a “fast fall” mechanic, Mason is still very much slippery. Luckily, it’s acknowleged in-universe. Second, the rhythm part; I’m a sucker for rhythm games, so when I noticed that there might be a semblance of one here, I was ready. As it turns out, there’s nothing to do with keeping a rhythm - all you get are four basic chords (played using the arrow keys) and a wheel to shoot them from (rotated by using W/S). Every once in a while, you’ll need to play a few chords to make a way for yourself or solve some other puzzle, but between how sensitive the wheel seems to be and the awkward controls, it was never really enjoyable. To add insult to injury on the controls part, you use W to talk to someone and only then advance the conversation using Space. I think I’m justified when I say now that I kept getting confused by the controls. Achievements are a fairly new addition to the game as well, so I suppose that’s why they’re not showing up on BLAEO? Oh well. I’m going to mark this game as “completed”, despite one of the achievements not triggering even though I fulfilled the requirements. Must have some kind of weird flag. To end on a good note: the soundtrack is great. It’s simple, yet satisfying and I found myself wanting to listen to it outside of the game. I’m glad the devs released it for free.

Moo Moo Move - A seemingly simple game, all about herding cows. It was absolutely made to be played with a gamepad, which I’m surprised not to see said explicitly on its store page. It’s the first game from its devs, so it’s hard to be a negative nancy, but I think it would have been much more easier if there was an option to rotate the camera; having it be locked seems like an unnecessary obstacle when the main mechanic is supposed to be troublesome enough by itself. There are a total of 21 levels in the whole game, and across them, besides how susceptible the cows are to your movements, you’re also going to be fighting with bulls, icy ground, an UFO and some… scarecrow-like thing that patrols the vicinity and puts your cows to sleep? It’s the middle of nowhere, who on earth might want these cows not to be herded? That’s just weird. All the levels give you a star rating, depending on how well you did, but in my opinion, some of those three star times are ridiculous. I managed to get three stars in two levels in spite of that, though I think it was just a matter of sheer luck. Also worth noting is that the flag for the achievement for completing all levels seems to be misplaced - it popped for me first, just after I barely launched the game, and judging by the percentages, it seems most people likely got it at the same time. According to some reviews, it’s a long-lasting issue the devs never bothered to address. Overall, it gets a “meh” from me; it’s a relatively easy and non-violent game, but it’s not really “good”, I suppose.

Plasticity - A very shallow, very glitchy piece that’s trying to convince everyone to fight pollution, or else all our mothers are going to die of cancer. Oookay then. When are we going to turn this on the corporations? I’m waiting.

SEXTS - Just a typing game all about sexy stuff. The art is openly said to be AI-produced and “touched up by AI-positive artists” (which might be why the base game is free to play). Personally, I’m not too into AI art dominating everything, but on the other hand, I can’t resist a game like this. Visually, there’s too much going on around the play area for seemingly no reason. The BGM could use a change as well; that’s definitely not game music. No beating around the bush; no matter how good the art looks, these games are always slapped together for the purpose of making a quick buck and that is why I’m glad to say all the achievements (at least currently) are doable without any of the paid DLC packages. Hopefully that trend doesn’t change later on.

Spa Mania 2 - Jade is back, alright! By now, she’s already established a chain of eco-friendly spas, but her competitor still refuses to give up, so you’re going to have to spot the moles she sent under the guise of regular customers and remove them from your spas. This time, the customers are mostly based on subcultures (geek guy, goth girl, surfer dude, etc.), rather than simple age characteristics that defined most of the first game’s clientele. Funnily enough, the SFX are simply brought over from the first game (and one of the geek guy’s SFX is that of a female voice, for some reason). Gameplay was pretty much the same as the first game, I blazed through most of it with relative ease; what’s a tad odd in this entry are the “green points” you get for having your customers use eco-friendly stations; that will then contribute to your final score. The day is over, but you still haven’t reached the goal of the level? Wait ‘till you see those green points accounting for a third of your final revenue. Some crazy green money going around in this universe. However, this time around I wasn’t pleased with the spa upgrades or Jade’s costumes. The spa upgrades unlock gradually, for seemingly no other reason than to make sure you won’t run out of things to upgrade before the game is over, which is… less preferable to just buying everything as soon as possible and being just a little sad about not having anything new to buy. As for Jade’s outfits, I much preferred the customizable dress-ballerina shoes combo of the first game, even if it didn’t affect gameplay in any way. Here, you get a wardrobe of various tops, bottoms, shoes, gloves and dresses, but they also unlock over time and affect how fast Jade moves around and works at different stations; I find that counterintuitive to the idea of customization, especially since the clothes don’t even mesh together most of the time. The minigames this time around average out to a “meh” sort of rating from me - the incense minigame is kind of Flappy Bird-esque, the tea minigame is a crazy easy “plan the path” kind of game and the special treatment minigame (“deliver ingredients to bucket”, tries to have a factory-esque vibe) deserves to burn for how dumb and limited it is. Comparing the art style of the first game and this one, I’m not a fan of the change, but alas, that’s just how things are. At least there aren’t any more stereotypical caricatures. What I did like, however, was that each new spa had a different rendition of the same song playing in the background, each bringing a different instrument out to the forefront of the track. Last thing I can think of is kind of a shower thought - how is it that Jade travelled seemingly all over the world to learn the secrets of wellness in the first game, yet her spa chain in the second game seems to be confined only to the US? Curious, that.

See you next month!

3 months ago 5 comments

Progress report: January ‘23 (a.k.a. I’m Back!)

Like a bad month could ever stop me! It took two whole hours to write all of these, but I did it! I managed to… uh… remember what I wanted to say! Mostly. Probably. Yeah!
Oh, and also, most of my February is going to be off, so… mayhaps something special is on the horizon? eyes emoji

On with the post!

100 hidden gnomes - They’re not even really hidden. They’re all right there, in plain sight.

Calico - This life simulation game promises oodles of fun, as you get busy rebuilding a cat cafe left behind by your older relative (either your grandma or aunt, I can’t even remember at this point). That… is there, sure, but there’s only so much you can do - after you fill up your cafe with as many different animals as your heart desires and prepare each and every recipe at least once, you’ve pretty much seen it all. Besides that, you’ll spend most of your time running around completing quests for everyone in the world, simply to fill up their heart levels, which… does nothing, really. Meanwhile, as long as you’ve got things in stock, the cafe works itself. Besides recipes (the only thing for purchase that’s actually useful), you could also buy a bunch of decorations for your cafe and all kinds of outfits for your character, but… why even do that? After you’re done with all of the quests and your cafe is stocked, there’s absolutely nothing to do anymore. It’s sad, really; it’s clear as day that this game wants to be a grand open-world adventure, but fizzles out after you unlock the second, maybe the third biome - it’s all rinse and repeat until you’ve seen the credits and/or gotten all the achievements. The cons I feel are most annoying are 1) controller preference; yes, I do own a controller, but that doesn’t mean I can use it whenever, and while playing a cozy life sim, I would prefer not to have to be asked to use one. This game did really push me to get myself a mouse, though, which made it more bearable; and 2) some of the cooking minigames are too damn tedious. Maybe it’s because I don’t actually really like cats (GASP) or pool (I swear, whoever thought that was a good idea…), but those were an exercise in misery. Perhaps if I had been using a controller, this wouldn’t have been an issue, but as I mentioned, I believe life sims shouldn’t have to be played with a controller. Not to end this on a negative note, though: the cooking minigame concept in general is cool. Nowadays, life sims likely have trouble setting themselves apart from each other. (Personally, I would kill for a game like MySims…) This is one thing I haven’t seen anywhere else, and while not always perfect, it deserves recognition for being a fresh concept. The theme song is really nice and the smooth switch between the vocal and off vocal versions when you enter/leave the cafe is a neat idea. General body/identity positivity, showcased through both the character customization and the characters from the game is always a plus although it feels like they forgot to make the characters interesting on top of that… Oookay, I’ll stop there! Last, but not least, I’ll say that I got this game off of someone who didn’t want it for cheap and personally, I’m glad I didn’t spend much more on it. Unless it gets a massive content update one day, to hopefully match the size of the world the devs are trying to cultivate in-game, but I’m not really holding my breath for that. On to the next life sim!

Coloring Game: Girls - I felt compelled, okay?! A-anyway, yeah… another pixel coloring game. Tons of breasts and buttocks in this one… or, I guess, it’s pretty much all breasts and buttocks. It’s like a camshow, except you don’t get to take part in any kind of action. Now, to go on and keep telling myself that my addiction with pixel coloring will one day let up…

Dark Nights with Poe and Munro - I was really excited about this one; after all, Poe and Munro were easily the most intriguing characters in The Shapeshifting Detective! However, that quickly fizzled out. As it usually is, you look at a preview of a thing and start to imagine what you’re going to get. When looking at the store page of this game, I couldn’t help but imagine Poe and Munro going on some kind of grand, exciting adventure. However, as it turned out, Dark Nights with Poe and Munro is merely a series of vignettes, showcasing all of the absurd things that somehow seem to happen only to those two, possibly just so they can talk about them on the radio later on. There’s no real callback to The Shapeshifting Detective, with only one other character from that game appearing briefly in one of the chapters, which means the mysteries from that game are still left unsolved; however, there is a reference to the studio’s first game, which I still haven’t played, but imagine might be enjoyable for its fans. What really bothered me about those vignettes was the lack of any sense of time that I could grasp at, making August seem like the most alienating and the most intriguing town at once. I also would have liked to see Poe and Munro’s lives outside of the radio booth; the fact that they supposedly keep broadcasting every hour, by the hour is still incredibly sus. Alas, I shall look out for whenever a new game from the studio comes around…

Edna & Harvey: The Breakout - Anniversary Edition - Getting to replay this one was such a joy! The timing was made even more perfect by the fact that I managed to find a code for the original in the wild, to get A in on the fun. Despite forgetting most of what happened in the game, I still managed to shave off about two hours, compared to my playthrough of the original. Conclusion: I love it just as much as the original, if not more! There hasn’t been a similar remaster for Harvey’s New Eyes, unfortunately, but I do own a second copy on GOG, so… I might play through that one this year!

Fireboy and Watergirl: Elements - Nostalgia throwback! Assuming you’re somewhere in my age group, you’ve more likely than not heard of this series, if not played it with a friend in your school’s computer lab. As far as I’m aware, this is a rerelease that compiles the first five or so games from the series into one big adventure. Knowing that I’ve got A on my side now, I bought both this and the other release from the series to play through together. This one starts off relatively easy, but as time goes on, it gets really freaking hard, as you have to plan out a way through levels involving buttons, switches, portals and rotating mirrors. All that with the pressure of a time limit on top made me feel like I was getting betrayed by my nostalgia (lol). Side note: one of the achievements is broken, but a simple fix from the community forums helps. Now, on to the other game whenever we have the time!

I commissioned some bees 0 - Now that I’ve finally gotten the chance to introduce myself at no charge to this series - I commissioned some bees seems to be like an evolved version of the 100 hidden… series. The concept is the same, but ICSB goes above and beyond - the scenes look vibrant, they’re drawn in the distinct art style that many people seem to just adore and want on their walls and the ambient BGM is pleasing to the ear. Not only were there bees, in every level there are a few items distinctly related to bees that need finding - and some of them were really hard to spot! (As opposed to the 1-2 items in the 100 hidden… series, those are just annoying.) All in all, it was a cute little time waster, and so… I suppose I am forever confined to this series now, too.

Pixel Puzzles 2: Paintings - I was hoping to finish this one before the end of 2022, but alas! There’s nothing special to talk about here, just another Pixel Puzzles 2 game with a different lineup of puzzles to solve.

