This update is brought to you by Lady Santa. Without her, this update would not have been possible.

Dear Diary,

For the most part I avoid writing BLAEO updates, because I prefer to write in excruciating detail and I tend to struggle with writing in general. Also, writing is like cooking, it takes hours to prepare, and minutes to consume.

I was originally thinking about ducking out of (as usual) the April challenge because I haven’t been in the mood lately to play any games, but I wasn’t able to escape Lady Santa’s radar.

And this month’s nominees are:

Game 1: Defy Gravity - Play Time: 1 hour

Here’s the interesting part: Lady Santa had no prior knowledge of what kinds of games I liked or disliked, and it just so happens that four of the five games picked had tags which I tend to avoid - Point and Click, Hidden Object Game, Visual Novel. So I was already in for an interesting ride.

I started with Defy Gravity, since it was tagged as a platformer and those are games I tend to excel at. Only…I didn’t consider this a platformer. I considered this game to be a physics level-based puzzle game, which is another type of game I avoid. Whoops!

I gave this game an honest attempt for about an hour, but I ended up stopping because I couldn’t figure out the controls, despite being halfway through the game. The game went by pretty quickly - an achievement would pop up every 3-4 levels or so. I somehow got the title of “Master Gravitymancer” without knowing what the heck I was doing.

The gameplay was incredibly difficult to master. You could fire portals which would either repel (yellow) or attract (blue). I almost never used blue portals because I’d get sucked in and get stuck while all the projectiles started flying into my face. Scary stuff. I stuck with yellow ones for the most part.

The mechanics were tough too. Your character doesn’t have very good horizontal or vertical mobility, so it was extremely difficult to dodge waves of projectiles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eMP3cz_MjI



Game 2: Time Mysteries: Inheritence - Remastered

A very love hate love relationship, in a nutshell. I started off expecting myself to suck, because I already knew I was notoriously bad at HOGs. I’ve only played one HOG game on Steam prior to this one: Enigmatis: The Ghosts of Maple Creek, and I did not enjoy it. As expected, each Hidden Object minigame averaged about 10+ minutes…which honestly isn’t that bad considering the hidden object minigames in Enigmatis took me like 30-40 minutes on average. Yes, I’m really that bad at HOGs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URf7DwvjCPI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJEdXXPb550
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RljEff_nB0w

How Long to Beat for this game was 3.5 hours. I took 6.7 hours. I learned a lot about myself in the process though, so I’m very glad this game was picked. Every game has its story, I’ll tell you mine.

I was expecting each Hidden Object scene to take me 30-40 minutes, so I was pleasantly surprised when I found out I was only taking 10 minutes. I actually enjoyed the story too. The plot was nice and linear, and very unlike a point and click game. Enigmatis was more of a point and click game, which was why I completely hated it. I was very pleasantly surprised that I was suggested a Hidden Object game I tolerated.

Then I’m not entirely sure what happened. Halfway through the story, I started failing really hard at all of the hidden object games. The problem was that a lot of the objects were camouflaged, and my eyes aren’t exactly the sharpest things in the world. Brown backgrounds especially gave me a hard time because I could not see anything. It got to a point where I just started clicking on random things and not really enjoying the game. The last straw was a puzzle that refused to cooperate with me no matter how hard I spamclicked.

This puzzle made me ragequit.

So after about forty minutes of blindly clicking in the puzzle, I decided enough was enough and I went to seek help from a guide. I ended up using the guide for a few more hidden object puzzles afterwards, because the camouflaged objects were giving me a really hard time.

