more cute cat girls!

Fraise and the sister join the harem… so some probably won't enjoy this because of that. To note this isn't canon, its a what if story.

decent nonogram game… however it gives you to much information at times… making it easy to know if there is no cells needing to be filled on a side.

a nice walking sim, I may go back to this and 100% it later.

has some issues like every point and click does, but this was interesting.

great tactical game, also has some amazing QOL features… like letting you skip the levels that are to hard for you without penalty(… outside of related achievements for that particular level, I did have to skip a couple myself)

not much to say… its extremely short(an anime episode is longer)

my brain was releasing steam… im to dumb for this game.

for some reason this game did not launch with english text as a default… I had to navigate some runes to set to english.

Its my 2nd God of War game… I played the original only(in fact its one of the 2 games I have beaten on the PS3… my least played console that I own)

no QTE's(yay!), slower pace though, still a great game, I wishlisted the next title to.

great story, gameplay is a little slow… controls are overly complicated for no good reason…. controls are one of the big reasons it took me so long to finish it

honestly… I would label this for robocop fans only, was rather boring for me.

this is a game that had my interest… since it was in kickstarter, never picked it up myself but got it in 2023's begging thread(shame it took me this long to get to it).

much shorter than the HLTB time makes you believe(I probably would have it done in around 15hrs if I didn't force myself to go extra side stuff)… all those 80hr no note submissions

I thought the turn based update for this had come already, but apparently that was for the sequel and its in the works for this so I played on how can you fail mode(lowest difficulty)

this was nice, might have enjoyed it more if I didn't force myself into 100%ing it for POP(have to 100% at least 1!)

normally don't like stealth games at all, but this is more of a puzzler using stealth as the puzzle and I really enjoyed this, great game.

was alright, next one is supposedly alot better.

this was enjoyable… I am getting lazy with reviews again.

neat game, fairly short.

< 22 min speed run cheevo which I am not bothering to get.

decent overall… had a few annoyances I had to mod out(things like lockpicks not being plentiful enough and such)

7/10 game, not bad… not didn't love it, story was decent.

I played this solo, it was decent, definitely feels like a game where you get a group of people in and its great.

this was great… do wish the map was better for the main area… but at least it was thematic for what the game is.

combat in this was simpler than expected, more of a souls-lite instead of a souls-like :P
did love the art style
don't think I will do the other characters campaign, just 1 is enough for me on this.

professional click to exterminate bee gamer here.

really good game that took the vampire survivors formula and changed it quite a bit, the meta progression is slow but is fairly impactful. I did the earliest part very early so I don't recall the slowest parts but I was getting multiple points worth in the tree every run… took 40ish hours with my demo progress porting over just to max that meta progression tree and leveling all the characters to 10… fortunately here you don't have to play each character while they are weak, just farm a little with your leveled characters to get a general xp pool to level whoever you want(which is good because the fortune cat at least is pretty mediocre compared to the others until its level is maxed).

I don't want to think how long it would take me to 100% this… could probably

story was to silly for me to enjoy
but puzzles were enjoyable enough.

see notes on first game… I screwed up 1 puzzle by mistake and can't 100% it in a single playthrough
flips a table

I was considering committing blasphemy here and renaming all the characters to their golden sun inspirations… but I am getting lazy

This was great, I knew I would probably love it because I loved Golden Sun and I kept hearing comparisons to the two… and guess what I loved it

main thing I disliked was needing to get all the rainbow conchs(at least there is a tracker for it!) to get true ending.

supposedly a dlc is coming soon so I will be watching out for it.

absolutely wonderful VN… and ofc Key does its thing and makes you cry near the end.

I like this conceptually… but it doesn't have the long term viability other survivor games have for me, part of being all the attacks are directional… you know the worst kind of attacks in survivor like games… admittedly you don't have a few hundred enemies swarming you every second either.

I wasn't expecting the supernatural stuff, just the female romance.
was great

its decent, I feel alot of the orbs don't get enough bounce… and some of the level layouts while neat looking aren't really great for a peggle like experience as it causes the orbs to just ultimately fall to the bottom. The 1st area is by far the worst… but you eventually get some relics and special orbs that make things interesting.

final boss can have some hilarious results based off your relic combos.

probably won't play much more after making this review.

simply game, try to find earth!
now I can move onto the sequels

Absolutely everything is a puzzle
getting around the zones? half of it is a puzzle(sure theres basic paths… but the rest)
want to use a key in a dungeon? its a puzzle
want to visit everything in a town? puzzle
just wish there was more unlockable shortcuts… as some of the world platforming for chests spans multiple screens

great game overall… I suck at dodging/perfect guarding… so I took full advantage of the enemy damage slider option, did tick down puzzle speed a few times but for most part that stayed at 100% speed.

would consider 100%ing but 2+ cheevos are missable and would require another playthrough, don't have it in me atm but I may reconsider.

