Zelrune’s profile
Hello! I am Zelrune! I like to play story-driven games like RPG’s but sometimes I stray to other genres if the game looks interesting enough.
I have four dogs!
My curator group is here.
Fun fact: I fostered a lost sun conure for a week and it was traumatizing for both of us.
(He was happily returned home.)
Joined on 04/03/2017 but didn’t start seriously working on my backlog until COVID.
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/b9XQO/extraordinary-backlog-assassins-wanted-apply-here-blaeo-thread/search?page=23#kIN3ZRM
May 2025 Progress Report
Lots of big games completed this month! Forbidden West has been a long time coming, but with the severe (possibly memory leak issues) complications made it very hard to just play normally and beat the game. I doubt there will be any updates to fix it though, considering this has apparently been an issue for a while now. TCG Card Sim was something that got my attention and had me in a chokehold for a while, it was pretty fun opening card packs and being a shopkeeper than I anticipated. The game is still in Early Access but it’s pretty much done if anyone else wants to buy it, I think card grading is in the works as a near future update! As for Skyrim, I was having trouble getting a short game to play but me and two friends decided to be a bit cheeky and see who can 100% Skyrim first, I think I got second place but in my defense I was unaware of the Telekenesis trick nor that I had to be lvl 78 to just get a Legendary Dragon to spawn in the first place.
For June, I plan on playing some Hyperdimesion Neptunia, but other than that I’m not anticipating anything crazy. I still have a few snowballs still to get through, so I’ll do one or two of those and depending on how fast I can 100% Nep Nep, I would really like to get into Immortals Fenyx rising!
Hope everyone has a successful June!
Total games added to backlog: 3 (Bentou bundle: Harvest Moon, Perfect Gold, Cat Is Cute.)
Total completed: 4
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Horizon Forbidden West™ Complete Edition
Aloy has successfully restored Gaia, and finally earned the recognition she wanted from her tribe. Along the way, Aloy made many friends built lasting connections, while uncovering her true identity and purpose – to protect the world just as her predecessors once did. But Aloy’s mission is far from over. To fully let Gaia do as she was designed to do, Aloy must venture out into the uncharted Forbidden West, seeking out Gaia’s missing sub-functions needed to heal the land and purge it of the spreading Blight. The fate of the world is still uncertain, and Aloy’s fight is far from finished!
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30-100+ hours to complete, Horizon Forbidden West is a visually gorgeous game with rich storylines, an absolutely massive and immersive open world, lifelike NPCs and a huge variety of enemies. In many ways, it feels like a refined and upgraded version of Horizon Zero Dawn! I spent 90 wonderful breathtaking hours on the highest graphical settings and for a while, it was an incredible experience. However, the longer I played, the more the game’s performance deteriorated. Eventually, even on the lowest settings I faced severe stuttering, random black screens pausing my gameplay to let the environmental rendering catch up, and ridiculously long loading times – up to 10-15 minutes! While there were some temporary fixes, there were no lasting solutions and it felt like I was constantly patching a sinking ship just to reach the end of the main storyline and complete the Burning Shores DLC. My computer hardware is more than capable of handing a game like this, but Forbidden West was acting like I was trying to run it on a refrigerator! After browsing forums and reading about similar issues on the discussion pages, I’m convinced the issues lies in the poorly optimized PC port and possibly a significant memory leak issue.
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Buyer Beware: Horizon Forbidden West is a fantastic game, but if you’re planning to play on PC, make sure your setup is WELL BEYOND the recommended specs – or better yet, experience it on the console it was clearly designed for.
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TCG Card Shop Simulator
30-100 hours to complete, TCG Card Shop Simulator is a first-person shopkeeping sim featuring Tetramon, a popular card game. As the storekeeper, hire employees and expand your shop and warehouse by slowly purchasing the buildings next to you as well as new licenses to stock popular products such as card sleeves, plushies, playmats, dice, and board games. Customers can play Tetramon inside the store as well should you place down gaming tables, and will use various purchased items such as playmats as you unlock them. Additionally, as Storekeeper and owner you have the fun option of scheduling tournaments, decorating your store by changing the walls and floors, or adding plants, posters, and large statues. You may also trade and buy cards to complete your own Tetramon collection!