Then all of a sudden, something just clicked and I suddenly got really good the remainder of the game. Maybe I had a really nice nap, or maybe I just decided that I was trying too hard. Not sure, but I actually started to enjoy myself again. My strategy was this, find all of the objects that I could, then use the previews to find the remainder of the objects. If I couldn’t find any of the objects, I would resort to spamclicking. This strategy ended up working pretty well, I was in and out of a few hidden object scenes within a few minutes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwPhhr5UIrc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-aaTrReRZ8

All in all, I did enjoy this game, and I learned a ton about myself. Here’s a summary of what I learned:
-Hidden Object scenes that were dark, shadowy, or brown were super annoying, because there would always be a few camouflaged objects.
-I’m too patient for this game.
-I have a really hard time visualizing things. If you ask me to find a certain object, I create an image of it in my head and look for that object. If the object is oriented a different way, I won’t be able to find it.
-I won’t actually know what certain objects look like. For example, in Enigmatis, I was supposed to find a “air freshener.” It wasn’t until I resorted to spam clicking until I noticed that an “air freshener” is shaped like a Christmas tree.
-Once I tone down my patience and resort to spamclicking earlier, I actually have a lot of fun with HOGs since I eliminate all of the frustration.



Game 3: Quest for Infamy - Play Time: 1.3 hours

Not very long lived. I played for a short amount of time, then realized that the first achievement was broken.
Unfortunately, this was a dealbreaker for me, and I decided not to continue with the game.

It didn’t seem like a game I would enjoy. I’m not a great thinker, so I’m terrible at “figuring out” what I need to do in point and click games. Sometimes, I find point and click games way too obscure for me. For example, I won’t know to pick up a stick that’s randomly hidden on the map so I can coat it with sap that I get somewhere else so I can use the sticky stick to retrieve another key item.

It also took me a good five to ten minutes to figure out how to open a door or talk to people. I was running around the town like an idiot wondering why I couldn’t interact with anything.

The humor to me was okay, but I did find it crude at times. The voice acting was done quite nicely though - it definitely added to the experience of the game.



Game 1: Defy Gravity - Total play time: 2.4 hours

Whoa what? Why are we talking about this game again?
After about a week of ignoring this game, I decided to try it again. And the remainder of the game was very, very frustrating. Projectiles flying everywhere, countless number of deaths, not to mention I was still not used to the mechanics. Good thing this game is incredibly short, I ended up tackling a few levels a day until I completed the game. There’s an achievement for completing the game on hard mode… nope.

I also found a pretty interesting bug too. There were certain levels where you had to wait for a platform to move around, but the platform would continue moving if you paused the screen. I may or may not have used this to my advantage.



Game 4: Hero of the Kingdom 8.5 hours

Definitely my favorite one of the bunch, although the last few achievements were incredibly incredibly grindy. One of the achievements was to amass 5000 gold - so the process was to buy a sack of grain for 30g, take it to the mill to turn into flour, then take it to another NPC to turn the flour into 6 pieces of bread, which would sell for 9g each. The problem was you could only sell loaves of bread in batches of 1. Which means you had to click 556 times in order to get the 5000 gold.

Story was super linear too, so I didn’t have to think too much, and there were also various hidden objects (eggs, mushrooms) across the world map. I called it “the kind of HOG that was made for me”, because I actually knew what I was looking for.

I actually didn’t find the story to be incredibly engaging, which is probably because it was mostly text based and I’m not a great reader, but the story was still pretty good. I really enjoyed how this game felt a lot like an RPG, and I enjoyed completing quests for various people and doing my chivalrous duties.

I somehow managed to get all of the achievements too without a guide! So that was a great win for me.



Game 5: Soul Gambler - Play time 3.2 hours

I left this game for last because figured it would be an easy game, being a visual novel. Nope, I was so wrong. I tend to avoid visual novels because I’m a terrible reader. Like, really terrible. I’m the type that ignores instructions or tutorials because I don’t really feel like reading or listening to the tutorial, which usually comes back to bite me.

The visual novel itself was interesting, however it had one major flaw. There was no “skip read text” feature which most visual novels had, and there were four achievements that were “ending” achievements. Which means I had to spend 4 different runs just clicking through a 20 minute story which I’ve already read. Yikes. Each “choice” would lead to a different achievement, but in the end, it didn’t seem like my choices affected the story too much.

I would recommend this game for a single playthrough, because the story is actually quite interesting. However, I would put the remainder of the achievements under the grindy category.

In Conclusion:
I had a lot of fun! I actually wasn’t sure if I could get through all five games in time. I actually started off my forcing myself, but I ended up having a lot of fun learning a lot about myself. The extra motivation from being challenged definitely helped. I’m definitely more flexible with HOGs now, which was something I never thought I’d do!