I won't call it bad… but was a disappointment for me.
generally to easy, never really had to guess what to do… only really missed 1 cheevo so I grabbed a guide to locate it and 100%.
everything that was meant to be a threat never felt like a threat

the feeling of intentionally killing yourself in a game felt wrong the entire game

bit more enjoyable than Bayonetta was for me, played on normal.

neat little game that really tests your memory.

its got the right vibe… but the first part of the game you feel the gold pressure… the later half its running back and forth since you weren't aware you needed to level the friendship of basically everyone to beat the game.

no real challenge in the game, just a bunch of grinding and running back and forth, I definitely didn't love it.

neat little short platformer, apparently each character has a different "quest"… the one I ended up picking was uncover all the fog… which tbh was probably the hardest one, another character was to grab balls… not bothering with other characters as honestly the map was to easy… I was expecting some tough precision platforming… not just simple jumps with occasional hazards to avoid.

achievements do seem to have all the letters and numbers for those wanting to use them for their profile.

its pokemon 3v3s with metroidvania elements

solid game, the battles in the end were a little tough… the attack team I used most of the game suddenly became to weak as enemies started 1turn KOing when they focuses on my physical beaters… fortunately the mage team was far far tankier somehow… final battle I had to swap out 1 of the mage team for the starting lion since they had units that were weak to physical attacks and resistant to magical… also it could take a few hits :P

great game

thought I had watched a full playthrough before, but apparently it was only the first part

simple death game, will need decent mouse speed to be able to beat it though… had to swap from wireless KB on TV for the last little combat.

only did 1 route, not good enough to do others… without text skipping option at least(if it had one I would do the other endings)

I will let my review on steam speak for itself

https://steamcommunity.com/id/carenard/recommended/2602450?snr=159__402

enjoyable but a little dated… the humor went significantly darker than expected.

nonograms!

had to farm gold to go broke

this was neat, just wish it didn't flash bang me as much

Act 3 finally dropped, the $7 I spent on this game… has gotten me plenty of hours
getting 50-70 per big update, and its one of my favorite games of all time to boot.

I definitely didn't skip a few meals because I was so addicted to pushing difficulty, managed to clear difficulty 90… max is 100 but that means turning down healing… and good lord I don't want to do that(on top… higher enemy scaling >>)

This was an interesting one, thought it was going to be all political with religious undertones… but suddenly demons

have you ever been so down you would sacrifice your entire reality to kiss an eldritch babe?

Estir's routes were the best.
Surprising that I didn't pick the catgirl right

a family share game, but its a nice little turn brain off and click things game.

a great sequel!
those who played first pretty much know what to expect, but this time we get a chapter select and alternate narrator for those who want to 100% and go back to get whatever you missed, 1 you had to get all in 1 playthrough with no ability to go back.

had a little to much fun in photo mode.

I enjoyed it… but its definitely a product of its time, think I will stay away from the rest of the older Mysts for now, the newest one though ill keep entering for… and get if it shows up cheap enough in a bundle

I am entering this universe… thought I needed Act 2 to do friendism/pesterquest… but apparently act 2 is after all that.

this was neat

a point and click with no text!
was short and enjoyable

This was really nice, the music made me tired for some reason though.

seems the homestuck webcomic(which is the epilogue)… serves out HTTP error 503's :/
I moved onto pesterquest without reading it.

decent game overall…

I do feel I said enough in my review, I won't be playing this game again for sure.
https://steamcommunity.com/id/carenard/recommended/1434540?snr=159__402

I would try reading the homestuck webcomic before playing this… would probably enjoy it more if I did… not sure.

its done, I will avoid future homestuck universe stuff that isn't hiveswap so I don't feel required to finding the webcomic again… and ignoring it again… then feeling somewhat lost because I skipped some content that should have been done.

and a weird one, took me a bit to get used to it

nice digital version of the game, the last few boards in the "campaign" are tough since the AI actually doesn't play dumb in them…

the AI on the easy/normal ones… is incredibly dumb…. like dumber than a brand new player to the game who is new to board gaming in general levels of dumb. they would play better if you removed their ability to use favor tokens… since they completely waste them in the lower difficulty parts.