Overall, I had a pretty fantastic time. Despite being early access, there is plenty to do and you can expect the developer to update the game about once a month. At the time of this review, I would very much consider this a full, completed game but the developer still has a bit of roadmap they would like to complete, such as Card Grading and actually being able to play Tetramon yourself which I am excited for! As for cons, I can only really think of two. The rent is really, really high and it doesn’t get better as your store expands – at max level, my rent, not including employee pay and reordering products, was about 3k per day which barely had me making a positive net income some days; and after playing 100+ hours I really do wish it was weekly as it’s a bit rough starting out. Second, employees should slowly gain experience over time and not maintain their starting speeds, and I really wish I could reward employees with card packs or free products as bonuses. Definitely consider picking TCG Card Shop Simulator up!
Perfect Gold
Two young girls from wildly different backgrounds meet and fall in love at the magical academy LeFay, a school for those seeking and pursuing the art of alchemy, healing, and controlling the elements. Audrey Clarey is a heiress who has always lived in the city of Castlecoast, her family famous for their transmutations into gold; while Marion LaRue is a rebellious girl from Doveport, a small town near the sea, seeking to hone her fire elemental abilities and earn her fame. It’s almost love at first sight, but their spark sputters out after their first kiss due to the completely separate worlds they live in. Can they get a second chance? Do they even want one?
Perfect Gold is a 3-6 hour Yuri slice-of-life visual novel that features animated character sprites and CGs in addition to its full voice acting, complete with character sliders in the settings. In particular, I really liked the art style; it’s super cute, and the animator did a fantastic job with facial expressions and casual movements. While I do think this VN is honestly kinda cheesy and can be a bit over dramatic, it’s absolutely worth picking up and playing if Perfect Gold even remotely interests you.
April 2025 Progress Report
Had an excellent month! I finished Horizon Forbidden West, but I’m liking the DLC too much to finish it quickly in a few days, hence why it’s not on here. It will be in the next post! I also finished and reviewed a curator game I ended up really liking, Canvas Menagerie, for an indie game it was written super well and the normalcy was refreshing. Usually in VN’s the author likes to push the plot via misunderstandings and drama, so I really liked the realistic normal relationship here. Goetia was cool, the storyline was unique in which a young girl wakes up years later as a wisp of a soul above her grave, and goes home to find her family missing and demons in the house; so a point and click investigation. The puzzles were vague though, and honestly, I don’t think most people could beat it without a guide.
This May…. hrm. Not sure. I know I’m 100%’ing Forbidden West. Possibly TCG card sim. I’m going to try Deliver Us The Moon, but it’s a bit of a frustrating game since it doesn’t have save slots, just chapter selects and the settings don’t show what keys do what actions. I stopped playing it for a while and suffice to say, I had no idea where I was or what I was doing. I’ll think of something. Happy MAy!
Total games added to backlog: 1
Total completed: 4
Notice: This game was given to me for free to curate, which does not guarantee a positive review, and reflects my sincere opinion.
Niko has been a small-time actor since childhood, mostly landing small roles in commercials and other short projects; so, when he auditions for a supporting character in a brand-new long-running series, he’s stunned to be cast as the main lead instead. The pressure is immense – especially with a famous actor as the second lead. Fortunately, the rest of the cast is warm and supportive, because Niko is gonna need all the help he can get!