Portal - Here it is: the game, the myth, the legend. The one title no self-aware medium forgets to reference: Portal. Despite having a peabrain when it comes to puzzles (and yes, I know I say that in just about every review of a puzzle game I play), I bought both games on sale a good few years ago, feeling like I had to play them because of their status. I originally spent some time in both this one and the sequel back when I was dating my first boyfriend, but then my interest naturally fizzled out. When A learned that I still hadn’t really sank my teeth into either of the games, I got the message: it was time to buckle up and go back… starting from the first game, obviously. I picked up most of the story mode without much trouble, but the later chambers were a nuisance. And here’s why: I have been gaming on a laptop, using only a trackpad 99% of the time. Naturally, whenever there was a chance to borrow somebody’s mouse, I’d gladly do that, but I never really felt the need to own one myself. For the most part, I’d rather just connect a controller and use that to play. So… the last few levels were doable, if a struggle, but the final encounter left me in tears. I actually friggin’ cried! A knew it all came from the fact that I was using a controller, and so I left the game like that for a while. Back then, I still hadn’t been considering getting a mouse, so the next time we considered playing, A helped me out with the final sequence, as well as the side challenges. Call me out for being a wimp; I’m just glad I can finally write this game off. I’ll pick the sequel back up eventually, since I know A really wants me to.

Super Seducer - I made the mistake of showing gameplay from this series to A as a “hey, check out how bad this is” kind of thing and oh boy, there I go owning both this and the sequel now. This is… a game. If you’ve heard of “pick-up artistry” or PUA for short, you might have an idea about who Richard La Ruina is. You likely also know that “pick-up artists” tend to be rather conservative/right-leaning. I would really rather not get political, for all I know I’d never be equipped well enough to argue politics with anyone, but really, with this game it shows. It’s an FMV-style game that’s all about approaching women in different types of situations - on the street, at a party, at the park. Sounds innocent enough, right? Well, as some others have likely pointed out before me, there’s really no situation in which the women are simply not interested; they always leave only after Richard has tried to show them his dick or made some disgusting comments about them or their interests. Richard - and I presume, the people who helped him make these games - know well that those choices are all there for the sake of being jokes (and the talking head you get after picking them will outright say “congratulations, this is a joke choice, don’t try it in real life, now go pick something better”), but nevertheless, most of them are simply in poor taste. There’s also the matter of some passable/middle of the road-type choices, where Richard seems to think that offending a woman and turning it into a joke is a passable move. There’s one particular instance of this happening that I can remember, most other ones are escaping me now, but I remember feeling distinctly weirded out at some of the choices that were considered “passable” by the game. For a game released in 2018, the humor feels really dated (and, again, in poor taste) as well - there’s mentions of “being gay” as if it’s an insult (although in one scene it works as the best choice when said jokingly) and multiple instances of Richard defaulting to calling the girls he was trying to pick up “lesbians” after they decide to go away, disgusted by whatever he said. Not a good look, Richard, but I can only assume it all comes from some kind of conservative beliefs still being lodged deep down inside. I don’t know, I guess maybe 10 years ago this still would have been laugh-out-loud funny, but now that I’m a young adult (and, in a way, somewhat of a target for “being picked up”… or whatever), this kind of thing is genuinely terrifying to me. I can tell a lot of people played these games to laugh at the ridiculousness, but if they’re considered legit learning material by even one guy… we might be in trouble.

Teddy Floppy Ear - The Race - It’s been a while since I checked in with this game. I love Teddy Floppy Ear (who doesn’t?), but I suck at any and all kinds of racing games. So… A took up the mantle. We quickly realized that racing hardly takes any effort, all you really have to do is keep track of the shortcuts, as AI players never really use them. The game just gets tedious when you have to race to win cups, then race to win in leagues, then do the slaloms… I, for one, thought the slaloms would be fun, but for every star you pick up while driving, there’s a loud sound effect that only gets more annoying the more you collect. The visuals have this “cheap demo from a gaming magazine” kind of vibe, the BGM isn’t much better, although it does worm its way inside your head. I can only assume the devs tried to make the gameplay varied, but ultimately, it flopped. I’m pretty sure the only reason A pulled through was that while boring, it was still really easy to 100%. Halfway through December, Forever Entertainment announced the discontinuation of support for the Teddy Floppy Ear game series, likely due to license expiration. So with that in mind and this completion, farewell, Teddy Floppy Ear! Even if this is the end of your gaming adventures, you’ll remain a symbol of the old days of Polish animation.

WooLoop - The new game from Coloring Pixels’ devs is finally here! This time, you can create all kinds of things just by wrapping and looping wool around strategically placed pins. Make no mistake, though, it’s not a sandbox game - the images are predetermined. I’ve seen a bunch of reviews from people saying that it’s disappointing to not be allowed creativity and all I can say is “welp, those people clearly haven’t played Coloring Pixels”. Since the game’s only come out less than three weeks ago, it’s still in an early development stage, so I’m sure that after more people have downloaded and played it, not only will new content be added by the devs, they’ll also host community contests like they already have done for Coloring Pixels multiple times. Just have faith in them and keep on looping!

See you next month! :)

4 months ago 9 comments

Progress report: December ‘22 (a.k.a. Burnout…)

THIS TOOK A WHILE. Between putting off writing reviews for games I beat with my boyfriend (whom I decided to start calling “A” from this point on to avoid the tiring repetition) and going back to school after the Christmas break, I realized I had little to no focus and desire to write reviews for the games I play anymore. Naturally, the longer I took to write from playing a game, the harder it was to reach back into my memories and pull out anything worth writing about, but in general… a few years ago, this started out as an exercise in creative writing (“I barely do anything except play games in my free time, so why not at least write down some thoughts I’ve had on them?”), but now I barely have time to play my games as it is, and with the “necessity” of writing a post, I felt blocked from playing too much (I’m only putting this out now, yet I’ve already completed five games since the start of January… imagine playing catch-up now). This doesn’t have to be goodbye forever, but I feel like for now, I’m going to only list the games I’ve completed in a month, no reviews attached. Hopefully that doesn’t deter any of you from interacting with my posts! :)

As for the games I’ve completed in December:

100 hidden birds - Still got nothing to say on the matter.

Abedot Family Estate: Search for Hidden Objects - Echoing multiple reviewers on Steam, this game has to be some kind of a joke. The art is beautiful and the music compliments it well, but the UI is weird, you’re just thrown into the game without any context and then it all stops dead in its tracks after five-ish minutes, because the game is apparently in early access. Why does the technical side of it have to be so clunky? Why doesn’t the game try to distinguish the items you found from the ones you haven’t? And, perhaps most importantly, why is there an option to go back to the main menu by clicking on a chair(?) [which, by the way, is the only thing found in a suitcase you pick up in the first scene, because…?] I don’t know, I just… I honestly don’t understand. I’m just glad to have won this game on SG, otherwise I would not have ever gotten to play it; still, I recommend everyone stay away from it.

Arcade Moonlander - A retro-styled game with a simple concept - fly a spaceship to a landing pad and land it carefully before you run out of fuel. Three modes are available: Arcade Mode (aka the main mode, pretty much) with 20 levels to complete, Adventure Mode, which is supposedly more expansive than Arcade Mode (A only really played Arcade Mode) and Procedural Mode, which, as the name suggests, can generate an infinite number of levels (yet is still in development, according to the store page). It was fine, if you’re into that kind of game, I guess? For me it was one of the games I reserved for A to try, and most of the time he spent playing, I would be talking his head off about something and before I’d notice, he was done for the day ^^;; Recommended…?

bit Dungeon - Got this one as a random gift from a friend once (thanks, Dev!) A cheap little game, I’m hearing it’s a mobile port. It’s got a simple concept - fight your way through randomized dungeons using randomized loot. I was planning to try it out myself at some point, but since I added it to A’s category in my library… he pounced right on it and cleared it in about 40 minutes. “For a hour-ish game, it was cool; can’t see myself playing it again though,” he said. “But I’d say it’s a 7/10.”

Bucket Detective - Bucket Detective is, ah… it’s a hard game to describe, really. It’s a first-person adventure game about a middle-aged guy, who’s weirdly obsessed with hardcore sex (or at least the idea of having it). He thinks writing a book (of the same title as the game) will be a great way to make women want to get in his pants. Okay, that’s… great, I guess? Well, he’s not very skilled at writing, so he asks a fellow writer about whether or not there’s a way to get better. Upon suggestion, he heads to a mysterious building… and that’s where everything kicks off. The game is by no means long, but it quickly establishes itself as delightfully absurd, confusing and immoral; if you’re not into crude sexual humor, gore, or even deafening silence, you should probably stay away. There’s also close to an hour of director’s commentary, which I commend for going into great detail on the challenges that cropped up while working on the game, mistakes that were made, as well as advice for aspiring indie devs, though not as much on the game’s lore itself. Still, it seems the devs are passionate about helping other people make good games, and that really came through. I’m excited to see what they might make next.

Cuties Hacked: Oh no someone stole my photos! - I vaguely remember stumbling upon this one in the store before and chuckling to myself at how ridiculous the title sounds (gotta love the usual “man writes unbearably horny woman”), but as soon as I caught wind of it going free, I couldn’t help but add it to my library. It’s yet another modern take on Qix, except they made it harder for no reason. While the usual rule is that cornering an enemy and cutting it away from the rest of the play area eliminates it, here you only get to cut it off into its own box. Sure, you can move freely and all that, but it makes going for the more perfectionist achievements harder. The whole “ogle cute girls” appeal is also weak, there’s not all that much to see, especially because most of the levels are locked behind DLC. Thank god all the achievements were unlockable with just the base game and good riddance.

Jane’s Realty - This one was a throwback; I’m pretty sure I used to play the free trial of this on Big Fish Games back in the day. You’re Jane, an up-and-coming realtor and you’re tasked with building neighborhoods from the ground up. Starting from the power and water plants, you have to buy lots, construct houses or public buildings, furnish houses after they’re built and keep their tenants happy after they move in. It’s a casual game, but it’s also a strategy game - I can only wonder if the devs knew how hard the later levels got, or if it’s just me who played in all the wrong ways. There’s a “Business” mode, as well as a “Design” mode, which I thought focused only on furnishing the houses, but when I launched it, it seemed to me like the same exact game… and I wasn’t exactly raring to go again after the last eight levels took me just about the same amount of time as the whole rest of the game did back in January. Recommended - no joke - only for people with strong nerves (or better strategic skills).

memoir - A series of VN-style vignettes, telling the story of a blooming relationship between a boy and a girl, interspersed with picross/nonogram sections. I’ll admit, I only decided to check this one out on a whim because of the picross/nonogram, and… that part’s baaad. The story part’s fine, you’ve got your usual teens’ ups and downs, with the typically nagging Asian parents to match; the girl even has some nice voice acting. The picross/nonogram, though, I found kind of pointless in the end. The images are 10x10, which, sure, that’s easy, but then it’s hard to tell what most of them are supposed to represent when finished. There’s also no option to drag to color, not to mention that sometimes it felt like my inputs didn’t register properly. If the image isn’t solved properly, the game just goes “no, that wasn’t it” and you have to solve it all from the start… whyyy… Between that and the characters themselves taking their first steps into game development, I can only wonder how much (if any) of the game was influenced by real life. Unfortunately, the result is very basic and sub-par.