this was neat… but didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would

another great entry in the series, looking forward to future ones if there ever are any

weaker part of the franchise if you ask me, the oz stuff was neat… being able to ground slam was fun and all… but gearbox also gave enemies jetpacks that seemed to have no limit where you could only get a little boost and that is it… made tracking some of the enemies annoying… and definitely made them buggier… watching them jetpack through floors.

didn't like the gunship boss fight near the end at all, until near the end… of my fifth attempt… it never came close enough to get blasted with a shotgun or rocket launcher(my favorites for slaying bosses)… the final boss though… decided at the end it would go big… and make a giant face target for the ice lady with tons of extra crit damage… to hit its weak point(the face) with. Needless to say… the boss got absolutely melted.

Story is… ok, not something I would recommend.
has some great CG art, backgrounds and 2D models are of varying quality.

its kind of difficult to read due to UI choices, it doesn't have a text box, or tell you who is speaking… just put a transparent background over the images and start throwing text at you.

I enjoyed this, however this is not a happy VN… your not supposed to like most of the characters in it.
am glad I picked this is up before it got delisted since the creator doesn't like it, sad I failed to grab it on sale… oh well only lost 30 cents or so of wallet funds extra.

not my type of game really… powered through it since it was a POP pick.
won't be playing anymore of the series though.

this was fun, however the graphics started to get to me by the end

While I enjoyed this… I do feel it is a little bit overrated, maybe some of it is lost in translation.

no actual happy ending either… boils down to 12 bad endings… and 2 ok endings.

This is something I started a few days after it released(came with my GPU back then)… I hit reload checkpoint once… had no confirmation box and lost like 30 mins of progress and quit…. now almost 12 years later I finally came back to it to finish it… of the Bioshock games I still prefer 1 the most(never finished 2, only have that on 360 atm… and my 360 is not at my place)

1 > Infinite > 2 is my ranking

apparently this is 100% machine translated… its terrible… every few text boxes was giving me mental damage…

I asked for the gifter to refund this levels of terrible, fan translation of it project was canceled to :(
I would avoid this unless you are playing it completely in Japanese/Chinese.

such a shame it has great art and music, well reviewed(likely not English speaker reviews for the majority)

This was one that looked really fun but I had concerns that I was going to suck so bad at it… I did suck at it… but playing on easy/casual made it enjoyable sucking at least, I think there were some things normally limited on higher difficulties(like standard missiles) that are unlimited here.

I could definitely seeing someone with a proper flight stick having an amazing time with this one.

enjoyable game so far.
,,, not going to finish it this month because I let the Path of Exile event league and balatro brain rot get to me

Finally managed to finish this wonderful VN, I did use a guide mostly because I don't tend to play VN's for difficulty on decisions, more for the story, comedy and characters.

A wonderful random gift I received

I promise I was not addicted… no don't look at those hours or what day I started playing it… or the fact that I have done wave 100 danger 5 on endless already(prbly could have gone infinite on that run… at least close to the world record of ~2000… that busted of a build)

This is one of the great weird VN's… its hard to say much without spoiling it.
its fairly cheap, its short(1-2hrs max to 100%) and I would say its worth playing

Cute and enjoyable, took me 33 minutes to 100%… without a guide, so its length is the only complaint.

pretty sure I did every choice possible to, there is a secret achievement… while trying to hunt for whatever it was I noticed the settings menu had new buttons and tried the Konami code for kicks and giggles… that was the code to unlock a secret option to get last cheevo >>

I had forgotten this was a souls like, honestly… I see what they were going for but it made one flaw with the game… you a jedi… feel like your using a wet noodle to attack with. I resolved with with a difficulty editor mod, just doubled the damage compared to normal mode to lower difficulty some(faster enemies die the less risky it is after all)… and most importantly… it felt more like I was using a light saber.

This took me a bit to get used to, even managed to get myself killed in the tutorial dungeon… got to close to poison gas, went to leave and saw fireball scroll, exploded it and try to get to other side to quickly and died to fire >>

did ultimately play on baby mode

I started this one on the wrong day, its dark, depressing at times, and mostly not the happiest of stories… I started this one the same day of my Cousins funeral… the completely wrong headspace to be walking into this VN's atmosphere with.

the story overall was good, not much to talk about art wise, the music did fit the atmosphere.

and now we move to cute Yuri VN's

I may be getting lazy on reviews

1 skeleton big bad and 1 human successfully flirted with
just bard things, flirt with everything with all that charisma.
great game, very short, has achievements in game but no steam achievements >>

