HurrJackal1’s profile

Hurr Jackal on Steam HurrJackal1 on SteamGifts

March 2023

  • Lingo: This is a very good pure puzzle game, but not a flawless one. Basically, there are a lot of panels, each with a word on them that require an answer in response. Learning all the ways that you are to determine the answers will take a lot longer than grasping the basics, and while some can be solved mechanically, you also have to solve a bunch with intuition and scraps of pattern and context. It can be absolutely wonderful magic when it works (I have no logical rationale for some of the answers I instantly got other than “it was the right vibe”), but there’s also a bunch of mechanical filler; and panels where you need to give the one accepted answer of many possible correct answers, which is annoying; as well as some puzzles that need you to not only read the designer’s mind, but also his accent, which I really don’t love. For instance the five letter response needed for “FIR” in a late game area should have been EARTH for me, and not (after much brute forcing) ROUGH, which would need to be FAR. I’ve completed the main level (credits rolled) and used a missing panel finder afterwards that looked at my savefile and indicated roughly where they are, though even that left quite a hunt, and I had to use the official spoiler for “LOST” which is obscurely clued past the point of unfairness. I also used an electronic dictionary and anagram finder and Wikipedia once or twice and in one case the achievements. The game’s peaks are an easy 10/10, but overall it’s an 8.5+/10 for its questionable panels, some padding, navigational irritations with use of non-Euclidean geometry where it adds confusion rather than value (though at least the map interconnects better as you solve things), and softlock pits towards the end needing a warp and runback. There’s a bonus main level available, which I’m probably over half-done but which I might well not get through as it has some even harder read-my-mind; plus some shorter areas on top of that, of which I’ve only reached The Library; and probably a meta-game as well.
  • Hiiro: A 2D explorer with some fairly gentle platforming, and occasional puzzles other than navigation. It was short, it was cute, it was ok. The final achievement requires dealing with a change in genre, so no. 7.5/10.
  • Shady Part of Me: If I had a dollar for every narrative puzzler I’ve played where the game is explicitly metaphorical for the protagonist coming to terms with some type of trauma, I could probably buy myself another narrative puzzler where the game is explicitly metaphorical for the protagonist coming to terms with some type of trauma. In this one you swap between a girl who moves in the 3d real world and must avoid light, and her 2d shadow, who is projected onto walls and other surfaces by light sources. There’s a few tricky puzzles, the mechanics feel sufficiently original due to their interaction, and things change up from Act to Act as new twists on the shadow-play are introduced. Not a fan of the heavy handed script – much of it voiced – though, which for me drags it down to a 7/10.
  • Love and Country: this is a Visual Novel, emphasis Novel. In 80 Days or Wanderlust, say, you have only so many critical branching points, but many minor little choices between these that might not ultimately matter too much, but that shade your understanding of the protagonist, other characters, and the world. For instance there’s a nun sneaking a drink; in some other universe you’d get to react to that either through thought or action. I was 30 minutes into Love and Country before I got to make my first choice between two options, and about that again before I got to make my second and final choice between two options. I’m not mad about Kojima’s movies either, there’s a fair chance I have some form of ADD, and the lack of interactivity left me twitchy and irritated through most of it - the close to 1.45 hours it took to reach an ending was achieved in 5 short sessions. I could in theory probably get another 3+ achievements in under 2 minutes as you get an achievement whenever you make a choice, and there is a “Skip” which fast-forwards through previously seen scenes (discovered when I accidentally loaded the wrong save, then overwrote the right one), which is kind. The content is fine for what it is and it’s well-written enough, so if you like romance reading and don’t care about a game being much of a game, then add a handful of points to my 3/10. (Steamgifts win)