Pastry Lovers - I bought this one for a friend on a deep discount once… and she hadn’t played it for years (not much of a gamer in general, I suppose), until I reminded her of it and suggested we get through it together… well, somewhat. I like to think of myself as a completionist, but obviously, there are times I can’t help but give up rather than 100% a game. The achievements of this one really helped with that, otherwise I’d be stuck putting in another 14 hours. Let me explain. 甜点恋人 or Pastry Lovers was initially released as a browser game… which is fine by itself, except I have no way of comparing that to the Steam version. What exists on Steam, though, is a game that always launches in windowed mode (only supporting one size, much smaller than you’d expect nowadays) and on max volume, effectively blowing your ears out every time you want to play. But most importantly… the translation. Hoo boy, it feels like I could go on for hours. Obviously, it’s machine translated (I’ve seen some weird takes in CN>EN translations, and I say this as someone who doesn’t know a lick of the source language… but I refuse to believe anyone could be this bad), but every once in a while, the script will pull out words like “shrewish”, “cudgeling” or “vicissitudes” and every time, I’d stop and think “When was the last time anyone used that word?” Needless to say, we had some fun with that. Otherwise, the game’s concept is as simple as it gets; it’s an otome stat raiser, but the only thing you’d really need to worry about - money - is set up so high by default (supposedly it wasn’t like that from the beginning) that there really is no challenge (although multiple people have created day-by-day guides to make sure you can achieve absolute 100% completion). In the process of going through the game blindly, naturally I missed some minor things here and there, but after getting all the endings tied to the achievements, I realized I don’t feel the need to go all the way back to the start. The game is already so broken, playing it is like walking a tightrope while balancing a raw egg on the tip of a freshly sharpened pencil. It’s one of those games that’s good to play if you want something to laugh at, but not actually a good game and after almost 14 hours of playtime, I feel like I’ve seen enough. My friend, however, takes longer to process all that mess, so after a similar amount of time, she’s only reached her first ending… we’ll see how it goes from there. (I’m rooting for you, Saku!)

Picross for a Cause - Hey, it’s another free Picross game! The title of this one comes from the fact that it used to be paid, with all proceeds going to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc., for almost two years since its initial release. Now, however, it’s fully free to play and more than worth that price point. I wouldn’t consider myself a picross aficionado, but after spending over 40 hours playing this game, I would like to think I’m a few steps further than I’ve been before. (I admit, I still used auto-solvers when I’ve had enough of a puzzle.) Fully recommended for anyone looking to get into picross.

Project Mercury - An action platformer, emulating the vibe of a game that’s waaay before my time. You’ll be running, riding a hoverbike, even floating down a chasm, all to hopefully save your fellows from the currently going monster outbreak. I got A to play through all of it aaand… it seems to have been a mediocre experience. According to him, there was clear inspiration taken from Megaman and Contra showing in the mechanics, but in the long run, the cons outweighed the pros. The little story there is is unskippable (even if you’ve seen it before), the music, while changing slightly from level to level, is still much too samey and last, but not least, the fact that getting hit mid-air leaves you no room to react, making you watch as you fall to your death is what really got him started. “No need to make it ‘retro-hard’ just for the sake of nostalgia emulation”, is what we both think, I feel.

Seek Girl - One of the many cheap erotic games floating around Steam these days, except this one has you whack-the-mole over parts of the image to uncover it. Besides the BGM, there’s also random R-18 situation tracks playing, which is… weirdly distracting. Between those clearly coming from the dev(s?)’ personal collection and the who-knows-if-it’s-not-stolen art (make no mistake, it’s very pleasing to the eye), I’m glad this was free, cause I wouldn’t have played it otherwise.

Spa Mania - What. A. Throwback! It’s another one of the games I used to try out on Big Fish Games, back when it was there. You’re helping Jade, an animal rights activist, build and manage an eco-friendly spa empire. All in all, this game was stupid easy, just your usual time management fare; I had to replay a few levels here and there to reach the expert goal and that alone let me buy out all the upgrades a good few levels before the end of the game. There’s some minigames to play between the levels, which will give you special treatment formulas to use at the spas, as well as unlockable colors and patterns for Jade’s costume, which, despite being limited, made me oddly happy for a passive unlock. The last three or so levels were a real pain in the ass, however, cause all of a sudden you’re forced to ignore the regular strategy of “I’ll just tend to everyone in bunches and it’ll all be fine” and actually consider which type of customer to tend to first, based on how easily they lose patience or the fact that they can upset other customers when not tended to. One thing that dates this game horribly… every ten levels, you’re brought to a new branch of the spa and introduced to a new mentor, who teaches Jade/you about new customer types, treatments etc. Problem is, the game’s 13 years old at this point… so you’re going to encounter some really stereotypical caricatures. Assuming you’re able to dismiss that (it irked me enough to mention it, but then again, it’s a sign of the times), this game is an enjoyable, classic time management experience. I’m itching to play the sequel already.

Telling Lies - Made by the man behind Her Story (which I still haven’t played, shame on me), this is another FMV mystery that is split into a multitude of tiny pieces, which you, as the player, have to put back together to get to the end. You are, technically, represented by a character whose reflection is showing on the screen at all times, which is totally immersive and not creepy at all. The game starts at around 12 am, I believe, and you only have this night (until 6 am, that is) to find as much information as you can and hopefully piece the story together. The app you use to look for videos is fairly easy to understand, but it only shows the five most relevant videos for the search query you input, so to get to the rest, you’ll be expected to enter whole proper names, as well as split them up at times, not to mention some common words you might not think would matter at all. I didn’t see the appeal of this whole system at first, so A took full control, jotting down anything he thought might be important… but eventually, he got tired of watching everything from start to finish, especially if it was a 6-8 minute video of someone maybe saying a few things, but largely just nodding along to what the other person was talking about. At some point, we noticed the in-game clock seemed to have gotten stuck, so I looked up some stuff based on a guide and all of a sudden, we went from something like 1:40 AM all the way to past 3 AM and I still can’t tell what that was about. When we uncovered enough evidence for the game to let us finish, we had seen about 90-ish videos, but over 160 are needed to have seen everything… so A gave up and went to sleep, and I sat around for another 2-3 hours watching the rest. Interestingly enough, the way we got to the end, it’s like one of the characters was barely necessary to keep the plot going, even though they’re on the cover and all that. After all the catch up, I woke A up and we watched the ending together. It was… underwhelming, to say the least. I’m generally not a fan of stories where I can’t tell what’s happening half the time, and so I think that the fact that there’s a rundown of it on its Wikipedia page says a lot. It wasn’t “bad”, per se, but I much more prefer a standard FMV.

The Most Boring Game Ever - I know this game wants me to admit it is what it is… and it is… but you won’t ever catch me saying that literally. It’s possibly the worst attempt at a clicker game, ever, designed purely to frustrate you (at least if you want all the achievements). Some simple math seemed to suggest that getting all the achievements would require a 20 hour idle (due to how slowly the clicks register and the fact that the game is pretty much impossible to run in windowed mode), so I gave up and cheated it.

The Stanley Parable - What can I say about this game that hasn’t already been said? The Stanley Parable is one of a kind, simple on the surface, but introspective underneath; it inspired a whole slew of other games to adapt a similar sense of humor, complete with an emotional narrator and subversion upon subversion, so easily recognizeable and linked back by thousands, if not millions of gamers today. I couldn’t care less if someone thinks it’s not funny or tries to bully others into unlocking its achievements one way or another; I love The Stanley Parable. (Now, to play the Ultra Deluxe remaster…)

See you next month…

4 months ago 4 comments

Progress report: November ‘22 (a.k.a. Choice Paralysis!)

This title technically doesn’t quite relate to November’s progress, but… maybe it’s because Christmas (and New Year’s) is coming up, but man, there is just so much to do! I just keep. ending up. doing nothing! That’s also why this post is so damn late, I just couldn’t get myself to get it out in time! Sigh…

Anyway, here’s to what I got done to November (with another shoutout to my boyfriend, he’s a treasure):

100 hidden cats - I’m not even gonna try and excuse myself anymore.

As Dusk Falls - 1998, Arizona. A family, on the way to their new home. Suddenly, their car is passed by another one, full of teenage boys. However, they’re no ordinary teenage boys and soon, their paths would cross again…
This game is amazing. It’s a game-ified crime and drama show/documentary, not unlike one I would imagine my mom watching; the first episode will grip you tightly and you won’t be able to break free until the last one closes out. There’s an interesting dichotomy to the artstyle; on one hand, it looks as if it was based on previously recorded footage (not rotoscoped), which supports the feeling of a live action show playing out in front of your eyes, yet the fact that it has a distinct, painting-like look, with no inbetweens, brings those cheap, choose-your-own-adventure games to mind. I think this game also deserves praise for the immense amount of technicalities that are being supported, from the amount of graphics quality and language options, through ways to play (I initially figured I would be using a controller to play, but weirdly enough, it turned out that using my phone was the most comfortable choice), all the way down to appropriate trigger warnings. Turns out it can really make a game stand out, when just about any and all boxes you can imagine are being ticked. Highly recommended for a few evenings with friends, family or on your own, however you roll.
(Update: It won the Games for Impact award at the 2022 Game Awards! If that’s not your call to play it, I don’t know what is!)

Cat Burglar: A Tail of Purrsuit - In this free stealth platformer, you control a certain kitty cat, who has three simple tasks: collect gems, collect keys, don’t get caught by dogs (or cameras, later on). There’s 7 levels, all available in three different modes (Standard, Gem Jam, DOGO) for a total of 21 levels. The game looks good for a F2P title and charity support is always a plus, but unfortunately, the mouse-controlled camera and lack of semi-transparent textures (as in, if you’re standing behind a wall, you can’t tell where you are unless you turn the camera around) on top of the later levels having some tighter spots than the earlier ones make this a “meh” on the recommendation scale. Still, if you love cats, are a fan of stealth or intend to support the promoted charities, this is the game for you.

Coffee Talk - Welcome to AU Seattle, where werewolves, vampires, orcs and all kinds of other species live alongside humans. You are but a barista, serving drinks at the titular Coffee Talk, a cafe open only at night, to the folk in need of a pick-me-up for all kinds of reasons. Coffee Talk is a barista simulator, but it also focuses on the stories your customers have to tell; so much so that this game is a visual novel hybrid. There is an endless mode, but assuming you’d care enough to memorize all of the qualities of each ingredient/drink, I don’t suppose you could have a lot of fun with that. The story is concise, all of the customers’ problems are resolved in due time and they all go on living their lives. The short stories available as a side read and aren’t related to the main plot contain some interesting and amusing hypotheticals, but were a bit of a harder read to me, personally, with some of the musings that came about inside. Everything would have been fine and dandy, if not for the cliffhanger at the very end of the game… which is to say, I am really looking forward to the sequel’s release.

Coloring Game: Pixel - Just some time ago, I would have sworn I’ll never buy this game… but then it started being an intrusive thought and I had to. That was one long-ass night… If you’ve played any of the other Coloring Game titles, there’s nothing new to see here; if anything, coming back from the later installments, this one felt weirdly choppy.

Cyrano Story - Frankly, I have no earthly idea what this is. ARGs are one of my least favorite things ever and I wasn’t at all interested in the games that were being given away through this one, so I suppose I played through this one just for the achievements. I got through the bulk of it last year, but I only completed it now mostly because of the two achievements I got last - “play the game on Halloween” and “complete the game in 79 seconds” (yes, my boyfriend helped with that last one).

DEEEER Simulator - This is one of those “haha omg Japan is so weird!11!” games, without a doubt. DEEEER Simulator, or, more specifically, DEEEER Simulator: Your Average Everyday Deer Game, is a game in which you will get to simulate a deer… except nothing is really “average” or “everyday” about this deer. You’ll get to cause mayhem by ramming into trees, repeatedly punching buildings, riding cows into the sky, rooting runs rat rolice rofficers and so, so much more! There’s also still somewhat of a story on top of all this (a method to the madness, if you will), at the end of the day; however, the weird structure of the game makes it so that it’s nigh-impossible to progress without a guide, at least in my opinion. I’ve played through half, maybe less on my own, then got my boyfriend to finish it up.