15-20+ hours to complete, Canvas Menagerie is a LGBTQ+ slice-of-life visual novel with realistic romance, authentic friendships, and the challenges of Niko – a commercial actor who unexpectedly landed a lead role in a major teen drama series. This game is extremely polished with high-quality writing, expressive character sprites, multiple CGs, and its completely hand-drawn art style. Overall, it’s pretty impressive for an Indie game; not only was the writer in particular very skilled at their work, the storyline kept me engaged with it’s realistic portrayal of people; meaning there was no dramatic misunderstanding pushing the plot forward, no instant friendship connections, the main couple did not trip head over heels the second they saw each other; which was an extremely refreshing experience that makes this easy to recommend. Opendyslexic font available in settings!
Search for cats in an ancient 700-year-old 40ft (12 meters) long silk scroll titled “Autumn Hunting in the Yuan Dynasty” which depicts a historical scene of a royal hunt, featuring Mongolian nobility. In this revised edition however, there are 200 distinct, individual cats diligently hidden among the artwork. With various meows and purring should you hold your mouse over a discovered cat and a hint button to guide your way, I can say that Catnip Studios has created one of the most enjoyable Hidden Object games I’ve ever has the pleasure of playing. To view the unedited scroll in its entire high-resolution glory, click the cover logo!
Catnip studios has also done other famous silk scroll artworks, such as the highly famous “Along the River During the Qingming Festival” made sometime around 1736 by collaborating artists as well as Zhao Boju's "Xianshan Louge Tu" from the Southern Song Dynasty, all for less than 1 USD! Pick this game up already! You won’t regret it!
Poor little Abigail Blackwood fell out of a window at 12 years old and died in 1902, so when she woke up as a small wisp of a soul above her gravestone much, much later, you can understand her confusion. Naturally, the first thing she does is go home in search of her parents and her sister Anne, but the Blackwood manor is… strange now. The wallpaper is dirty and cracked, strange sigils and symbols are marked on walls and doorways, iron metal sheets are nailed into walls, and the house is much, much bigger than little Abigail remembers. She can’t find her family, but she’s not alone. A large white raven claims to be a demon named Malphas, and they know your sister quite well, apparently…
6-9 hours to complete, Goetia is a point-and-click puzzle game set in a giant manor and its surrounding locations. As you progress through the game, you will slowly unlock more rooms to explore and uncover more of the storyline. While most of the puzzles were fairly straightforward, the few that were difficult were due to vague objectives and unclear directions, since you can re-read any notes and papers you previously discovered by simply pausing the game and looking at your Codex, conveniently sorted by areas. Overall, it’s a pretty solid game I don’t mind recommending, the biggest downside to Goetia is that you’re probably going to need to look at a guide to finish it.
Dawn is a young cat that’s faced significant hardships in their life. Abandoned at a shelter, their luck changes when adopted by an elderly woman named Olive to be her companion – and for the first time in a long while, things might start looking up for Dawn! Safe shelter, food security, friendship, Dawn could get used to this! Things change however when you find out your name was taken from someone else, and you were adopted because Olive’s first cat, the original Dawn, looked just like you but ran away a week ago. You were a replacement, and when the original Dawn comes back, things get a bit complicated.
3-5 hours to complete, Copycat is a linear simulator that focuses less on gameplay and more on the story as it attempts to make an emotional impact. Objectively, it’s not a bad game, especially for an indie group; the writing is without errors and the voiced narration is well done. However, the middle and end of the story is fumbled pretty terribly, the game tries to deliver an emotional story but ends up feeling shallow and honestly kind of irritating. The narrator is antagonistic and railroads you into doing aggressive actions without the player understanding why until the end of the game when you learn the cat’s backstory, and does it’s best to make you sympathize with Olive, Dawn’s owner, when by the end of the game, you’ll probably hate her. ![spoiler!] Upon losing her cat, she adopts another one, when her cat comes back, she accidentally kicks you out of the house. When she realizes she has two cats, she drives far, far away out into a forested area and abandons you there instead of returning you to the shelter, and the good end is making your way back to her and forgiving that action. \ To sum up the spoiler to those who don’t want to be spoiled, neither Olive or her daughter Mae should ever own an animal. Copycat is a game that tries to be bittersweet, but in the end, it’s just bitter. If you like cats, this game will probably upset you.