Games I Will Not Complete

  • Super Daryl Deluxe: I bounced right off this one - it claims to be a metroidvania, but it doesn’t really feel like one, and from reading reviews a lot of others don’t think it’s one either (skills gate chests but not generally routes, and a hub-and-spoke model). The animation is excellent - fluid and full of character. The gameplay is a beat-em-up with a little platforming/exploration, and you’ll likely need a fair amount of combat to get sufficient levels and equipment to deal with higher-level zones. I did not enjoy the combat, and found myself feeling a little nostalgic for Viewtiful Joe, so a subjective 5/10 from what I’ve seen. If you like comedic cooldown-based RPG beat-em-ups then maybe add a couple points.
  • Sundered: Another combat-oriented metroidvania/soulslike I bounced off. I like exploration of tailored worlds. Sundered has frequent hordes of monsters to act as a constant interruption, and a requirement to collect enough escalating points to buy abilities and skills so you need to kill a lot of them rather than just fleeing. Rooms can feel somewhat randomly designed, with bits that just don’t do anything sensible, and that are designed to be somewhat randomly sequenced – which is at odds with the care that is put into the art and animation and AI of the hordes. I like some unashamed roguelites – Binding of Isaac and Neon Abyss in particular – but I’m yet to be convinced that roguelite elements are particularly good for metroidvanias. 6/10 (Addendum: I just discovered through a coincidental Funhaus video that it can be played 4 player local co-op, which looks chaotic fun, but again, not particularly what I’m after in a metroidvania)
  • Oddworld: Abe’s Oddyssee: An old-school puzzle platformer, with old-school painful platforming. The game aligns the character to a grid square, which makes controls feel both sluggish in responsiveness and overly precise, which was very standard for a 1990s game, but aggravating in the 2020s. I want to enjoy this a lot more than I did, as the puzzle side of things are quite good, as is the world. 6.5/10 (Steamgifts win)
  • No Time To Explain Remastered: You fire a beam which pushes you, allowing you to propel yourself through the dangers and gaps of a level, as well as deal with bosses. It was tricky but enjoyable and amusing. Then it switched genre and became a side-scrolling bullet heck. I died a bunch; I didn’t get good; I quit. 7.5/10 up to the sidescroller. (Steamgifts win)
  • Vandals: I liked Hitman Go and Lara Croft Go, and would have liked to have played Deus Ex Go if it had ever been released on PC. Vandals is similarly a set of route optimisation puzzles, but I did not enjoy it nearly as much. Part of it is probably the fantastic graphic design of the Go series – how they abstract out familiar levels into a “toy” look. But the level design is also part of it: the Go series levels are tight. There’s still room for puzzlement as the choices available in later levels open sufficient decision space, but it’s not overwhelming - there’s a certain elegance in a correct – and optimally correct – solution. Vandals levels need to be bigger overall because unlike the Go games you can’t eliminate threats, and are more difficult for that because of the additional load in needing to mentally look-ahead in the expanded decision space. 6/10 for me. (Steamgifts win)
29 days ago* 4 comments

February 2026

  • Indika: A game about a nun who can hear the devil in an alt-universe Russia. The nun is likely schizophrenic, and what is real and what is not – and to what degree it is not – is unclear, particularly once another character joins. The game design is also somewhat schizophrenic, and bounces between 3d cinematic adventure and 2d retrogame. I guess the ending was probably intended as an artistic decision, rather than being a case of “fuck it we’re done/out of funds”, but it does leave things on a real anticlimax. 7/10 or 8.5/10
  • The Henry Stickmin Collection: A remaster of a series of old Adobe Flash choose-your-own-adventures, which get progressively more elaborate as they go along. Funny and absurd, but replayability (to see all paths and collect all stick figures) is made more annoying than it should be by not being able to advance quickly through seen scenes, particularly where stick figures are only briefly shown in a long scene. 7.5/10
  • Q.U.B.E. 2: A post-Portal puzzler. Its first half is very unpromising, as things are so very straightforward where you can only interact with particular specified locations with your limited abilities. It does get better halfway through where puzzles open up to better require combinations of abilities, and the final couple of levels really do require thought. 7.5/10
  • The Loopler (demo): A roguelite/semi-idler with a very generous demo. You have a racing car that goes around a track. Things may well change by the final game (and with unseen unlocks), but it feels like there’s currently a golden path strategy, with many of the other offered mechanics unable to scale as needed.
  • Book of Hours: Be an occult librarian - researching books, making items to help you research books, and exploring the rooms of the library. I finished the game with the baby ending (screenshot, very mild spoiler warning) – the Cultist Simulator equivalent is far easier to get to. Real endings require more work, so I may be reporting having beaten this another 1+ times at some point. As for the playtime… I spent a lot of time both in restarting the game, and paused (but still playing much of the time). At its core it’s a crafting game, where some of your inputs are time constrained. Funnily enough, one of the closest games mechanically in feel is the Logistical series. What finally cracked it for me was to use the exact correct colours in my spreadsheet: I was using approximates, and that added enough friction/confusion. But the game is more than just its mechanics; it’s also a game where you get snippets of lore, to piece together the secret histories of the world, and to provide hints as to what you can craft and how. I really – really – like Alexis Kennedy’s approach to writing these here as well as in Fallen London/Echo Bazaar, Sunless Sea, and Cultist Simulator, but less so his approach to game design which can tend towards the grindy. Book of Hours is, however, his most approachable work so far (Travelling at Night is likely to be even more so), and there are a bunch of systems in the game I have barely scratched the surface of. 9/10++
about 2 months ago* 4 comments

Old Steamgift Wins

So, I intend to review all my Steamgift wins, one way or another (definitely not going to do it for the rest of my library). I’ve previously reviewed most of my completions month by month, but am missing some early ones (A bunch of which were from icaio – RIP), and have only sporadically reviewed my DNFs. I can recall most of them, but it’s hazy vibes for a few. The times are not necessarily right (did some idling for cards afterwards in some cases).