Frog Detective: The Entire Mystery - Since this series is now officially complete (and available on Game Pass), I figured I might as well jump into it again. I’ve had yet to play the third and final game on Steam, but boy, was it worth it. The humor is… still as PG yet nonsensical as ever, but at the end of the day, it brought a smile to my face and I guess that’s what really matters.

NO THING - Somewhat of an endless runner, NO THING is a game that hinges entirely on your reflex. The concept is simple: walk along a path, turning left or right along with it. However, your speed will increase with every turn you make, the screen will keep changing colors every few turns, as well as pretend to glitch every once in a while, all of which only serves to make the experience more frustrating, because the moment you fall, it’s all over and you have to start again from the beginning of the level. Unsurprisingly, I only managed to pass one level on my own, but my boyfriend had nerves of steel and persevered until the very end. I will say, without shame, that we cheated to get the achievements for point count, but I mean, come on, that’s a pretty tall ask considering the difficulty of the game.

PARADISE CLEANING -pregnant ogre- - See game from the same series in this post. (The game this is based on is now also slated to release in the future, what a shocker.)

Pathfinders: Mini Words - Another game from the Mini Words series; this one aims to teach English learners (more specifically, children) some basic vocabulary. Gameplay is the same as the rest of the series, this time there’s even a voice reading each and every word out loud after you find it… but I’m confused as to how this is supposed to work as a learning game, when the vocabulary is all over the place - long words mixed with short ones, none of them sorted by any specific theme. It might work as a cheap supplement, but only that; please teach your children vocabulary in a well-constructed manner.

Pickers - Lucky update on a game that had been featured in the past! As I mentioned in my previous post, this HOG-meets-Pawn Stars still had a few achievements left to unlock. Well, I got my boyfriend to step up to the challenge, and he knocked it out of the park! He didn’t seem to find it hard, mostly wishing the items could belong to more than one category, which I fully agree with (being non-native speakers, we had a hell of a time trying to guess what constitutes “kitchenware” or “appliance”).

PIXASSO - I guess I couldn’t just wait for the new Coloring Pixels pack to drop and this was discounted for the umpteenth time, so I caved in and got it. PIXASSO almost feels like one of those games for people who just want achievements because of how they pop when you start a level, not when you complete it. There’s an option to mute the BGM, but not the coloring SFX, which is… certainly a design choice that totally hasn’t led me to muting the whole thing externally. /s All the images are small and simple, but weirdly enough, they don’t complete themselves - when you think you’re done, you have to click a button to then have the result checked by the game, which is… weird? Not to mention the one drawing that clearly has an error in it, leading to some confusion on my part. All the images are shaded in different ways, so as to help you fill in the blanks, besides the preview image to the right of the playing area… but oddly enough, it feels somewhat condescending, like you were tasked to do someone’s job, and not have your fun, like with Coloring Pixels… unless that’s just me being conditioned into feeling that way. Oh well. Despite not being a fan of this game, you’ll probably see me buying the sequels whenever I have some cash on hand, or, at the very least, whenever I start thinking about them compulsively.

Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire [BLUE] - Bought this one thinking it was going to be just another one of those casual games where I get to match some tiles and look at some cute girls… well, it technically was that, but then again, I really wasn’t a fan of how blatantly the gameplay was being padded. Simply put, the game has no shuffle button (pretty much always found in mahjong games), which means that every time you can’t clear a board, you have to try doing it again from the beginning. That alone made the game go from what I would gauge to cap at 2-3 hours to a whopping 9 hours… Every now and then, there will be a lucky break, but I sort of noticed a pattern when I started struggling, where the board will, in some cases, finally appear solvable after about 30-ish minutes of play… I’m not saying anything for certain, but just, you know… I might start hesitating more when it comes to buying the next mahjong game.

Resonance of the Ocean - A simple game, in which you control a stranger, who finds themselves on an equally mysterious island, being reached by a sound from beyond the ocean surrounding it. Your task is to find (and sometimes combine) simple items that will let you reproduce that exact sound, and thus, communicate with whoever’s responsible for creating the original one. It’s hard to say much more about it, other than that it has a specific feeling to it, one that perhaps doesn’t translate well outside of Japanese. It’s on the short side, but I recommend it, if you’re looking for something with a pretty art style and great sound design.

Serial Cleaner - Viscera Cleanup Detail meets… uh… some kind of 2D stealth game ^^;; This one was mighty fun, even though I left it all to the boyfriend because I sucked when I tried to play it. That resulted in all the dialogue inevitably getting skipped, but still, somehow I managed to glean the overarching plot from what was going on. Between twenty main levels and ten bonus ones, there’s plenty of content to keep you busy, not to mention that the game plays a tad different depending on whether you run it while it’s still bright outside or in the middle of the night. I honestly recommend it.

Sex Search - Seems this dev tried piggybacking off the “100 hidden…” series’ success; to no avail, I say. This game is infinitely more confusing and frustrating with how cluttered the levels are and unless you play it all in one sitting, I don’t think you’re going to be able to get all achievements, because you need to actively learn what you’re supposed to find; add to that the fact that sometimes, those items might appear on top of each other and… good lord, am I glad this was free. Even if you’ve finished all the “100 hidden…” games… stay away, for your own sanity.

Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe - Virtual tic-tac-toe with a few possible spins; multiple boards compiled into one and the so-called “forget” modes, which will erase your oldest moves. That being said, I just got the boyfriend to help me get all the achievements, so there wasn’t really much competition involved.

Unravel Cyndy - A spin-off of a game simply called Cyndy, Unravel Cyndy is, ah… it’s a jigsaw puzzle game with 3DCG images. There’s more than enough content for a free game, seeing as it took me almost five hours to solve all of the puzzles without any hints, but as multiple people have mentioned in the reviews and forums, it’s somewhat of a shame that there’s no animation available as a reward for solving the puzzles. I also think the UI could use some work; while it somewhat brings to mind the late 90s-early 00s era of graphic design, it’s not the easiest on the eyes. Side note: this game refused to run on my laptop (and judging by the forum discussions, I’m not the only one with that problem, which still remains unsolved as of now), so… shoutout to my boyfriend for having to deal with me playing this weird-ass-looking porn game on his PC.

Viki Spotter: Space Mission - Another one of those Viki Spotter games. As with the previous one, I muted the annoying BGM loop. It just so happened that the last differences to find sometimes seemed troublesome at first, but there’s no repercussions for using the in-game hint system.

Welcome Back to 2007 2 - Some weird freaking platformer that was given away for free during the pandemic. It’s got crude MS Paint drawings and cigarettes as power-ups, if that’s your cup of tea. I managed to beat less than half the game on my own, then I got my boyfriend to help.

Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus? - Step into the shoes of Abby, just your average-looking twenty-something with perhaps the most hostile and unlikable family you could ever meet, as you indulge your mother through taking part in the yearly family quiz. What presumably already wasn’t going to be all fun and games gets worse when you learn that your dear uncle Marcus has been poisoned at the family meeting that happened just yesterday! You weren’t there, though, so now it’s up to you to try and suss out who could have done it. Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus? has an interesting premise, but the whole picture comes together really fast… and if it doesn’t, you just have to keep replaying the game over and over, trying to see whether a particular family member will engage you if you push to talk about the meeting or not. What’s also worth mentioning is, no matter how the action plays out, you get an anonymous threat, which, in the end, goes nowhere every time. The acting, however, is still pretty solid; if you’re fond of any of the cast members, I suppose this is worth checking out.

See you next month! :)

6 months ago 0 comments

Progress report: October ‘22 (a.k.a. An Unexpected Development!)

Well, what do you know… I got myself a boyfriend! It feels weird to even say, like it’s not “my style” or something… but hey! He likes games and he likes me, so that’s all that matters (I think)! We’ve had a good amount of time to spend on playing together this month, so he features heavily in my reviews. He was a big help in finishing quite a few pesky games, too, so all kinds of positive feedback specifically for him will be more than welcome :)

Without further ado, here are this month’s assassinations:

Among the Dead - A terribad VN about living in a world plagued by zombies. I’m genuinely curious as to where the author learned English, ‘cause they’ve got the basics down, but they’re often only close enough to saying what they mean, as opposed to writing like a native speaker would (things like saying “Probably…” instead of “I guess…” or a lack of sense for what the right word order in a sentence should be). Other aspects of the presentation don’t fare any better: the zombies all look like one and the same bald guy (at least they give him two different sets of clothes! lol), and you fight them by… wait for it… repeatedly clicking a button with the word “Kick” written on it. God, I wish I were making it up. There’s an introduction for this “mechanic” near the start of the VN, which tells you that the amount of clicks will depend on how many zombies you’re up against; there’s only one in that scene, and to top it off, he’s distracted, so I thought “five clicks will probably do it, right?” Alas… he took 15 clicks before eating it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that these mobs grow to the point of absurd (there’ll be four zombies at most, and that’s how you know you’re headed for a bad end anyway), but I counted up to 50, even 60 clicks at some point… I think it’s safe to say the dev missed the note about how that’s not entertaining in any way. Last, but not least, the story stops dead in its tracks at what looks like a decent sequel hook, but this game came out in 2018 and there doesn’t seem to be any continuation, so… that’s it, really. I’m glad I finally played it, though, since it’s been at the back of my head for a while now.

Chris Isn’t Alone - Simply put, a joke VN about a boy, taken aback by a monster that suddenly appears in his room at night. It’s a “joke” VN in that there’s a high ending count in relation to the playtime - you make a few choices, some of which get progressively more imaginative, and you either win or lose (or, in this case, “die or live”). Problem is… I’ve gotten all but one ending in the span of about half an hour, and that’s as far as I want to go. It honestly feels like I’ve exhausted all choice combinations and while I can’t tell where it is, that last ending has to be buried somewhere in there. I’m also aware that I’m not supposed to expect literary genius from indie games (and even more so “baby’s first game”, which this is), but come on… you’re creating a visual novel, at least care not to let half the script go unchecked. (I assume the devs are native English speakers, but still, capitalization and punctuation are less than satisfactory.)

Crazy Taxi - Have you ever wanted to try working as a taxi driver? No? Well, what about driving a taxi with no rules to adhere to? That’s where the essence of this Dreamcast classic, Crazy Taxi, truly lies. In this port of the game, you’re free to work for 3, 5 or 10 minutes in either the arcade or the original mode, or test your crrrazy skills using the Crazy Box challenges. Funnily enough, three different people contributed to progress in this game on my account - my ex pushed me to start this delightful mess (then got started on the challenges), I got all the achievements for regular gameplay and my current boyfriend helped with completing the rest of the challenges. Crazy Taxi is a game that’s easy to learn, hard to master, and enjoyable to both play and watch, so if you’re into oldies, racing games or both, I highly recommend it.

Drop Alive - Deceivingly cute, Drop Alive is a platformer that follows the life of a water drop, as it goes on a movie-like journey through a bunch of locations and various states of being. The “deceiving” part is in the fact that this game is unnecessarily hard with its lack of checkpoints, iffy precision jumping and size reduction mechanic (the more you move around, the smaller you are, eventually resulting in death), which while clever, feels like an unnecessary punishment most of the time. Unsurprisingly, I was only able to play through the first two levels, and my boyfriend finished the rest.

Gothicc Breaker - Just a small Arkanoid-type game with goth girls. According to my boyfriend, “the easiest game I’ve given him yet”.