A great big thank you for everyone who pitched into this month’s challenge!
And another special thank you to Lady Santa for spending the time to pick games for me to play! You definitely helped me recover my gaming spirit again!

Until next time!
Tumalu

Dear Diary,

Whoa. We’re halfway there! Whoa-oh! Livin’ on a Prayer.
Less than a month into the New Year and I’ve already reached the halfway point of my goal of reaching a 70% average completion rate by playing games I had not that many achievements in.

However, I’m expecting diminishing returns, as well as a decrease in focus. In an effort to increase my percentage by not introducing new games, I’ve been neglecting a few of my Steam Gifts wins that I’ve been meaning to play, so that’s going to have to change. My score will probably take a few hits from starting new games, but hopefully I’ll still be able to reach 70% by the end of this year.

Normally I’d do an entry and focus it on a single game, but I’ve been jumping around so many different games that it’s impossible to just talk about a single game.

Without further ado, here are the games that I’ve tackled so far:

Before: 0/104 (0%) Current: 68/104 (65%)
Most of my time spent has been on this game. Love it a lot, but for the most part it’s mindless, repetitive killing. Fitting for me, because I like mindless and repetitive, but it’s not to everyone’s tastes. I’ve always been a fan of the Epic Battle Fantasy writing, it’s nonsensical and they make a lot of references. However, some of the battles can easily take up half an hour if you’re stubborn like me and play on the hardest difficulty. For normal people, it’s best to play this game in doses, because if you try to focus on just this game you’re going to go nuts. Achievements seem more involved than Epic Battle Fantasy 3 though, there are a handful of pretty tough achievements. In case you already didn’t know, Epic Battle Fantasy 3 is free on Steam!

Before: 0/31 (0%) Current: 3/31 (10%)
Oops. Shouldn’t have started this one. I’m not very far into the story so I can’t really say much, other than it’s really confusing and I have no idea what is going on. The battle system feels like its predecessor, except that they added quick time events in the middle of some battles, so nothing too new and interesting. My silly perfectionism is getting in the way too. I’m only at the third boss and I’m stuck because I won’t take a battle rating that’s below 5 stars. Playing as Serah is pretty sweet though. She’s awesome.

Before: 1/64 (2%) Current: 4/64 (6%)
Boy, this game is really hard. I’m a big fan of platformers, but the controls and movement are very difficult to master. The puzzles are extremely cryptic and hurt my noggin, but overall I’d say it’s pretty fun. Achievements are super hard to get though… 10 hours in and I’ve only managed to get only 3 more of the achievements. If you’re a masochist, then I’d recommend this game. Otherwise, it’s not for most people.

Before 2/33 (1%) Current: 6/33 (18%)
A gift from our favorite addict, Student123. This game makes me feel really stupid. Or at least, it used to. I had no idea how people could sit through and get all the letter achievements for their profiles because this game make me sit there and derp over a lot of the puzzles. And then something magical happened. The game somehow just clicked with me and I came up with a pretty solid strategy that let me breeze through a lot of the levels. Only managed to get 4 achievements though. Pretty fun game if you like puzzles.

1/60 (2%) Current: 8/60 (13%)
Why this game’s name is in all caps is beyond me. I’m really bad at bullet hells. Like, really really bad. Unfortunately, the one and only achievement I had in this game was before I knew about card idling software, so I launched every game manually. And this was one of those dick games that gives you an achievement for launching the game. Hate developers that do that. :( Anyways, about the game. They try to make it 3D without it actually being 3D. It does add some depth to the game, but it also makes it a ton more confusing. I’m not even sure what’s going on over half the time. Then I played the tutorial and things started making a little bit more sense. Guess I should have started with that, heh. The UI is incredibly confusing and really hard to look at because it’s so bright, and their point system is even more confusing. I don’t think I’ll ever figure out this game. Not a bad game, but I wouldn’t recommend it because of how confusing it is.

1/6 (17%) Current: 6/6 (100%)
This game also made me feel really stupid. I got stuck on level 21 for like half an hour. I had no idea how to solve it. Then, similar to LYNE, this game just suddenly decided to click. Managed to get the rest of the achievements without too much of a struggle. The game is pretty good for a puzzle game and it’s not too hard to 100%, so I’d recommend it. This game suffers from extreme memory leaks though, because the game performance gets terrible over time.