FINISHED (all 12/12 of those unreviewed)
• MirrorMoon EP: Go to a planet, which will have some set of structures and artifacts to find, and manipulate these to lead you to the next planet. I don’t think it’s a good game, but it did capture a sense of mystery and wonder and distance and isolation, aided by the simple geometric graphics (reminiscent of the ancient Domark games Dark Side and Driller). I finished Side A, but not Side B, where the universe opens up into a vaster collation of seasonal (technically multiplayer) randomness.
• Eternal Hope: A forgettable Limbolike. The animated screenshot refreshed my memory of the goat, but not more. Vibe: mid – worth playing if you already have it, but only if you’re hard up for unashamed limbolikes if you don’t.
• Tick Tock Isle: A (very) short and at times quite amusing time travel adventure where you go back and make the right changes.
• A New Beginning - Final Cut: Old-school point-and-click adventure from the guy who did Syberia. Mostly straight forward, with some very occasional obscurity/moon logic. It helps in adventure games if you find one or more of the main characters likeable; I didn’t (there was something a bit off in tone).
• Dex: It’s listed as a metroidvania, but the only things I can remember of it are that combat was overly laborious, and the backtracking was unfun (the world design may well have been more hub-and-spoke than true metroidvania)
• Cards of the Dead: I guess it’s a roguelike – collect cards to use against challenges and zombies and escape at the end of the chapter. More luck than skill-based, and gets increasingly unbalanced against the player. I finished two of the three characters but the end boss of the third one was an exercise in frustration.
• Save Room – Organization Puzzle: Fit weapons, ammo and healing items into oddly-shaped inventory grid, sometimes combining them or using them up. Not at all tricky except for the last puzzle or two, but I enjoyed it for what it was. I believe this is based on one (or more?) of the Resident Evils.
• The Last Campfire: A thoroughly charming cinematic puzzle adventure game – definitely worth playing.
• Super Dungeon Boy: A reasonably good platformer, with some slightly awkward physics, and a good –and occasionally devious – set of secrets to collect.
• Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons: Coordinate a pair of brothers (twin stick controller) through a cinematic puzzle adventure. Not just a good game mechanically, but also very effective emotionally – builds to a degree on what Ico did.
• Grim Legends: The Forsaken Bride: My first hidden object game, and one that at the time I found had a surprising amount of effort/care put into it. I liked it so much that I went on a bit of a hidden object game kick afterwards, but am now rather over them.
• The Innsmouth Case: A choose-your-own-adventure style visual novel with a tongue-in-cheek take on the Cthulhu mythos. I found it to walk the line well between silliness and faithfulness, and rather enjoyed it, but there will be Lovecraft lovers who will absolutely hate what they have done. It lacks any kind of narrative “map” for replays, so some of the paths are a bit tricky to find.

WILL NOT FINISH (9/26 of those unreviewed to date)
• Summum Aeterna: A roguelite whose combat is ok, but that is distinctly lacking in its (random) level design. I guess it’s a filler game for the studio to bring in some income between their metroidvania releases.
• Meadow: An odd combat-free MMO with a striking patchwork quilt visual style built around exploration and emotes and cooperation, where you play an animal. Somehow a number of my achievements are very rare (but to me blindingly obvious), while I’m missing a bunch that would require far more time and effort to have achieved. It is not a good game, but there are definitely those who will love it as an experience. I might – might - end up playing it again some time, but it’s not a game that can be “beaten” other than collecting everything, and some achievements can only be gotten if you buy a bunch of the developer’s other games.
• Eidolon: A lost-in-the-wilderness game, that really captures some sense of that despite it’s retro graphics. A deliberately horrid experience, but an atmospheric one (literally, at times). Meadow scratched my exploration itch far better, and I really don’t have a survival game itch.
• Remnants of Naezith: Get to the end as quickly as possible. What makes this particularly difficult is that you need to do it by swinging and releasing, and retaining the right amount of momentum. I beat the first world (only 5.5% of owners have done that), but the second (only 3.2%) and later worlds were beyond my abilities/patience. The best players are amazing, though (the game allows you to watch their runs).
• Gemcraft - Frostborn Wrath: A deep tower defence game I played and enjoyed a bunch, but it did get to the point at which it was more frustrating than fun, where you really need to optimise everything very carefully, possibly with a spreadsheet as there’s a lot of variables to optimise.
• The Divine Invasion: A woefully bad game with some unbelievably – unbelievably – good reviews, and the only game I have ever left a Steam review for that wasn’t badge related: “One of the most miserable hours of gameplay ever, with 5/6 of the achievements reached. Watch a Let’s Play on youtube before even thinking of buying this, at which point you won’t”.
• Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet: Technically a metroidvania, and quite stylish with its black silhouette plus zone colour graphics, though zones loop back to a common spine rather than being properly interconnected. I completed 5 of 7 zones, but constantly manouvering something like an overfull shopping trolley with wobbly wheels is is painful.
• Weaving Tides: A puzzle/shooter/explorer which could really have used a map – because not only is some of the navigation a little confusing, but much of each world is visually fairly similar, so you have to remember the geometry of the level without sufficient other cuing. Getting to the last boss from the save was a pain, the boss was annoying, and when I retried it after a significant amount of time I couldn’t remember how to get back (though admittedly I didn’t try very hard).
• Toki: A remastered (literal) arcade game – I completed a couple of levels and that was enough. I probably shouldn’t have entered this, and just played it on MAME.