So this is one I was somewhat worried I wouldn't love, as it would be my 3rd game from platinum to play, the 1st was Astral Chain, I just couldn't behind controlling both the player character and demon thing for combat, 2nd was Bayonetta, that one was frustrating at times and felt it was trying to be more showy than fun.

fortunately I loved this so I won't write off platinum games, I did almost every single quest… skipped the final race thing, 2 colosseums A and S rank battles(I didn't want to grind up some more to do S rank on them… I definitely pushed it doing the other at the level I did)… would likely need an hour of straight grinding in the desert pit where they infinitely spawn to do it comfortably. I did ultimately play on easy, some with and some without the auto chips on… dying on the tutorial boss and losing 30 minutes of progress hurt. Once you get past that and have the checkpoints death is not a serious setback anymore(as long as you save often)

Decent, I found it to easy
I don't know if any cheevos were able to be missed but I got them all without a guide.

unfortunately unplayable

doesn't work with my controller at all, tried playing KBM but the screen just spins, I found something on community hub as a "fix" and it didn't work either :(

nice short horror(mostly blood and gore) point and click game with a solid story

did a few technical problems… but nothing that made it unplayable for me.

An incredibly good VN with amazing art centered around time travel.
easily going to be my favorite played VN this month

does have a few relatively minor localization issues, but nothing that will stop the understanding or enjoyment of the story(things like missing spaces, a couple times names weren't translated(EG Cecilia telling a character you can just call her , one of the unimportant side characters name seemed to be a literal translation of their Chinese name, a few times closer to the end it would show text intended for production(BG: XYZ)

this was a great puzzle(box) game

I feel like I am getting lazier on these texts… are people reading this far :D

and now the VN's are getting philosophical, this was pretty good… but weird at times(debating if I upload any SS's atm)
anyone who wants to 100% this, do the settings/main menu achievements rq before doing story… so you don't need to dig and find the save folder to delete your save… as doing the bad end will lock you out of 1 the cheevos

This one was no longer just a puzzle box, but now puzzle box tied to a room
this is definitely a great series

Necks!
this one was short and interesting!

and now the series is more escape room, still great though, don't have 4 through family share sadly.
there was some puzzles in the hub area that spans all of the area I definitely couldn't figure out, but its beaten
won't 100% this one… previous 2 100% was just beat the game.

Its a Sakura game… not much more needs to be said
Childhood friend is the best(aren't they always)

decent mining game… the early game is pretty boring… alot of games have this problem though… but once you get some upgrades it gets better

Nice and enjoyable Nonogram game.
its all making pictures… so if you get stuck with the math logic… you can try to go to art logic.

I was a rebel and saved the tutorial for after finishing the rest of the game to 100% it.

and yet another Sakura game and rooting for childhood friend.

definitely the cutest vampire survivors like game I have played, game definitely needs some more balancing… some of the skills and characters are just so much weaker than the others, ranged projectiles are by far the best(to be fair… in what vamp survivor like game are they not?)

all the characters at least were fairly unique with their unique weapons, you have the cat girl with a giant hammer going for big aoes(prbly the best melee weapon… because of its sheer aoe), a Shiba Inu ninja that is all mobility(lots of dashes), a robot that can be in mobile mode or deployed mode for even more damage(later unlocks give it a shield so its not as detrimental vs bosses/elites), can't tell if its supposed to be a living jackfruit or dorian that is about getting hit and doing reflected damage, standard warrior dude, elf archer(by far the best of the characters), a literal cat summoner(2nd best imo once you get its 2nd talent tree layer), a watermelon samurai… and a few more normal characters.

all the characters have their own talent trees, the only thing that get shared is the bonus for unlocking their ultimate talent(mostly things like +1 reroll, +1 banish, there are a few static bonuses that are more useful like some hp, attack, a revive and some levels for free right at the start(this is by far the most important for later stages)

soo.. when I was checking achievements of others for some other reason… I noticed I was lacking a large number, pulled up an achievement guide and realized… I hadn't done most of the single player campaign… at least with achievements on my account. My cloud save also reflected that..