Kach - A short student project with a premise that’s just a little bit off: find your sister, who’s ran off and hid in a strange, abandoned house and make up with her. I’ve had an okay time playing this, though I do feel puzzled by some reviewers bemoaning the lack of jumpscares or monsters to run from.

Lure - I… I just… is this a fear anyone genuinely has? Sure, the a e s t h e t i c is cool, but I know I would get a more complete experience out of watching a playthrough of an actual PS1 horror game… so I recommend everyone else does that, too.

My Sticker Book - You’re a little girl with a sticker book, who’s just moved into a new house; how fun! After presumably having fun with your stickers the whole evening, you go to sleep… and wake up in the middle of the night, because you’re feeling thirsty. Oh, no! Creepy shadow monsters won’t let you go any further! You’ll have to use your magic stickers to progress! I… have spent over twice the estimated time playing this game, just because I can’t deal with games that don’t provide any instructions. That is all.

OutDrive - An, uh, “racing” game where you have to keep a girl alive by driving around at a moderate speed, with no particular destination in mind. If you drive too slowly, she’ll get weak and die; if you drive too fast, she’ll overheat… and die. It’s kind of an interesting concept, if not somewhat off-putting, considering the girl in question being more of an object than a person, but the game is broken as all hell. There’s only one road around the whole map, and it’s not particularly hard to loop around, but for all I know, you could be driving without fooling around and still put yourself in an unwinnable situation. However, it’s just as easy to drive off the road and right near the mountains that are supposed to work as a sort of frame for the map, then clip through them and start falling endlessly. You know it’s bad when that’s the strat recommended by an achievement-focused curator (and coincidentally, how I completed the game as well). In short, the aesthetic’s pretty good - the visuals are decent and the soundtrack is nice, but the game is broken as all hell and the achievements, as uninspired as they are, don’t help at all. Avoid, avoid, avoid.

Space Girls - A shoddy clone of DEEP SPACE WAIFU. Couldn’t get through the last few levels for years until my boyfriend came along.

Submorse - Apparently you can learn Morse code using this game! …I only cared about the achievement.

The Dark Side of the Moon - Having played through The Shapeshifting Detective with my boyfriend a few months ago, I got this game on sale as soon as I noticed it starred Rupert Booth… who, as it later turned out, carried this whole game on his shoulders (and he doesn’t even play the main character!). The story has a simple premise: you play as Dean, a man left to take care of his children alone after his wife mysteriously disappeared a few years back. One night, you drink yourself to sleep, and the next morning… the kids are gone too. Everything quickly unravels into a story that’s way too big for the overall playtime. We had a few small ideas as to what could happen, which we knew were cliche anyway, but we still ended up disappointed when none of them came to be. All I wanna say now is: the title didn’t have to be this literal.

We Went Back - A time-looping horror game; sounds easy enough as a concept. Played it with my boyfriend; neither of us found it particularly entertaining or impactful, so we ended up speeding through the whole thing.

[Bonus] Boyfriend’s game ranking for this month is: Crazy Taxi > Gothicc Breaker > The Dark Side of the Moon > We Went Back > Space Girls > Drop Alive

See you next month! :)

7 months ago 3 comments

Progress report: September ‘22 (a.k.a. Winding Down Now…)

September’s… gone, huh…! Contrary to expectations, I spent a good chunk of the month still playing stuff through Game Pass (my friend gifted me another month’s worth of a subscription)… meaning that my PS backlog is still full of games I got for my birthday… but alas, there’ll be time for that eventually!

Here’s what I found time for this month:

  • 100 hidden snails

    0.2 hours playtime

    100 of 100 achievements

  • Ben 10: Power Trip

    20.9 hours playtime

    28 of 28 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Life is Strange: True Colors

    12.1 hours playtime

    40 of 40 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Lost Words: Beyond the Page

    2.2 hours playtime

    21 of 21 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Mini Words: Polyglot

    3.6 hours playtime

    16 of 16 achievements

  • Monkey GO Happy

    1.7 hours playtime

    no achievements

  • PARADISE CLEANING -Me and my Doctor's life in the hospital-

    0.3 hours playtime

    11 of 11 achievements

  • Sapling

    0.0 hours playtime

    no achievements

  • Slime Rancher

    38.1 hours playtime

    57 of 57 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • State of Mind

    12.2 hours playtime

    34 of 34 achievements

  • Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master!

    88.5 hours playtime

    89 of 89 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Tell Me Why

    12.1 hours playtime

    30 of 30 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Tina & Rook! Cookie Quest!

    0.5 hours playtime

    3 of 3 achievements

  • Watch Me Jump

    1.5 hours playtime

    9 of 9 achievements

100 hidden snails - Yep, at this point I’ve got it down bad for these.

Ben 10: Power Trip - Noticed this one was another Outright Games title, so I jumped on it as well. It’s been a good while since I watched Ben 10, so I’m out of the loop, big time. The premise of this game is that Ben, Gwen, Max (and Kevin, if you’re playing in co-op mode) go on holidays to some town with a vaguely German-sounding name… and it just so happens that Hex is there too, oh boy! Now you’re gonna have to explore three different locations in search of the aliens you lost to later face off against enemies, help civilians and collect coins, upgrades, golden monkeys and… sausages? Yeah, that part’s just weird. As a fan of what I would assume to have been the original series, I was disappointed to see so few aliens being utilized; Diamondhead, really?! Grey Matter was right there! To add insult to injury, once again, some of the stuff in this game is straight up broken. The only reason I somehow clocked in a whopping 20 hours (?!) is because just when everything seemed fine with the download version, I realized I need to try and play in the cloud, because some side quest stuff just wasn’t showing up at all (and by that point I had already wasted a bunch of time running around looking for it). I wouldn’t mind replaying it one day, as long as I could be promised that I won’t be forced to waste so much time on accomplishing nothing again.

Life is Strange: True Colors - Binged the hell out of this one, since my Game Pass trial was about to run out… it was, uh… okay? The “superpower” utilized in this one is very hit-or-miss, it’s nowhere near as instantly enticing as the very first game. I was genuinely relieved that I could choose a male love interest this time around, even if in the end it doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things. While this isn’t related to the first game or Before the Storm in any way, I was still wary of the pairing Alex up with Steph, lest it end up messy… and fairly surprised that the global stats were 2:1 between Steph and Ryan. Oh well.

Lost Words: Beyond the Page - A light puzzle-platformer that plays out between a girl’s diary and the story she begins creating as practice for becoming a full-fledged writer. Between chapters you gain (and lose, depending on the situations) new verbs, such as “rise” or “break”, that will help you progress further. It’s a story of how fast one’s life can flip upside down, but also how important it is to get up and fight through it. As a cherry on top, everything is narrated/voice-acted with strong emotion.

Mini Words: Polyglot - I admit, I blasted through this one only with French on, as that’s the one language with a complete guide available. The gameplay’s the same as with all the other games in this series, though I do think having it be words in different languages spices it up for players who don’t know them.

Monkey GO Happy - A collection of the first five games in the long-running series, Monkey GO Happy’s concept is simple: interact with the environment by clicking and dragging things to make a monkey (or multiple, depending on the game; though in this collection, you can only play with one at a time) happy. You’re going to be doing all kinds of stuff, from simple and dumb things like making a balloon deflate in the air or winning a monkey plush at the arcade to more surreal things, such as protecting a monkey cloning lab on Mars. Stumbling upon this on Steam hit me with nostalgia, and it restores my faith in humanity to know that the original creator is available on Patreon to this day, still creating new levels.

Paradise Cleaning: Me and my Doctor’s Life in the Hospital - Woof! The first Paradise Cleaning game was released in 2018, so this has been a long time coming! It’s pretty much the same game as the first one (fun fact, I checked my post history and it seems I straight up forgot to write about it); you’re presented with an image covered up by a few kinds of cute critters, which you need to clean up with relevant tools and uncover the image. This may have only lasted 20 minutes, but it uses CGs from the company’s very own VN, set to release on Steam in the coming months. A genius marketing strategy, if you ask me.

Sapling - It’s… kiiind of a walking sim? People really are singing praises for this one, but at its core, it’s not much. Terms like “first spoken-word video game” (as it’s actually described on its store page) work to make this game seem like something out of this world, but in reality, it’s just a short story that could be read as heartwarming and bittersweet, depending on who you are.

Slime Rancher - Since the sequel was just around the corner, this summer seemed like the best time for a replay (I first played through the game on PS4). If you’ve somehow managed to completely miss this one, you play as Beatrix LeBeau, who moved from Earth to the Far, Far Range to take over a ranch. When exploring the Far, Far Range, you’ll encounter a bunch of colorful slimes, each with different quirks, such as Rad Slimes that can (and will) irradiate you, if you stand too close to them for too long or Dervish Slimes that enjoy whirling up a storm and picking up everything that’s been laying loose along with it. In a way, it’s a miracle game, having come from a studio that hasn’t released anything prior to it and ending up as sort of a sleeper hit; for me, as a calm and cozy game, it hit the spot just right and I’m excited to dive into the sequel soon.

State of Mind - This… is supposed to be a story about transhumanism… I think. In 2048, in a futuristic vision of Berlin, you control Richard, a middle-aged journalist looking for his wife and son, who seem to have mysteriously disappeared. He’s also hot-headed, a cheater, ragingly anti-tech and probably the worst protagonist I’ve ever had the displeasure of controlling. His characterization is all over the place: he acts like he’s desperate to find his family, especially his son, even though a certain part of the story reveals he’s confused about whether or not the kid is really his. He sees a memory of a stranger having visited his apartment, doing nothing in particular; automatically assumes he’s his wife’s lover and swears to murder him, even though he actually cheated on his wife in the past. Then there’s another thing, which is very much in line with his character, but still bothered me immensely: his wife bought an android, Simon and left him home. Through the whole game, Simon is nothing but a sweetheart, actively trying to help Richard with his search, but Richard insists on acting like an asshole in return. At one point, he even says that he could destroy Simon with an axe, an action he claims would be “all too human”… excuse me, who wrote this shit? Ah, but there’s also a second part of the story that plays out in an alternate, virtual world… honestly, I played through this game twice and I still don’t fully understand it. There’s a major problem with the storytelling here: you either go two hours learning next to nothing, or fifteen minutes in a dialogue-heavy scene, where some character infodumps on you, and even then it feels like the plot is happening next to you, not at you. Remember when you were little and your parents or some older kids would talk about stuff that you assumed was probably cool, but they wouldn’t say a thing when you asked about it? That’s what playing this game feels like; things are not explicitly named or described well enough, which leads to further confusion. Add to that the weirdly disproportionate amount of puzzling, a run cycle that makes every character look like they just remembered they have legs and the lack of ability to skip through cutscenes (minor detail, but useful for replay purposes) and you’ve got yourself a real mess of a game. At least… the polygon art style stands out, I guess? While not a writer myself, I do imagine cyberpunk to be one of the harder genres to write in, but I still can’t believe it could be fucked up that badly. Truly a blemish on the otherwise good (so far, from my perspective) Daedalic adventure catalog.

Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master! (i can’t figure out how to make the image look good, send help) - Here it is; the one, the only, the legend: Taiko no Tatsujin. It’s the game that got me to jump on my first Game Pass trial, and now I’m proud to say that I’ve finally unlocked all of its achievements. It’s easy to pick up, but tough to master; it’s what I like to call “a perfectionist’s rhythm game”. The franchise’s always three steps ahead; I would have loved to call this release somewhat of a “definitive edition”, since PC is easily the most accessible, but they’re busy with putting out new titles on Switch as we speak. Luckily enough for players of all skill levels, the achievement list for this version is largely geared towards buying cosmetics, but the amount of money you need to accrue is no joke (spoiler alert: there’s also an achievement for just having almost 90k units saved up at once). The one thing that might somewhat relieve the pain of replaying one and the same list of songs over and over again is the online multiplayer function, which is, ah… broken, at times. It’d be hard to count the amount of times I got disconnected from a match (which automatically counts as a loss) due to a supposed loss of internet connection (emphasis on supposed), which meant my opponent was left playing with the ghost of what was supposed to be me. I can imagine it happened to a good deal of other players as well, but then again, with the ranking system utilized in the game, there also seem to be some low-level players who will outright throw matches just to lose their rank; easy money, but also somewhat annoying. This is the second Taiko game that I’ve completed (the first one being V Version for PSVita); I can’t say I’m starved for another one quite yet, but I’m curious to see where will life lead me next in regards to rhythm games.

Tell Me Why - A year’s passed since my first playthrough, so I figured I might as well replay this one! Don’t really have anything else to add to my original review, except… did I really call it a walking simulator? LOL

Tina & Rook! Cookie Quest! - A short point-and-click about a couple of kids who just want to munch on some cookies after playing games together. It’s an adventure reminiscent of things you might have gotten up to as a kid, when the house was empty and every other idea seemed boring (within reason, of course). If you’re a fan of anime or Japanese games, you’ll quickly realize the kids fit right within typical character archetypes - Tina is lively, bouncy and comically morbid, while Rook is more quiet, calm and works to balance out her wit. The pixel art design, with some simple music in the background (which the dev claims to have made despite having no knowledge of music production, which is just sweet) is greatly reminiscent of the point-and-click games I used to play back when I was a kid, which is also a big plus. The only downside is some of the English being rough, but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t prevent further progression. The dev is supposedly still working on another, bigger game featuring the same characters, so I’m excited to be on the lookout for that.

Watch Me Jump - Adapted from a play of the same name, Watch Me Jump follows Audra Bee Mills, a star women’s basketball player on her way to becoming the highest paid female player in the business. However, on the night before playoffs, the memory of a certain happening resurfaces, threatening Audra’s career. I know next to nothing about basketball, so I couldn’t say how well that worked in the story (though it did seem like the author knew what he was talking about). The LGBT+ aspect of the story… uh, minimal is the word I’d use here. The art screams “beginner”, although it does have a charm to it that I appreciate; additionally, the writing fully makes up for it. While you can hardly control the plot, I still liked it enough to be interested in the original play.

See you next month! :)

8 months ago 5 comments

Progress report: August ‘22 (a.k.a. It’s Still The Holidays!)

Hello, fellow assassins! Took me a while to get this post out, mainly due to the fact that I keep putting off writing reviews for Game Pass assassinations… for reasons I can’t quite explain. The start of the month was quite turbulent; my sleep schedule was a total mess, and if that wasn’t enough, I got teh coh-veedz. No need to ask how I’m doing though, I’m totally fine! After recovering, I simply got back to the routine of, uh… playing Game Pass games just about every day.

Here’s what I got done this month:

  • 100 hidden mice

    0.1 hours playtime

    100 of 100 achievements

  • Donut County

    2.9 hours playtime

    20 of 20 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Firewatch

    4.9 hours playtime

    10 of 10 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Four Rendezvous

    2.6 hours playtime

    4 of 4 achievements

  • Gardenia: Prologue

    2.0 hours playtime

    7 of 7 achievements

  • Lake

    8.2 hours playtime

    10 of 10 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • my brother lives in a canyon

    0.4 hours playtime

    5 of 5 achievements

  • PAW Patrol The Movie: Adventure City Calls

    8.1 hours playtime

    30 of 30 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • PowerWash Simulator

    64.5 hours playtime

    40 of 40 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • The Procession to Calvary

    2.7 hours playtime

    21 of 21 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • The Walking Dead: A New Frontier

    0 hours playtime

    30 of 30 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • The Walking Dead: Michonne

    0 hours playtime

    21 of 21 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • The Walking Dead: Season Two

    0 hours playtime

    40 of 40 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • The Walking Dead: The Final Season

    17.3 hours playtime

    48 of 48 achievements

  • Twelve Minutes

    4.7 hours playtime

    12 of 12 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • What Remains of Edith Finch

    2.2 hours playtime

    10 of 10 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

100 hidden mice - Just… another one of these.

Donut County - If you were offered to move to a place called Donut County, surely you’d do it, right? Well, I’ve got some tough news for ya, buddy, you’re now in fact camping underground. Donut County is the story of Mira, a human girl, but more importantly, her raccoon friend, BK. Being the trash panda that he is, BK sold “donuts” to just about everyone in Donut County. Since these “donuts” didn’t taste as great as they were expected to, it’s up to those two to work it out. There’s a simple and highly satisfying gameplay loop here - swallow everything you can while gradually growing. However, judging by the reviews, many people seem to have expected something more like Katamari Damacy, and while I still haven’t had the chance to tackle anything from that franchise, I can see where they’re coming from. Donut County follows a clear-cut story, and with its length, it definitely falls short of the price it’s being sold for. I’m glad to have played that game for free on Xbox, it’d have to be on a deep discount for me to consider buying it somewhere else. I also really wasn’t a fan of the “modern”, memetic approach to dialogue. There’s a fine line between what’s reasonably entertaining and what sounds like the script was originally written in Twitter drafts.

Firewatch - This game looks gorgeous, has great music and solid voice acting. However, the plot takes a nose-dive when one of the main characters starts focusing on a thing that, at first, doesn’t seem all that important. It also suffers from a case of “painfully subverted ending” (or whatever else you might call it), where you’d expect what’s perhaps a “fairy-tale” ending, only to be hit with the exact opposite. In those cases, I’m all about the fairy-tale endings, so this really didn’t do it for me. That being said, if not for the plot, I would say Firewatch ranks high as a walking simulator, just because it gives the player something to do besides walking in a straight line. I’m looking forward to the devs’ next game.

Four Rendezvous - This is a great example of a Russian VN done well; the art is gorgeous, the soundtrack - beautiful, there’s even full voice acting! I just… really wish there had been more to it. It’s a love story, plain and simple, yes, but no matter how much I see this kind of relationship develop between people in real life, I still can’t believe it in fiction. The main character meets the heroine exactly four times, and just because they had both been stuck with terrible lovers, they realized they actually love each other? Gimme a break… The dream/real life plot mixed a tad too much at times, I’d think it was the real life, but then something would happen that was a tad off… That’s why this one is very middle of the road for me, the presentation is amazing, but there’s still something very amateurish about it.

Gardenia: Prologue - I went into this one fully expecting a farm sim, as I was in the mood for something like that and have since realized that, uh… it’s more of a scavenger/gatherer kind of game, with some platforming involved. It’s very empty, with not a lot to interact with or do, which technically could be excused by the fact that it’s pretty much a demo, but it didn’t really pull me in. It’s so empty, in fact, that I must have spent the first hour on running on base level alone (no super-jumping/flying that the game lets you do), for the sake of checking if it really is that empty. I could have used more NPCs, more coherent worldbuilding, a tidier crafting system (if you can’t pick up a thing you just crafted, but you’re still trying to craft in hopes of emptying your inventory, everything will shoot out all over the place) and less manly grunting (I can appreciate quirky mouth sounds, but that was just… it’s not like we even know who the player character is, can they not be feminine?) …I suppose I’ll keep a lookout on the full game.

Lake - Imagine, if you will, USA in the eighties. These bulky-looking “personal computer” things are slowly, but surely becoming commonplace, and more and more accompanying software is being developed. Meredith Weiss is one of many developers of such software… but this isn’t a story about that. This is a story about Providence Oaks, Oregon; Meredith’s hometown, to which she returns in hopes of taking a break from work in the big city. While her parents are on holidays in Florida, she takes up her dad’s job as the local mailman, which sets her on the path of reconnecting with old acquaintances, rekindling friendships, and maybe even getting to know someone new… I had no idea about what this game was going to be like, just kind of guessed that I’d enjoy it and so I tried it. I ended up absolutely loving it. The ratio of busywork to events is just perfect. Driving around while listening to the radio (which is great, the licensed songs really fit the overall vibe of the game) can be a simply satisfying experience, but I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that as you visit all major locations, you unlock fast travel points, as well as markers you can auto-drive towards; it really streamlined the whole thing. There were only a few minor issues, such as an extended loading time in a particular location, a few empty textboxes you have to know to click through, or the fact that the resident old lady clearly sounds like another character putting on an “old lady” voice (‘cause she is, really), but all that was nothing, compared to the pleasure I derived from playing this game. Highly recommended for a chill afternoon.

my brother lives in a canyon - Exactly What It Says On The Tin™️, my brother lives in a canyon is a walking sim about Jake and Tom, who reminisce about the past, as Jake’s on his way to meet Tom. It’s an excellent premise that draws you in, with pleasing graphics, nice music and serviceable voice acting. I’m glad it’s free, as that makes it much easier to recommend; I’m certainly surprised I hadn’t heard about it until just recently.

Paw Patrol The Movie: Adventure City Calls - This game is the stuff of nightmares. I was in love with the idea of Paw Patrol after completing the first game, and I still am, but this game is just a dirty cashgrab and I refuse to be convinced otherwise. Most glaring is the issue of it simply crashing a minute, maybe two into the very first mission; a full-on crash with a Unity error window popping up, which to this day remains supposedly impossible to replicate by the devs - basically a fucking joke. I was only able to experience this game through Xbox Cloud Gaming, and with the most basic of internet speeds, that was less than comfortable, but I digress. The count of collectables (treats) you have to get across all of the levels and minigames was, I believe, quadrupled from the previous game, which is absolutely mindblowing; isn’t this supposed to be a relaxing game for kids? No kid is going to be interested in collecting that much stuff. To further add insult to injury, most of those will be collected in one and the same driving minigame, which while available in the previous game, was only used sparingly. Here, according to some simple math, you’d have to perfectly complete it about 30 times, and that’s without accounting for mistakes. Not to mention that the devs for some reason decided to get rid of the treat counters in individual minigame levels, so you now also have to keep track of that on your own. Last, but not least, what absolutely broke me were some of the translated strings. I suppose Xbox automatically chooses the game’s language based on the language my PC/Xbox app is set in, which is fine (though in the game itself there is no option to change that, which is also criminal), but… instead of just being distracting, as it was in the previous game, here it’s just downright sad. When you complete a minigame, I assume the text that pops up says “Game complete!” in the English version… but in the Polish one, it’s been translated to “Full game version!” …seriously, was this shit machine translated? You’d think Nickelodeon would care about what I assume is one of their most popular franchises to date. If you value your time and your money, avoid this game at all costs. Maybe go outside and play some kind of ball game with your kid, that can’t not be fun.

PowerWash Simulator - If you’ve been living under a rock for the past, I dunno, year or so… PowerWash Simulator is Exactly What It Says On The Tin™️; a simulator game that lets you start a powerwashing business. And where to start, if not in good ol’ Muckingham! The people there will have all kinds of jobs for you, from their bikes or cars, through houses, all the way to ships or airplanes! It was great fun doing an honest day’s work during every session, earning a good handful of cash and using it to upgrade my equipment later on. Honestly, I think we should just collectively decide to leave making simulator games to these devs, because my only complaint is that this game’s just too addicting! But more seriously, it does get repetitive eventually…

The Procession to Calvary - A small point-and-click made up of rennaissance works of art and Monty Python-esque humor. It was okay, I don’t suppose I’m that big of a fan of either of those. It was nice to play as a protagonist who bended stereotypes left and right, though.