2 months ago 0 comments

January 2026

  • Super Win the Game

    7.1 hours playtime

    25 of 33 achievements

  • Gato Roboto

    8.7 hours playtime

    7 of 12 achievements

  • AER Memories of Old

    2.5 hours playtime

    11 of 20 achievements

  • The Complex

    3.3 hours playtime

    20 of 20 achievements

  • Blasphemous

    22.7 hours playtime

    34 of 45 achievements

  • BOOMEROAD

    0.4 hours playtime

    no achievements

  • Arrog

    ? hours playtime

    no achievements

    (Humble)

  • Before I Forget

    ? hours playtime

    no achievements

    (Humble)

  • Fate of Kai

    ? hours playtime

    no achievements

    (Humble)

  • Grotto

    ? hours playtime

    no achievements

    (Humble)

  • The Wanderer: Frankenstein's Creature

    3.4 hours playtime

    no achievements

  • Onde

    5.5 hours playtime

    7 of 10 achievements

  • Unparallel

    ? hours playtime

    no achievements

    (Humble)

  • A Game About Digging A Hole

    2.9 hours playtime

    4 of 10 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Dome Keeper

    1.75 hours playtime

    9 of 47 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Dome Keeper

    27.8 hours playtime

    41 of 86 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Blueberry Garden

    0.9 hours playtime

    no achievements

  • A Fistful of Nothing

    ? hours playtime

    no achievements

    (Humble)

  • Heeey ParkBoy

    ? hours playtime

    no achievements

    (Humble)

I finished a number of games that I’d stalled on, and went through a bunch of downloadable no-key old Humble games from Humble Monthly. Also picked up Gamepass again for a month because Star Wars Outlaws was released, but didn’t get very far into it, and might not.