Before: 14/27 (52%) Current: 15/27 (56%)
I haven’t actually played this with anyone yet. It seems very conceptually interesting, but it seems like it would be very hard to get a group of people to learn enough of the mechanics to play a game. I could be wrong though. Didn’t do much for this one, I just flipped the table 100 times for the achievement.

Before: 9/17 (53%) Current: 14/17 (82%)
Not sure how to describe this game, other than it’s a pacifist bullet hell. You can’t attack, but you have to dodge various objects that fly at you. There are 13 different levels, each with its own achievement for not getting hit. Not too hard, except for that Rave level. Totally made me rage quit. Not too interesting of a game though, so I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re after some fairly easy achievements.

Before: 47/58 (81%) Current: 48/58 (83%)
Apparently, I just gave up before getting this achievement, because all I had to do was buy one thing from the store to unlock the spend 50,000 achievement. I tried to continue Hell and Hell difficulty for the Virgil’s Downfall DLC, but I got stuck at the last fight. I can’t seem to beat it without getting hit four times. Left this game alone for now, but someday!

Before: 1/20 (5%) Current: 12/20 (60%)
This post has been censored.

Before 1/22 (5%) Current: 117/22 (32%)
Do not play this game. This game wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for one major game-breaking issue. Achievements just up and disappear. I’m not even sure how this happened, but if you start a new challenge or a new career, the game decides it wants to tell Steam that you never got those achievements. Even worse, the game itself remembers that you’ve gotten those achievements before, so there’s no way to reclaim those achievements other than messing with the game saves. So far, I’ve had to delete the save files twice - once for starting a new career and another for starting a challenge. The mechanics are not very well thought out either, so once you figure out the game it becomes really repetitive. The only reason I’m continuing to play this game is because I’m pretty sure I can get 21/22 achievements if I don’t accidentally start a career or challenge again. Oh, yeah. And I’m also really stubborn.

Before 20/22 (91%) Current: 22/22 (100%)
Wow, I did not expect this game to be so good. It’s really easy to get the first 20 achievements, but then you’re left with 2 speed run achievements. The first was to complete the first part in less than 12 minutes, and the second to complete the other part in less than 20. The last time I played this game was probably over a year ago, so I played through both parts normally to remember how to beat it. The first part took me 40 minutes, and the second part took me over an hour. I eventually had to use a guide for the first part, because my path wasn’t optimized so I ended up getting 12:30 consistently. The second part was pretty straightforward though, so I’m pretty proud that I managed to figure that out on my own. Took me all weekend to get these two achievements, but doing something over and over again and expecting better results is what I do best. I highly recommend this game. The satire is super amusing and the game itself isn’t too bad. Don’t go for those speed run achievements though. They’ll drive you nuts.

Whew, that took a lot longer than I thought. Until next time!

Yours Truly,
Tumalu

Dear Diary,

What? You were expecting another update on Ori? Too bad. Today I will be talking about DmC Devil May Cry.

I had completely forgotten about this game and how much fun it was. I told the person I was family sharing with about this game being good and they basically played it every available moment for a week straight. So I decided to revisit this game.

I originally stopped playing the game because I had hit a road block. The remainder of the achievements I had left required replaying the game on 4 completely different difficulty levels. The campaign itself was pretty long so I wasn’t really up for replaying the whole game again just for a single achievement.

Fortunately, I was convinced to make an impulse purchase of the Virgil’s Downfall DLC from the Steam Store for a mere 2 dollars during the Winter Sale! I probably should have bought it back when it was in a bundle, but bygones. The DLC contains 6 new missions, but seeing as how my first playthrough of all the missions took about 3 hours, it was definitely worth every penny.

I’m pretty glad that it was only 6 missions, because it was short enough to a point where I went for the achievement for completing All Missions on Nephilim Difficulty with an SSS Rank. Surprisingly, it wasn’t really that hard. I made a ton of mistakes, but I still managed to pull off an SSS Rank on some levels even though I didn’t attain an SSS ranking in each category.