The Walking Dead: A New Frontier - It’s “The One Where They’re All Horny”, as I dubbed it once in a conversation. Kate and Javier’s relationship was much easier to digest if you just went for it, but I’m still not a fan of Clem and Gabe “bonding” just because “she’s a teenager, of course she’d be interested!”, I guess.

The Walking Dead: Michonne - My TWD replay binge started winding me down around this time, so it’s tough to come up with anything new to say. I want to say I tried making Michonne a tad different than I did the first time around, but really, it’s hard to not want to make her be the badass she is.

The Walking Dead: Season Two - Another replay, bless Xbox’s Cloud Gaming function! This time, I tried shifting my outlook on the characters from how it was when I played the first time around and boy, it’s a whole another story. No wonder the finale of this game might just be one of the most divisive choices to be made in gaming of all time.

The Walking Dead: The Final Season - Finally tackled this one! In any other case, I would have left it for next year, but since Game Pass gave me the opportunity to replay all of the previous entries, I decided I might as well finish my adventure with the franchise once and for all. Clem’s all grown up now, taking care of AJ once again. Soon enough, they’re swept up and taken to what was once a facility for troubled youth… and here’s where everything really starts. This time, the main cast is made up entirely of children/teens, who eventually have to face off against blood-thirsty adults; that’s one thing I liked, as it gave off this “old kids’ movie” kind of vibe. However, an issue I do have is how much different this cast is from all the other ones. Not only does it seem to imply that kids tend to get into arguments that are much more petty than adults (while personally, I believe there’s more of a balance), but it also makes most of the cast unmemorable. From a technical standpoint, yes, I do know the whole main cast by name, but really, most of them contribute little-to-nothing, as two characters in particular gradually stand out more and more. Speaking of which, as much as I let myself get endeared to the characters in question, I’m still not a fan of putting Clem in a situation where you have to choose between “friendzone” and “something more”. You say “but it’s about time she got a crush on someone!”, I say “she’s been just fine not having any interest before, and not necessarily because of the apocalypse”. Hence, I prefer to think of the choices in those scenes as ones I’ve made for myself, rather than for her. In general, the game really does feel like a fresh breath of air, rather than the thing that killed its maker, but it also shows in the annoying things. For once (possibly the first time ever, in this line of games), there are achievements you can miss, ones for performing special actions and ones for collectibles. However, while the change to a sort of “free roam”, not unlike DONTNOD’s titles looks-wise, along with the action sequences no longer being scripted half the time does a lot to make the game more interactive, it’s quite tough to play the game well with a controller. Not to mention that the one QoL function available in all the previous games, scene select, has been removed for seemingly no reason. Come on, Telltale! DONTNOD’s games have a whole-ass “isolated replay” option just for collectables, what are you doing?! Lastly, the ending… ehh, to me it just felt like big-time wish fulfillment. Still, it’s probably not the first time this series did such a leap of logic, so I guess that was just a nice way to wrap everything up. Final verdict: I liked it, but didn’t love it. Would definitely think twice before picking it up on a different platform.

Twelve Minutes - Holy crap, it’s that game! The wildly overpriced one! The one with the all-star cast! The one with time-sensitive gameplay! Yeah… yep. I played it… and I just didn’t like it, at all. The voice acting might have been just the best thing about this whole ordeal. I knew what to expect from the gameplay thanks to a video I watched some time in the past, but still, maybe this kind of “time loop, do everything step by step” gameplay just isn’t for me. The “big twist” also wasn’t anything groundbreaking, since the internet’s been screaming about it soon after the game first came out… and sue me, but I don’t think it’s as horrible as people paint it to be. These are just pixels on a screen, after all.

What Remains of Edith Finch - Easily the best walking simulator I’ve played yet, if not ever. The game puts you in the shoes of Edith as she returns to her childhood home, years after she’s last seen it, in hopes of retracing the steps of her ancestors. It’s a magical, magnificent, but also gut-wrenching story about remembering your roots and being proud of where you’ve come from. Personally, I’d recommend it to just about anyone.

See you next month! :)

9 months ago 2 comments

Progress report: July ‘22 (a.k.a. Finally, the holidays!)

Yep, you heard me right! It’s summertime and I plan on contributing nothing useful to society for as long as I can! I’m going to work as hard as possible on assassinating my backlog instead, thank you very much :3
A super important thing for this month - I made a new friend! He loves gaming just as much as I do, if not more, and I got to play through some games with him while he was still home. Small dreams coming true ☆
And then, if that wasn’t enough, he brought my attention to Discord giving away free Xbox Game Pass trial codes! Expect a splash of that until halfway through September~

So, here’s what I’ve been doing instead of being like any sane person:

  • 100 hidden cupcakes

    0.1 hours playtime

    100 of 100 achievements

  • A Memoir Blue

    3.0 hours playtime

    15 of 15 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • All You Can Eat

    0.8 hours playtime

    11 of 11 achievements

  • Bishoujo Battle Cyber Panic!

    1.4 hours playtime

    8 of 8 achievements

  • Cat&rooms

    0.3 hours playtime

    no achievements

  • Come with Me

    0.6 hours playtime

    9 of 9 achievements

  • Drowning

    2.2 hours playtime

    16 of 16 achievements

  • DYO

    1.6 hours playtime

    10 of 10 achievements

  • EMMA The Story

    0.3 hours playtime

    no achievements

  • Escape Academy

    6.5 hours playtime

    27 of 27 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Escape From School

    0.8 hours playtime

    7 of 7 achievements

  • Escape Room - The Sick Colleague

    2.3 hours playtime

    34 of 34 achievements

  • Femboy Besties

    0.1 hours playtime

    no achievements

  • Hide and Secret Treasure of the Ages

    0.5 hours playtime

    no achievements

  • it's always monday

    0.3 hours playtime

    no achievements

  • Mini Words: Top Games

    1 hours playtime

    12 of 12 achievements

  • My Friend Peppa Pig

    2.3 hours playtime

    11 of 11 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Omno

    9.0 hours playtime

    21 of 21 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • PAW Patrol: Mighty Pups Save Adventure Bay

    3.1 hours playtime

    30 of 30 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Pupperazzi

    4.8 hours playtime

    23 of 23 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • SLG Remix

    0.3 hours playtime

    no achievements

  • Starting the Game

    0.2 hours playtime

    18 of 18 achievements

  • The Artful Escape

    6.4 hours playtime

    12 of 12 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • THE CORRIDOR

    0.9 hours playtime

    10 of 10 achievements

  • The Shapeshifting Detective

    9.7 hours playtime

    21 of 21 achievements

  • The Timeless Child

    3.4 hours playtime

    22 of 22 achievements

  • The Walking Dead: The Complete First Season

    0 hours playtime

    48 of 48 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Townscaper

    0.8 hours playtime

    10 of 10 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion

    3.8 hours playtime

    37 of 37 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Unpacking

    3.0 hours playtime

    25 of 25 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • We should talk.

    2.6 hours playtime

    24 of 24 achievements

  • We Were Here

    3.9 hours playtime

    26 of 26 achievements

  • With You

    0.4 hours playtime

    no achievements

  • 夏花的轨迹——A summer promise to forever

    5.1 hours playtime

    6 of 6 achievements

100 hidden cupcakes - I told myself I wouldn’t actually spend money on any of these… and then I caved in anyway. This one’s… the same as all the other ones, I assume, just that you’re looking for something else. Funnily enough, 0.5% of people straight up gave up before finding the last cupcake (which, fair enough, hardly looked like all the other cupcakes), but I’m not one of them! Bonus virtual cupcake for me for… willing to spend three more minutes to look closer before consulting the guide…

A Memoir Blue - I’m tired of all these media that think they’re being impactful by not saying anything. For the love of god, speak to me. I know you have a voice, but for some unearthly reason you’re choosing not to have it! Sigh… This was my first experience with Xbox Cloud Gaming, and with how weak my internet connection is, the results were… serviceable. I’d still be better off making download space when needed.

All You Can Eat - I’ve had this one on my wishlist for a while now, but only when I looked at it again before buying, I noticed… “when the player ends the game, he is given the option to print out his gameplay in a comic book format”… that sounds like vApe Escape! Indeed, it’s from the same devs. Much like vApe Escape, it’s a comic-style point-and-click, which you can later export as a PDF and print out, if you want, which is… cool on paper, again, but useless if you struggled to finish the game in the first place. This game even has a developer commentary, which I always enjoy, but I still don’t think it’s worth its asking price. I got my key from someone who was selling it for just a little bit less than the biggest discount possible for it and that’s the price I felt comfortable paying.

Bishoujo Battle Cyber Panic! - Another Zoo Corporation game, another Qix reskin, another Rick G. Earth (?) feature; really don’t know what to say about this one, except that I’m iffy about how easy it was for me, ‘cause I feel like if I had to play the original Qix, it would kick my ass brutally.

Cat&rooms - Barely a nukige about a guy who picks up a magic stray cat that foresees sex in his future. Three different endings, a horrible English translation, generic moaning and a clear preference for a certain type of female body. Porn is free, so… avoid.

Come With Me - This one might have been just the perfect difficulty for us. I was poking fun at how I’d probably end up being the purple character at the start, and then I actually did… luckily, they had more agency in the whole thing. It’s a nice school project, recommended if you’ve got a friend and an hour to kill.

Drowning - Easily the simplest walking simulator I’ve ever played, Drowning relays the story of a subject (presumably the developer themselves) and its struggle with depression. The story can last for up to five years and has four different endings. The problem with this game, however… is that it’s bland. Besides a few random objects you can pick up for achievements and the fact that three of the endings are considered “secret”, there’s really not much variety or spice; you’re walking on and on, pretty much on rails, as the story is told to you every so often. It only got more excruciating when I realized that for some reason the Steam version of the game doesn’t have an option to skip chapters, unlike the console version, therefore extending the play time for no reason. I empathize with the game likely being raw and personal, but I cannot in good conscience recommend it to even the biggest walking sim lovers.

DYO - A mind-bending platformer with a cool concept that proved too disorienting for both me and my friend way too soon… so I just skipped through the rest of the game to get all the achievements. I’m just glad I got this for free and not $10, which is what it supposedly was in the past. Recommended only if you’re not the type whose brain melts…?

EMMA The Story - A short, somewhat existential story about space and the future. It’s not bad, but due to the length alone, pick it up on sale.

Escape Academy - Easily the best game I got to co-op in with my new friend, and we both think so. Escape Academy is, as the title suggests, a game about a school that tests its students based on their escape room escape skills… that… makes sense, trust me. The visuals are eye-catching, the soundtrack is great, the riddles are a great balance between “did they seriously think this was hard?” and “uh… what the fuck am I supposed to do with this?”… if you have a friend, a family member, a partner, anyone willing to play games with you, this is the next hot thing for you to play. I myself can’t wait to replay it on another platform in the future.

Escape From School - A simple “escape room” kind of game… is all I can say, because me and my friend did not have a single clue about how the heck to solve any of the riddles. We cheesed it, fooled around for what felt like an eternity before we got to the end (twice!), and we still somehow fit within the brackets of how long the game is supposed to take, according to the dev. Verdict: …good?

Escape Room - The Sick Colleague - There was a new multiplayer room added, so naturally, I jumped at the chance of completing that too. If I had to judge the difficulty of this one, the first part was sufficiently complicated, but as we went on, it got even more so and we lost the proverbial thread, so to speak. The voice-activated thing was nonsense, figuring out the dates on the SD cards wasn’t even necessary, and just about all the other stuff was purely for the achievements at that point… not to mention the in-game clue system leaves a lot to desire. Doing the Stairway to heaven achievement was fun though; I’m happy I have it now, but it’s probably going to forever be superseded in rarity by the latest Coloring Pixels packs…

Femboy Besties - Said it many times before, will say it again; it’s a shame that stuff this short is asking to be paid for, while there are some real gems out in the free-to-play world. And yes, like most the reviews say, the balls are on backwards.