  • Super Win The Game: Retro metroidvania, and not always in a good way – controls and tools are reasonable, but some of the endgame is way underclued, and I ended up looking up a bit rather than living with the frustration of exploring way too many walls and floors. 7/10
  • Gato Roboto: Fun old-school metroidvania – maybe Metroid II inspired. You are a cat in a mecha-suit, but can leave it to explore (but can only take one hit then – you’re a cat). 7.5/10
  • Aer, Memories of Old: Incredibly mild action adventure. You can do things in pretty much any order, but within the Temples things are basically linear. Flying was surprisingly awkward particularly when trying to land. There are better games with flight, and better games with puzzles. and better games with both. 6.5/10
  • The Complex (Steamgifts win): A FMV game. I never bought the lead as a scientist, much less a brilliant one. It’s not just her acting, either. The character has a baffling lack of common sense (standing on a rotating chair instead of dragging something stable such as a lab table or a box; or leaving a door open to gawk when she knows there’ll be imminent danger). Other acting was all around good. I noticed a few inconsistencies with the real world - in particular the beach more likely to be UK than SE Asia, MI6 is external (MI5 is internal), and arrests are performed within the UK by Special Branch. At least one available instance of unnecessary light murder involving a hole. Ability to skip previously viewed scenes is appreciated, and makes replays quite quick. Found all but one ending (Second Chances) on my own, though 21/196 scenes remain unseen (not all scenes are particularly different, however). It’s not good, per se, but it is very well produced fun. 7.5/10
  • Blasphemous: I originally put this down after a few hours, and having restarted I can see why - it’s a Metroidvania with some heavy Fromsoft influences, particularly Dark Souls, and combat is fairly laborious for quite some time (until you get the right items and upgrades, at which point you can melt things pretty easily including the final boss). I then confused it with Dead Cells, thinking of this as a roguelite. No - it’s a metroidvania with an eventually highly interconnected map, fair boss fights, fine retro 16-bit era style graphics, and a bunch of obscurities. And the obscurities can be to the point of hostility: I locked off the DLC by not doing things in the correct order, and Prie Dieu (bonfire) teleportation – essential to minimise backtracking – is unlockable for 20000 tears, but you’ll be led to spend it on upgrades instead unless you know about it – which I didn’t discover until I was basically at the end of the game, 15+ hours after which I could have gotten it. 8/10, add +0.5 if you unlock PD teleportation early.
  • Boomeroad: Free, fun, and fundamentally broken (It was released by Bandai Namco as one of three short experimental developments), with the boomerang allowing you to path pretty much everywhere, which can avoid significant challenges by allowing you to bypass sections, walk on walls, etc. Maybe a more rigorous playstyle is necessary for best scores in the endgame time attack mode. 7/10
  • Arrog: A snack of a surreal puzzle story. I got it from Humble as a non-steam downloadable game. At times it feels to me a little like Gorogoa in ambiance, although it’s a very different and inferior game, and its puzzles are simple and pretty uninspired. Not worth what they’re asking for on Steam, and even at the max 50% discount it’s very hard to recommend. 6.5/10, but only if it’s ever at like 80%+ off
  • Before I Forget A gentle game, I guess technically a horror walking simulator. Not long, but slightly too long for what it wants to do. 7.5/10
  • Fate of Kai: Fun little visual – and I do mean visual – novel, in comic book form, mostly moving ideas into thought bubbles to change the course of the story. 7.5/10
  • Grotto: Unsettling visual novel (more or less). A while back there was a trend in RPGs, triggered by the move to fully voiced lines, towards massively simplifying player choice in dialogues, whether using standard modes (eg: Nice, Nasty, Humorous) or overly compressed summaries. The result was that what a player thought their character was going to say could be diametrically opposed to what their character actually ended up saying. Grotto deliberately lives in this uncomfortable space, as you provide star signs as symbols to answer visitors’ questions, with often painful and disastrous results. I do wonder if there is a more “optimal” sequence of choices, or if like Witcher 3, there are generally no good choices, just differently bad ones. I probably won’t replay it to see, though – the tale is told. 9.5/10
  • The Wanderer: Frankenstein’s Creature (Steamgifts win): Slow-paced adventure / walking sim, based on Mary Shelley’s work but directly from the Creature’s perspective . Of what I saw, the game omits some of the events of the book (I needed to redo most of a chapter, and you could have different outcomes for different sections – not sure how much that affects things). The experience was ok, but it had an excellent painterly art style, and an ending that almost stuck the landing but didn’t go as far as it needed to (if it had, it would been gimmicky but greater). 7/10
  • Onde (Steamgifts win): Somewhere between a platformer, a rhythm game, and a puzzler but not really any of those. Guide your blob from bubble to bubble through a semi-abstract aquatic world. Soundtrack is 1980s Euro electronic music - think Jarre and Tangerine Dream. I got hideously stuck at one point (Leaving the white “sun”). And even looking up a walkthrough video didn’t help. Then I quit and re-entered and things worked straight away (though in windowed mode), so it may have been a bug. Objective rating 8.5/10, but be prepared to assume that problems might be the game’s fault and not the player’s.
  • Unparallel: Vanishingly short sokoban variant, with the conceit that you can see invisible things in mirrors. Could have been the base for something more complex and longer, but what was released was one-note. 6.5/10, but still worth a play because it was so short
  • A Game About Digging A Hole: A 3D game which does what it says in the title. About as long as it needed to be. I actually took way longer than I needed to because I thought it was a slightly different game than it was and was definitely overly conservative in the first hour or more. The upgrade curve feels a bit off. 7/10
  • Dome Keeper: A 2D digging game, overall worse than Wall World. Beaten, but only a couple of times, and it’s a roguelite so there a bunch of upgrades… which I probably won’t end up getting. 6.5/10
  • The Talos Principle 2: I found this way easier than the first game, which I stalled on. Part of it might be more experienced design, part of it is definitely that the new tools often make things rather obvious because of their properties vs what is in the level. Many levels I could basically run through, including late game ones (Area 12). I rarely got seriously stuck, and only needed to skip a handful of levels to reach the end. I might go back and see if I can hit the optional content some time. 8.5/10
  • Blueberry Garden: Eat fruit for effects, and collect items to get height to turn off a tap, all while trying to do everything before the water rises. I’ve tried starting a few times, and I’ve just never been able to enjoy the timed aspect / sequencing puzzle combined with the somewhat awkward physics. So into my DNFs after over a decade in my library. 5/10 for me – I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad game, and maybe some will rate it a few points higher.
  • A Fistful of Nothing: An overhead-view stealth game where you try to get through corridors past bad guys to reach the lift to the next floor. A little too much trial and error, geometry that’s way easy to get caught on (body vs door size doesn’t help), and … text … with … no … option … to … make … it … pass … quicker. 2/10
  • Heeey ParkBoy: Cute but dreary. Water seeds, grow flowers, play them music to eventually generate more seeds, pick and sell flowers, and buy upgrades to make things faster. It kinda sits in the same space as the pressure wash cleaning games, but with more annoyance. It’s possible that with enough upgrades it would become rather more fun, but I won’t be spending the time to find out. I got as a Humble download, but it’s now free. 5.5/10
3 months ago* 4 comments