Only 6 missions, so then I thought, why not go for the achievements of completing the DLC on all of its difficulty levels?

Here are my thoughts on all the difficulties:
Human Difficulty and Devil Difficulty - I skipped these so I can’t provide any opinion here.

Nephilim Difficulty, in other words “Hard Mode” - I really enjoyed my first playthrough. Then again, I’m a sucker for Hack n’ Slashes and collecting upgrades. I didn’t find the game to be too hard either, the boss gave me a bit of trouble though. Took me a while to get used to his attack patterns. It was pretty easy when I played through it the second time for the SSS ranking, though that was because it was a new game plus and my upgrades and items carried over.

Son of Sparda Difficulty - You have to play through this mode where the enemies are replaced with harder ones. There were a few moments that gave me a bit of trouble, but it wasn’t extremely difficult. The boss level was pretty much the same as Nephilim difficulty, so it wasn’t all that difficult to complete.

Virgil Must Die! Difficulty - Waves of enemies in this mode are replaced with “insane opponents”. I’m putting this in quotes because that’s what the game said, but I haven’t actually played through this difficulty yet, so I have no idea how hard it will be.

Heaven or Hell Difficulty - Play through Son of Sparda difficulty with a twist. Everything will kill you in one hit, but everything dies in one hit. I was really excited to play this difficulty at first, because I wouldn’t be able to tank multiple hits. Turns out this mode is actually really boring, since you have a ranged skill you can just spam to kill everything. The only challenge in this mode is navigating through the environment without falling.

Most of my deaths were unfortunately due to a bug. Sometimes, the Angel Boost didn’t really register immediately after jumping, so that lead to me falling off the map a bunch. You’re given three free resurrects though, and even if you die, you can just start over at the latest checkpoint. This difficulty would have been a little more interesting if they had removed your ability to use ranged weapons in battle.

Hell or Hell Difficulty - Play through Son of Sparda difficulty, but all enemies have regular health and you will die in one hit. One small tweak from Heaven or Hell difficulty, but it makes the game a whole lot harder. You still get the three free resurrects and can start over at the latest checkpoint, so as long as you complete a battle without getting hit four times, you’re good to go. However, if you’re clumsy like me and get hit a lot, then this difficulty can be frustratingly difficult. I’m currently only halfway through this difficulty, and I have absolutely no idea how I’m going to complete the boss level without getting hit four times. It’s also super buggy too - if you fall off the environment and get hit, you end up resurrecting “off the map”, and you get stuck. The only way out of it is to force a game over and start from the latest checkpoint. Good thing the achievement only requires completion of this difficulty and not SSS ranking it. That would be nuts.

Still not sure if I will tackle the achievements for the base game, we’ll see if I’m all hacked and slashed out after completing the Virgil DLC.

Yours Truly,
Tumalu

Dear Diary,

Never thought I’d give into the whole new years resolution thing, but it’s good to have goals that I’ll never complete, right?
Lately, I’ve been poking around and trying out new things. Just looking for something new, I suppose.
I eventually ended up looking at my own TrueSteamAchievements profile, because apparently I linked it on my BLAEO profile, but I never really bothered to use it.
Things lead to another, and I finally figured out the best way to increase my completion percentage.
I sorted all of the games that I had played according to percentage completed, and it turns out there’s a handful of games that I only have one achievement in. Yikes, that definitely hurts my percentage.

So, my goal for this year, is to play some of those games to at least 70% and hopefully increase my overall average to 70%.
Game on!

Yours Truly,
Tumalu

Dear Diary,

Hope you’re not completely sick of my Ori and the Blind Forest updates yet. Remember when I was a total masochist and decided that I would complete a One-Life difficulty run legitimately without manually screwing with the save files? I’ll give you one guess to figure out whether or not I was finally successful or not.

Drum roll please.

And the answer is…

Nope!