Hide and Secret Treasure of the Ages - This was bad. I knew it was going to be bad, but I bought that cheap key anyway. It’s one of those HOGs where nothing really matters anyway, so the HOG scenes are just random blurred stock images of libraries and whatnot, while instead of hand-drawn items that fit within the place, you’re looking for the same clown plush or elephant statue five times over. The story of this one is told through comic-style cutscenes with terrible pre-rendered 3D art and not much better voice acting. The characters’ accents are all over the place; if anything, I feel like Toadie’s VA stood out as the best, even if his voice didn’t match what the character looks like at all. If anyone knows where I can find the names of the voice cast (assuming they weren’t all just picked up off the street), I’d like to see if he’s been anywhere else. As for the game, though, avoid it at all costs.

it’s always monday - Is it, though? I’ve seen a playthrough of this game ages ago, so now that I remembered nothing about it and it finally went 75% off (which, judging by the price, might be the lowest it even can go), I figured I might as well go for it. It’s a game about the mundane, but like so many others before it, it’s hard to talk about without just giving everything away. One thing I must say though is that it was supposedly free to play before, which makes sense considering it’s only about 20 minutes long… but now it’s paid? That alone makes it hard to recommend; there are longer and more enjoyable experiences to be found in free to play games…

Mini Words: Top Games - Last month was movies, now came the time for the top 100 highest-grossing games (as of this month). Again, much easier than the first (main?) game and just as short as Top Movies.

My Friend Peppa Pig - I like me a good children’s game, and this was pretty good. You can customize your own character, meet Peppa and her family, and go on an adventure around Peppa’s world. I’ve long since grown out of watching Peppa the Pig, but the little bits and pieces that I’ve committed to memory were portrayed accurately. I’d say the bar for children’s games isn’t high, yet Outright Games seems to meet/pass it (whichever really works) every time, considering they’ve been on a roll putting out games based on popular IPs.

Omno - This was going to get removed from Game Pass at the end of the month, so after looking it up and seeing that it’s an estimated 3-4 hour completion and “a relaxing adventure”, I decided to try it out. God, was I wrong. Not only was the presentation something I don’t jive with at all (think games like Journey or Abzu, in that they’re “no story, just vibes”), but the gameplay absolutely broke me. “But why?”, you might ask. “It’s just a platformer, isn’t it?” Yeah, it is… except it fucking sucks. All contentment I could have gained from watching all the creatures prance around and getting through the game at a reasonable pace was trumped by how godawful the platforming was. I’ve noticed that the dev was doing his best, coming up with more and more new ways to get to the collectibles and that’s great, but it stops being admirable when you have to zoom around the spot twenty times over because you keep failing the jumps. If there was a jump I couldn’t make, it was because most of my tries ended up with the character bashing their head against the platform and falling. I’m honestly glad I didn’t get vertigo from all that zipping around. Not to mention the handful of times where I looked at the next jump and thought “hmm, that looks far enough to use the dash ability”, which I did, and again, bashed my head, and fell down, then went back up to try that same jump and do it without using the dash, only to succeed. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s downright unacceptable. At the very least I can say, I’m done with it now. It was a frustrating experience from start to finish and I will gladly purge all memories of it from my mind.

PAW Patrol: Mighty Pups Save Adventure Bay - When Paw Patrol first appeared, I was long past the age at which I’d watch it for fun, so I’ve simply been curious about its popularity. Now that I’ve gotten introduced to the basic idea, I think the general message behind the cast of pups saving their hometown is pretty good. However, this game was… kind of atrocious. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun collect-a-thon, between the main missions and the minigames, and obviously the difficulty is way below what I could do, but… everything is bogged down by the voice acting. Even though I haven’t seen a single episode of the show, I could swear that the dogs can speak, but here, they don’t speak, or, at the very least, bark… all the talking is done by Ryder, and boy, does he have a terrible voice (in Polish, at the very least). I would hope that’s not the same voice actor as in the show; he just sounds so disinterested and like he doesn’t want to be there most of the time. That, and nearly all the time the things he’s saying don’t match up with what’s written on the screen, which tired me out even further. Seriously, you don’t know how distracting that kind of thing is until you see it happen.

Pupperazzi - You’re… uh… a somewhat human-sized camera… on legs… and you get yourself into the business of taking dog photos. …probably because they occupy most of the world? Anyway, questioning the setting aside, this was a pretty fun game. If you ever feel the need to relax, wind down and pet some good puppers before giving them a photoshoot, this is the game for you. However, I’m glad I got to play it as part of Xbox Game Pass, cause good lord, with that price it ain’t worth it. I wouldn’t mind replaying it some time in the future, but not for that price.

SLG Remix - I’m not exactly sure what this is supposed to be… it’s a visual novel, sure, but the 20 minutes that it took me to read felt like they were cut out of a bigger story. I went in, aware of the less than favorable reviews and I was not surprised. Do yourself a favor, assuming you even knew about this game, and skip it.

Starting the Game - I feel lied to. I don’t think I started any game, maybe besides this one. It was short, looked crappy and its humor was pure nonsense to me. The “subscribe to PewDiePie” thing at the start was really cringy too, there are reasons I’ve unsubscribed a good few years back.

The Artful Escape - I’ve been really looking forward to playing this game. The “Music” tag and a mention of Jason Schwartzman being on the cast got me, I admit. And now, with my Game Pass trial, I got to try it out. It… wasn’t great. Don’t get me wrong, the art is fantastic, the voice acting is great and the overarching message of being your own person is important… but it’s just not a good game. All of the musicality is brought down to pressing/holding X to let out sound, with the sections where you need to “prove yourself” being presented as a glorified Simon Says. In the end, this is another one of those games that I suppose I wouldn’t mind replaying, but not for its base price. Heck, looking at this one makes me think - “wouldn’t this have worked better as an animated feature?”

THE CORRIDOR - This game seems to be getting bashed for simply being Stanley-esque, but I don’t necessarily think that’s bad. The other way out people take to try and convey things like these is usually by keeping silent; I much prefer bad writing than no writing at all, and this wasn’t necessarily bad… The gimmick was a tad annoying, but in the end, it was a fun experience.

The Shapeshifting Detective - Streamed this for my friend after he showed an interest. It’s a damn engaging FMV where a mystery is afoot. As the title suggests, you’re a shapeshifter - it’s unclear who (or what) you originally are, but after coming in contact with a potential suspect, you can use their likeness to get info out of other suspects. We stayed up a few long nights to see the mystery through; he’s even more interested in FMVs now than he was before, I just wish all the plot twists that were introduced had some sort of an explanation.

The Timeless Child - This game is just great. Maybe it’s because I know how to solve all the riddles by now that I say that, but the riddles in this game are genuinely fun to figure out and execute. The “Prologue” in the name only gets me excited - I wonder what more will come out of this. Definitely recommend this one if you’re itching to play with someone online.

The Walking Dead: The Complete First Season - Hell yeah! Thank you, Xbox, for giving me an excuse to replay most of the TWD series! Especially the first game; man, it’s been four years, I’ve forgotten tons of stuff that went down. …you only ever remember the major beats…

Townscaper - One heck of a creative sandbox. I’m not a creative type, however, so it’s safe to say I played this one just for the achievements.

Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion - This game, ah… it looks good. It’s cute, it has a nice soundtrack and, uh… that’s about where the praise ends. Seriously, I could hardly stomach the writing. Who on earth thought stuffing a game with memes would automatically make it funny? I guess it’s whoever called that one guy in the credits “the meme encyclopedia” or whatever. There’s an old lady who uses uwuspeak, a random JoJo reference just for the sake of it, and another character who appears out of nowhere to contribute nothing other than tell you an edited version of the Navy Seal copypasta. So, should you play this game? If you can handle this kind of “humor”, by all means. I’ve pretty much quit Twitter at this point for a reason.

Unpacking - A downright adorable pixel art game, telling the story of a certain woman through all the times she moved house. It’s one of those rare examples where I didn’t need a written-out story, there’s just so much you can tell based on what kind of stuff people take with them when moving. Naturally, a tad of a gripe is the game forbidding me from putting some stuff where I might have put it in real life, but with enough playing around, everything’s to be worked out. I already can’t wait to replay this one someday.

We should talk. - Your relationship’s falling apart, but still, you go out drinking. This is a simulation of how 8 out of 9 times you’re going to break up, and the lucky ninth time is when you get to keep up the relationship. The other characters of the story don’t matter one bit. The vibe of the game is pretty nice, everything else not so much. Every time you get to the title screen, even if you just finished a playthrough without exiting the game, you’re going to have to readjust the options, if you did that before, which is hardly acceptable. Even the fastest message speed isn’t nearly fast enough to get through the game at a reasonable pace, considering the ending count and how repetitive most of the game is. If this were a standard visual novel, you could shave off a bunch of time just by skipping the wait for the messages you’ve seen ten times before. We should talk. wasn’t bad per se, but… very meh.

We Were Here - Finally! At last, I made a friend to play this game with! It’s a cool concept, a librarian and an explorer getting lost in a castle filled with traps and riddles. Shame that the “no death” achievement isn’t described better, as there are multiple different ways to die during the game (the spikes fail just looks like a simple respawn, but it actually counts as a “death”?). However - and I can believe I would speak for the majority of the players when I say this - the ending sucked! What’s with that?! I can only hope the sequels get better, but I’m not in a hurry to buy them, I’m just going to look out for when they might go on sale or something.

With You - Going from DYO to this, it was a perfect dial-back on the difficulty. I reckon we’d have been done with this one in 15 minutes, had I not gotten a nosebleed while playing. I don’t suppose it’s as much of a relationship-exploring/testing/what have you game as it might want to be, but it is a nice student project, and I love me some of those.

夏花的轨迹——A summer promise to forever - This has been another one of my rare encounters with Chinese VNs and… it was okay. The art is pretty, the voice acting seems good enough and the English translation is serviceable (apparently it was revised in the past, too, so that’s good), but the story is just really meh. You play as Lin Jiajun, a high schooler sent by his dad to scope out a school in a remote village called Tangxia. Naturally, he meets a few new people there, but the standouts are the heroines - Wu Wanxue, who’s quiet and devoted to working out in the field and Chen Yinlin, who seems to remind him of the distant past… Anyway, it all reads like a bad fanfiction; both heroines have their problems, ones that should be seen as serious, but then the main character, who is, as usual, just your average guy, swoops in and solves everything like it hadn’t been going on for much longer than he’s known any of those people. There’s also a secret sex scene that you can patch into the game, but it’s not voiced or available in English, so if anything, just open it for the related achievement. I’m glad I finally finished this, as it’s been cramping my completion % for the last three (!) years and… let’s see what this studio’s going to do next, I suppose. According to VNDB, they’re in the process of making another VN set in the same universe.

Bonus:
BROK the InvestiGator - I decided it was only fair to finish the demo, so I did. The UI wasn’t as problematic as I might have thought at first. I enjoyed how much stuff there is to collect and explore, it really does look like it’s going to be a long, solid point-and-click adventure game when it comes out, considering it’s now the longest demo of the ones I played for Next Fest. The hints, the deaths, the choices, I’m excited!

See you next month! :)

10 months ago 9 comments
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1592 games
49% never played
4% unfinished
2% beaten
41% completed
4% won't play
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