2025 Retrospective

Last year I…

  • Beat 68 games - 44 Steam, 23 PC Gamepass, and 1 Epic (and played quite a lot more)
  • Won 32 games on SG
  • Gave away 57 games on SG
  • Bought 32 games. 15 were in the first half, and 8 in the second half (though second half was slightly more expensive than the first because first half had some cheap bundles)
  • Added 30 keys through 3 months of Humble Choice
  • Added 8 keys through 1 Humble Bundle
  • Activated 49 keys, some quite old. (Humble is starting to time limit some keys and run out of others, so I’ll continue activating or giving away the older ones while I can)
  • Was subscribed to Gamepass for 11 months and tried a bunch of games through that (including some which I have unactivated keys for).

My current ratios for are 19% completed, 32% beaten, 21% will not play further, 19% unfinished (although some of those are really likely to also be DNFs), and 8% yet to play, with an average Achievement percentage of 54%, 6.1 hours average per played win, and 774 hours total. Of those played, 39.7% (52/131) have more than 5 hours and 9.92% (13/131) more than 10 hours – though Gemcraft - Frostborn Wrath, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Mad Max really skew times

Looking forward…

  • I still have about 350 keys to activate or give away – probably about half each
  • I need to cut way down on the number of new games I buy. There’s a few that are definitely on my list, though. Obenseuer is in early access, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes looks intriguing but might not come to GP or HC, and Travelling at Night is a day one purchase (I love Alexis Kennedy’s writing and lore building … the gameplay not so much).
  • I’ve been thinking that perhaps some kind of ratio is the way to go - maybe a ration of 1 per 10 games beaten (ie: not 100 cats).
  • I really need to deal with some more SG games. Problem is, one’s feelings when entering doesn’t always survive past the win. Elex II in particular, since I was really unable to get into Elex. I have 39 unplayed or unfinished wins. Some of those are likely to turn Will Not Play for different reason (Orbi Universo I’ve played a bunch, Rain World is just too damn hard, Flashback and The Way the controls just shit me, …)
  • I’ll continue with Humble Choice and Gamepass very selectively. With various changes, both have now gone from something I would just keep on regardless to something I’ll subscribe a month at a time for.
  • Life is too short to beat games when one is really not having fun with them. It’s also too short to complete games for the sake of completing them, particularly when my Pile Of Shame is so large. Some games are great for a time, and then I hit a point at which I’m done, and that’s ok.
4 months ago* 7 comments

December 2025

,

Ugh - just lost my mostly complete longer writeup. Here’s a shorter one.

Animal Well: A metroidvania with an interesting and original set of tools that allow new puzzles. If all you want to do is play through, see what you see, and roll credits then it’s a 9/10. If you want to collect everything, then it’s an 8.5/10 with not enough warps/shortcuts to deal with the backtracking. And you will be backtracking. Collecting the office key was particularly frustrating (I solved it correctly, but actually doing what needs to be done took 20++ attempts on my gamepad). And beyond that, if you continue playing then you reach a point at which you basically cannot progress without either a horde, some datamining skills, or a walkthrough. Or just watch somebody do it at that stage.
Frostrain: Strategy-lite clearly inspired by Snowpiercer. Unbalanced (most strategies don’t scale enough to deal with the punishing tax system), and resources (Training, Zeal) that you would think would impact mechanically/strategically don’t. Excellent for free, though (8.5/10)
Marsupilami: Hoobadventure: Good controls and reasonable levels but fatally flawed in its collectable design: 100 Fruit gives a life. There are massive quantities of fruit in every levels. There are time challenges that give fruit. There are secret areas that give fruit. There are hidden chests that give fruit. You will easily reach the maximum 99 lives. Would have been so much stronger with no lives, and only 100 collectable fruit in each level. (7/10)
Blanc: A fine twin-stick cinematic action-adventure. (8.5/10)
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Redux: For some reason this isn’t showing up on BLAEO so I missed this before. A walking simulator with some mostly mild puzzles - though I only remember the house maze as being good. Pretty good graphics, but I don’t love the story, particularly the ending. (6.5/10)

4 months ago* 3 comments

September, October & November 2025

  • Drop Duchy

    19.0 hours playtime

    103 of 161 achievements

  • Little Inferno

    6.3 hours playtime

    9 of 22 achievements

  • Hollow Knight: Silksong

    81.1 hours playtime

    40 of 52 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Brotato

    22.3 hours playtime

    40 of 114 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Keeper

    6.7 hours playtime

    11 of 13 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Ball x Pit

    27.75 hours playtime

    29 of 63 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Hogwarts Legacy

    37.35 hours playtime

    18 of 45 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Firewatch

    4 hours playtime

    6 of 10 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Outer Worlds

    23.5 hours playtime

    21 of 68 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Clover Pit

    11.4 hours playtime

    15 of 30 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

In the last couple of months I’ve been cramming on Gamepass rather than Steam due to the recent steep rise in subscription price. It’s gone from a no-brainer with no concerns if I don’t play anything on it for weeks on end, to something where I’ll be focussing on it sporadically for value.