Not sure if I played on brothers/someone elses account, if co-op campaign was same puzzles but as 2 characters or what as I remember a good chunk. Even if it was a replay or just a first time doing single player its been long enough that it was a great experience regardless

Lets start this month off strong with an amazing game
straight into the favorites, I did effectively 2 playthroughs as I had to go back to get the collectibles I missed via chapter select

neat little puzzle platformer

neat little arcade shooter that can be beaten in around an hour(on rookie… less if you fail less than me :D)… I don't want to imagine what it would take to 100% this though.

this was on overall disappointment

haven't played the other kingdom games(yet), gameplay seemed to be what I recall from what I watched of the others… story was very whatever.

title screen had some great music, even though I wasn't going to play the the multiplayer(prbly the bigger chunk of the game)… I had hoped to be able to enjoy the single player…

my god is it slow… way to slow… so slow you can get bored as hell and quit… like I did
another sad red mark in my wins :(

not very good at these retro fighters… definitely could have beaten them all faster but I didn't want to do the 2 controller or save after every hit level cheese strats… I did let myself use a cheat code on one of them

effectively a precision platformer, first 2/3 of the game I really enjoyed… then the game started adding winds and timed lasers which made the game less fun to me, ended up using cheat engine to get god mode on a few levels so I could beat it.

rather enjoyable point and click… other than being forced into fullscreen mode(these kind of games I like to windowed… or at least borderless fullscreen), something was breaking SS's for me on this… all of the ones I took are just solid black >>

will let my review on steam speak for itself

an Arkanoid clone with RPG elements, while at first its enjoyable… then you start noticing the collision and physics bugs, the ball just going straight through the paddle, being sent downward instead of back up, or otherwise the wrong direction. The split ability seems to almost always shoot a ball towards the bottom of the screen regardless of the balls original direction… making it a low value skill with a long cooldown.

would love to play more… but… these bugs are just killing me
I tried the area I stopped at 4 times… I failed it all 4 times due to collision detection bugs… shame as the game is otherwise enjoyable

a lovely story based game
those who can enjoy a slower story focused game will likely enjoy this one

well I have determined… I absolutely suck at this game, won't surprise me if I missed something to help me win at all.
but even using the assists and setting AI to the bare minimum… I couldn't win

and then a racing game more my style, arcade style!
other than not loving the looks of the vehicles… they feel misshapen somehow I enjoyed this one.

I feel like the trailer is complete false advertising… it depects lots of action… I have put 4 hours into this game now and have killed ~40 enemies total… 1 group of humans for a quest… which was more shoot explosive barrel and thats about it… and the rest is weak little rats/flies… everything else will just murder you because your way to weak… even on easy.

This game mostly wants me to go point A to B and talk to people so far… while I expected some of that in a game like this… when only 2 quests have asked me to kill things… and 1 of them was effectively kill 5 rats that are spread out in the world…. I just wanted more action :/

this was a very old SG win, I actually have a key for the directors cut/enhanced edition/whatever it was called(to lazy to double check)… but that version isn't a win so it gets no love!

I originally marked this as won't play… but as my unplayed win list shrinks I looked over some of my won't plays and this one I was unsure why I had marked it, I overall enjoyed this one, it wasn't great but a solid 7/10 for me.

wasn't bad… but my god some of the secret room locations are just dumb, if I didn't open the steam guide to get an idea… I would have been clueless to check a mailbox for a secret room kind of dumb.

now to take a break from RPGmaker games for a bit before tackling the other one I won.

another old win bites the dust, I guess I got distracted by WoW/POE on this one which got it left unfinished… for 9.5yrs

For starters I won't call it a good game(5/10 or so), was longer than expected to.
The voice acting is the entire reason I entered a single GA for this… and the parts of the game that were voiced were disproportionally good compared to the rest of the game. You could definitely tell which parts had more time put into them to.

an interesting arcade game, definitely not one I can sit down and finish quickly but will work on it over time

This was a random gift from someone
its a slower pace vampire survivors clone, but we have cute characters! A big hammer wielding fox? wolf? cat? girl(can't remember what lore vs looks was), a dog ninja(yes just a dog), a cat summoner(again yes just a cat), an elven archer and more(still haven't unlocked them all). Instead of a generic meta progression tree for everyone each character has their own talent tree which when pushed to a certain point gives a bonus for all characters(+1 revive, +1 reroll, +5 starting level(and what comes with levels) are the ones I have seen)

probably would have finished it by now, but Santa brought me a potato that shoots guns and swings weapons at things

I probably watched 20+ hrs of the game since the abyssal DLC came out(the curse mechanic is the sole reason I became more interested in the game, without it… it would become to samey and easy), and I was right… I am clearly addicted(all those hours… are in the past 2 weeks… and I have multiple days where I was out and about for family/holiday stuff).

starting to play with mods as I finish up 100% achievements(which is just win with each character on each map, and a few other that you get in the first hours)