Surprised? I certainly am. I never thought I would have made it so far. There were a lot of close calls and even more anxious moments. I got extremely nervous after getting past my all-time longest run in Mt. Horu and I started making a ton of stupid mistakes and slipping a lot. In hindsight, I probably should have continued falling instead of trying to stomp into the water during the last Kuro sequence, but each death is a lesson in itself. It was a really fun and thrilling run, and I’m certainly going to keep playing this game well after getting 100% on it. I love this game too much.

On a side note, messing around with Open Broadcaster Software has been pretty fun, and it’s given me a lot more motivation to create videos of me failing all the time, all the while tackling my never-ending backlog. Doesn’t matter if it ends up having no views, it’s a fun side-hobby to play around and have fun with.

Here’s my latest run! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa2Tak6moMM

I’m definitely going to make a composition of all the really silly deaths that have happened to me in all my runs. I’ve always wanted to play around with video editing software too. Stay tuned!

Yours Truly,
Tumalu

Dear Diary,

Huh, I actually pulled it off. I was able to complete the no-skills run on Hard Difficulty in about 2 hours and 45 minutes, netting me the Formidable (Hard Difficulty), Elite (No skills), and Supersonic (Under 3 hours) achievements! Hard mode was a real pain in the ass, there were a lot of moments where I felt “trapped”, so I had to do a really long sequence with no energy to save which resulted in a lot of unnecessary deaths. 191 deaths in total, I would say over 150 of them could have been avoided if I wasn’t so impatient.

After finishing that feat, the 100% run that I did next was a walk in the park. This was also my first time exploring the bonus areas introduced in the definitive edition. There’s a lot of instant death obstacles there, so I should do my best to avoid it in One-Life difficulty. I was able to get the remainder of the achievements except for the two no death ones.

Only one challenge remains, to complete the game in One-Life difficulty legitimately, without manually imposing on the save files. I don’t expect to get the achievement anytime soon, but I’m sure as hell going to enjoy the ride while it lasts.

I’ve also started dabbling on video recording software. Currently, I’m trying out OBS studio 17.0.0. The recording seems to look pretty good but the settings could still use a bit of tweaking. It gets extremely choppy at certain points, especially during the Ginso Tree escape. I end up dying in the Black Root Burrows because I get trapped between a wall and an instant death beam. I’m not super familiar with the environment in the Black Root Burrows, but a few deaths in One-Life mode should remedy that. I figured having the Dash ability will be useful for the Kuro instant death sequence immediately after the Forlorn ruins, which I am not 100% comfortable with the movement during that sequence.

Without further ado, here is a recent failed One-Life difficulty run. Please note that this is my first time uploading anything to Youtube, as well as the first time I’ve used OBS to record anything, so I don’t expect the quality to be top-notch. My play style is extremely… let’s say fidgety, so it causes me to slip and fall a lot. I am in no way perfect and I make a ton of mistakes in this video. There are a lot of close calls, especially in the Moon Grotto instant death beam area, so I’d say I got pretty lucky to get that far. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCGcJt_hfes

Yours Truly,
Tumalu

Dear Diary,

I expected this game to be the exact same as the regular version with the exception of a few new areas, but they managed to introduce a few new features that completely changed the game for me.

For the most part, I’ve been playing with the newly added One-Life difficulty. The farthest I’ve gotten is the Misty Woods, killed by a really tricky laser beam that causes instant death. Most people would get extremely frustrated from having to restart the whole game after dying, but I don’t mind because I can aim for a more optimized route each run. Most of my deaths have been unexpected or stupid, an accidental slip off the wall which causes me to fall into spikes, or getting trapped in between to instant death beams with no way to escape. I feel like the game could have been designed a bit better so that those deaths could be avoided, but perhaps the design was intentional. I’ve already come to accept that I will never get this achievement, but that won’t stop me from trying. I guess I finally understand all those people that create hardcore characters on Diablo.

After about ten unsuccessful attempts on the One-Life difficulty, I decided to switch gears and try a run where I don’t use any skill points - only, I made one huge mistake of playing it on hard difficulty. In hard difficulty, everything does double damage. This wouldn’t be a huge problem except that I don’t have the skills to heal myself when I need to, so I’m constantly at low health with no energy to save. So far, I’ve found One-Life difficulty to be less tense, because falling into spikes doesn’t necessarily mean your death. In hard mode, having low health and no energy forces you into somewhat frustrating situations. I’ve accidentally created an incredibly difficult challenge for myself, but I’ll gladly take it on.