  • Drop Duchy: Tetris meets tactics-lite. Pretty good, but lacking something that makes it great/addictive. 7.5/10
  • Little Inferno: A toy game where you burn things, and combinations of things. From the makers of World of Goo, so fun graphics, quirkiness, and good music. It was so unmemorable that I hit the end and realised that I’d previously played it all the way through before there were achievements. 6/10
  • Hollow Knight: Silksong: A huge – huge – and overall excellently designed Metroidvania, with a significant step up in enemy quality and difficulty, and some hostile decisions (certain runbacks and grinding). Interestingly you can see occasional influences from Ori … which was influenced by Hollow Knight. I did not enjoy the default bounce movement (Hunter Crest) and switched it out as soon as I could. Some of the final bosses (GtG, SSK and LL) were frustrating to the point of almost walking away – and given HK’s long post-launch development cycle, I’d expect them to similarly continue to rebalance things further. 9.5/10
  • Brotato: A fun post-Vampire-Survivors roguelike with lots of variety in characters that influence the selection of upgrades. A good second-screen game, 8/10
  • Keeper: This is fundamentally the same plot as Herdling: A game with some awkward controls where the main character wakes up and decides to go on a long journey to the top of a mountain, solving puzzles to progress. But it’s so much better in every respect. 8.5/10
  • Ball x Pit: Breakout meets roguelite (meets a minor city builder), which elegantly solves the frustration by only penalty loss of balls off the bottom of the screen with a slight delay and/or loss of multiplier. Another good second screen game 8/10
  • Hogwarts Legacy: On the one hand it’s a standard open world game, featuring someone who is definitely The Main Character Of The World, and way too much to collect and do. I have half an idea that they might have been thinking of making it a live service game and pivoted partway through development because the levelled equipment is so very annoying (it would have been so much better if what you collected were purely cosmetic clothing items rather than having to juggle/junk items). On the other hand, a lot of people who made this really love Harry Potter, the game shines with a greater level of effort than is common, and the relatively early broom access is kind. 8/10
  • Firewatch: A walking simulator. Atmosphere/environment excellent, particularly towards the end. I really didn’t like the characters, and didn’t love the gameplay. 6.5/10
  • Outer Worlds: I never got around to playing this when first released because it was an Epic exclusive, and by the time it hit Steam. I also got significantly through Outer Worlds 2 but that’ll be a DNF due to constant crashing. I enjoyed Outer Worlds more despite lots of little irritations. The rather larger Outer Worlds 2 nicely sands off all – and I mean all – the little irritations I had… and then keeps on sanding off things that matter like complexity and uniqueness and quirkiness. OW1: 8.5/10, OW2: 7.5/10
  • Clover Pit: Balatro meets Inscryption meets a slot machine; I liked it better than either 7.5/10
5 months ago 3 comments

August 2025

  • Hollow Knight

    55.9 hours playtime

    22 of 63 achievements

  • 20 Small Mazes

    1.0 hours playtime

    1 of 1 achievements

  • Assassin's Creed Mirage

    37.82 hours playtime

    30 of 50 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Herdling

    3.6 hours playtime

    19 of 31 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • New Super Lucky's Tale

    7.42 hours playtime

    41 of 54 achievements

    GAME
    PASS

  • Hollow Knight: Finally finished on my third restart in time for Silksong (I thought it was easier to do so than try to pick up from where I was some years back). Metroidvanias and Soulslikes are two of my favourite genres. Hollow Knight has excellent controls; excellent enemy and boss variety; excellent buff variety; excellent skill-unlocks; excellent art and music and atmosphere; and a large and varied world with lots of good unlockable interconnects that is very flexible in its order once you finish the startgame. On the other hand, needing to use a precious limited buff slot to see where you are on the map is a constant irritant, and could have been reserved for NG+. Needing to collect enough Geo currency to buy and upgrade necessary things also brings frequent enough annoyance (and there’s not much to do with it once one has cleaned out the shops). Objectively it’s excellent 9.5+/10. Subjectively I don’t love it 8.5/10. I hope to like Silksong better.
  • 20 Small Mazes: A nice set of different maze-related puzzles, and a free one at that. 8.5/10
  • Assassin’s Creed Mirage: This is the first AC game I’ve completed, though I played a bunch of Odyssey before petering out, and bounced hard off AC1 and Valhalla. This one is relatively bite sized - mainly the city of golden-age Baghdad with not much to do in the surrounding wilderness (pay no attention to the hours listed, there’s an unknown bunch of idle time in that). I played on hard, and the game was too easy - the parry window is overly generous, and as long as I was respectful of stealth mechanics (and bravely running away when needed), it was pretty straightforward – which was not helped by extremely limited variety in the enemies and pretty stupid AI with variable pathfinding quality. The environmental design was good. The parkour was both mostly mindless - and occasionally frustrating (climbing unintentionally, not climbing properly in tight spaces). Ultimately the game is fast food - it knows what it is, it does what it does, and not more. 7.5/10
  • Herdling: Made by people who definitely liked Journey and Ori and the Blind Forest, and probably The Last Guardian and maybe Pikmin — and decided to mash it up into a cinematic action-adventure game where you steer a herd of beasts over fields and mountains just because, pausing at points to solve environmental puzzles to progress. 7/10
  • New Super Lucky’s Tale: A very good – if rather gentle – 3d Mario-like. The digging mechanic is fresh, the controls and camera are excellent, the variety of worlds and their activities good, the characters likeable, and the time limits very kind. Too kind, really – it probably could have done with a difficulty switch. 9/10 (but don’t expect too much of a challenge except maybe for the no-hit achievements).
8 months ago 13 comments

June & July 2025

  • SILT: Really atmospheric puzzle-adventure game, with its possession mechanic and the underwater setting making for some reasonably fresh gameplay. (8.5/10)
  • Please, Touch The Artwork 2: Hidden object adventure, though an oddball charming one given it uses real artwork as its fodder. Even better, IT’S FREE!! (8/10)
  • Wall World: Mining/shmup roguelite. Ultimately not enough variety of experience as a roguelite, particularly with the DLC, and would have been better to have doubled player damage/speed/drilling and also doubled the invasions and reshape the difficulty curve. There seem to be a limited set of objectively better choices for upgrading particular weapons and gear with the limited resources available (7/10)
  • Nobody Wants to Die: Transhumanist adventure that proudly wears its Bladerunner-influences, though ultimately most of its choices seem to only have cosmetic story consequences. The detective mechanic is a fun take on Arkham Knight’s detective mechanic, but it’s ultimately not real detection. Nevertheless, worth a play (8/10)
  • Alwa’s Legacy: Metroidvania - much like its predecessor but not as fresh/good (7/10)
  • Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery: The art and music is far stronger than the gameplay – which is a bit of a melange. Puzzles mainly straightforward (particularly the painting mechanic), with the exception of the escape room sequence which spikes difficulty a little. I did not love the story, but I can see this being a game that may well resonate with others (6.5/10)
  • Rusty Lake Paradise: Another weird entry in the Rusty Lake adventure series. Mostly reasonable puzzles for the world (7.5/10)
  • Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction: A mix of stealth and corridor shooter. Surprisingly good combat AI for such an old game (though it doesn’t handle hiding for a long time well) – and certainly feels better than many a newer game. Level design feels somewhat compressed - as though there’s tension between what they’d like to have done and what they had the RAM on console for. One unforgivable design decision to make an enemy unkillable without any justification in order to progress its story. I really didn’t like the 24-inspired-torture interrogations. (7.5/10)
  • Crypt Custodian: 3/4 view metroidvania/platformer, which could have been 3/4 the size and 3/4 as grindy without losing a thing – the trend of adopting soulslike currency to buy upgrades/cosmetics needs to stop! Otherwise, nice variety in choosing the set of buffs to use and some ok bosses (7.5/10)
  • Little Kitty, Big City: Exploration collectathon - no way I was completing the grind for all achievements. Fun NPCs, and its animation captures the sense of being a cat (7.5/10)

Lot of 7-7.5s in my scoring, but nothing was absolutely outstanding these months, and 1-6.5s often just end up remaining as DNFs

9 months ago* 10 comments

March 2025 … part 2

Somehow I missed some games from March. Now to stretch my memory…

  • Alwa’s Awakening: Enjoyable Metroidvania with some satisfying route unlocks, and fairly open to exploration if a boss proves too hard (though I recall the bosses being fair if you learn their patterns). 8.5/10
  • Path of Giants: Puzzler with a nice difficulty curve towards the end. 8/10
  • Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion: Short and silly with 2d-Zelda dungeons 7.5/10.
  • Kathy Rain: To damn this with the faintest of praise, this is a competent enough old-school adventure game (Lucasarts in kindness; mid-era Sierra in lack of complexity) which I have certainly played to completion. 6/10
10 months ago 1 comment
Statistics
849 games (+14 not categorized yet)
19% never played
40% unfinished
19% beaten
11% completed
12% won't play
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