Definitely one of my favorite games to date. Looking forward to the day where I finally perfect this game.

Yours Truly,
Tumalu

Dear Diary,

As always, I’m long overdue for a new entry. There’s a bunch of games which I’ve completed since the previous update, but I’ll slowly cover them one at a time.
Today, I decided to pick up this game which I found from Astats. 0.7 hours to 100%, so it shouldn’t take too long. Mostly Negative reviews? That’s fine, I’ve played a few of those before for the 100%, so this one shouldn’t be too bad.

Fast forward ten minutes, and I’ve basically given up. Normally I have an extremely high tolerance for bad games, but this game is something else. The game is lucky that I was willing to give it an honest attempt for ten minutes.

The game is advertised as a typical racing game. Drive forward in a vehicle and navigate past obstacles. You get a gun to shoot at obstacles in your way… only the gun doesn’t do anything. The car’s going down the road which appears to have three lanes. The middle lane has a bunch of barrels that explodes and causes me to instantly die and the other two lanes have a concrete wall that I can’t seem to shoot down, so I basically just have to run into the wall.

But wait, it gets worse. I’m not even pressing up or anything, and the car decides to accelerate at an alarming rate by itself. Eventually it reaches ludicrous speeds that my brain can’t even process. Eventually, my car just goes out in a blaze of glory and I get a nice game over screen.

That couldn’t be right, how are people completing this game in 0.7 hours? After about three deaths and having to exit the game twice because the restart button somehow causes my car to forget how to accelerate, I decide to check Steam for guides.

Turns out, you just can just let the game sit in the game over screen and have it cross the finish line. The car goes in an excruciatingly slow pace after you die though, so now I’m just sitting here typing up this entry because I have a few moments to burn. I even had to restart the level a few times because apparently, it doesn’t count if my car starts traveling underneath the floor due to some other bug after the game over screen is reached.

Normally, I try to find a glimmer of hope in every bad game, but I’m at a loss.
I can honestly save I have no good words for this game.
The game is riddled with game-breaking bugs. I hate to use such words, but this game is literally unplayable.
How did a game like this even get on Steam?

Well, looks like I spoke too soon. I managed to complete the last level legitimately, so I will take back that literally unplayable comment.

Yours Truly,
Tumalu

Dear Diary,

Noooo I died!

One of these days I’ll beat it without dying. One of these days. You hear me? I will beat you!

Even though Ori is on the difficult side, still by far one of my favorite games. Every now and then I find myself going back and attempting to complete it without dying.

There’s always a few areas that give me trouble. Once in a while I mistime that giant laser beam in the Moonlight Groto which then proceeds to zaps me to oblivion. Then we have the Ginso Tree escape where I get greedy and go for the ability spheres on the side and drown. Then there’s that instant death laser beam in the forlorn ruins that separates me and the life orb in the back. I’ve definitely learned my lesson on that one. Then there’s all the silly deaths that happen when I accidentally fall or bash my way into a pit of spikes. The list goes on and on.

The game itself isn’t horrendously difficult once you get the hang of it.There’s a few tricks I found across many, many playthroughs that I find to be extremely helpful.

Stomp is so overpowered. Spam stomp when you can. High area of effect damage and reflects most projectiles that are coming your way. Just spam stomp and eventually everything will just die.

Put everything into the right-most skill tree. The half damage perk is amazing and lets you tank several hits in the second dungeon escape. Saving can be done twice as much, heal some damage every save, and who can forget the mighty triple jump.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to complete the game without dying, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun to play through the game, so I will keep trying.

If anyone can complete a 100% run without dying in one go, major respect. That’s a bit too far out of my league and I wouldn’t want to go insane now.

Keep calm and Ori on!

Yours Truly,
Tumalu

I took the week off!

And I’m looking for a group/discord to chill out in and play whatevers other people want to play. I feel like I’ve been living under a rock lately (I’ve literally spoken to less than 5 people and commented less than 20 times here and on SG in the past month) and I should be more social.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
-Tumalu