March 2025 Progress Report
Failed my New year’s resolution to play 4 games every month! Yay!
I ended up getting the time wrong for a lot of things, and then I got super into HZD: Forbidden West and miscalculated. The VN I was supposed to finish as my 4th game, which was supposed to be about 10 hours, is turning out to be more like 20! The original VN I intended to play had a bad English translation so, I failed twice lol. I’ll do 5 games this April to make up for it and get back on track! I liked the games I played this month, Spilled was a last-second addition as it was brand new and Immediately gained my interest, Togainu no chi was shockingly good, and Jusant was a nice lil’ post-apocalyptic game I may end up playing again, despite not having a high replay value.
Next month, I’m planning on finishing Forbidden west and Canvas Menagerie, not sure about the other games but possibly Copycat? And something else? I’ll figure it out.
Dog update: Everyone is suspiciously ok. Cautiously optimistic.
Total games added to backlog: 2
Total completed: 3
Arrested for a crime he didn’t commit, Akira is the prime suspect of a murder in a corrupt country that doesn’t need justification to put someone away for the rest of their life. The only way to avoid his unjust sentencing is to accept the request of two suspicious individuals – Go to the lawless city of Toshima, participate in a life-or-death game, and try to kill the mysterious man behind it. II Re.
15 – 30 hours to complete, Togainu no Chi is a fully-voiced LGBTQ+ set in a dystopian world about child soldiers abandoned in orphanages after the abrupt end of WW3, rending Japan into three segmented areas. The military government of the East, the CFC; the government political union of the West, Nikkouren; and Toshima, a lawless abandoned city between the two rivals, where most of the story takes place. Overall, it’s a fairly dark novel that I highly recommend. Created in 2005, there was no English translation until JAST Blue developed one in 2020, finally bringing this (now updated!) popular dark fantasy to Western audiences. If you’re still not sold on Togainu no Chi, I seriously suggest you try their most popular translation, DRAMAtical Murder. An uncensored patch for both games on Steam is also available on their website, and it’s pretty simple to apply.
Jusant
Jusant is a 5 – 10+ hour rock-climbing fantasy game about scaling an absolutely massive tower that used to hold a large civilization in a post-apocalyptic world. Explore empty cities and find out why everyone either died off or left as you follow the anchors of a previous climbing group, trying desperately to scale to the top of the spire even as the population fled on foot across the desert. With only a baby Ballast as a companion, take your time, plan your paths, and make it to the top to hopefully find whatever it is, you’ve been searching for.
I just want to start by saying it’s impossible to fall to your death. You cannot die in this game, and it’s not difficult to learn despite the semi-manual climbing experience. While the game offers alternative pathing and some hidden locations, it was more linear than I anticipated. Overall, I had a very positive experience; your companion is adorable, the story is interesting, the game mechanics are fun and there is no rush. Jusant a beautiful and unique experience with various landscapes, and even with the dizzying heights I had a fun time exploring and looking at the ecology, which was different at each level of the tower. There are some minimal gripes, such as the game being auto-save only and only having to start at the beginning of each chapter if you missed a collectible; and despite unlocking short-cuts, those get reset if you re-play a chapter which defeats the purpose of having them in the first place. Regardless, Jusant is an easy recommendation and I highly suggest not missing out on this experience. There are color-blind modes available as well as an anti-dyslexia font in the settings!
1-2 hours to complete, Spilled! Is a short and casual ocean cleanup game about a little boat doing its best to keep the environment clean, and a larger boat causing all the trouble! Collect and recycle plastic waste, contain and clean oil spills from the water’s surface, extinguish fires, rescue animals, and collect points to purchase upgrades. It’s a pretty satisfying game with pleasant before and after screenshots, nice to check out in an lazy afternoon, with easy to manage controls.
Overall, Spilled is a very simple game with a very special message about ocean conservation efforts and keeping an environment clean and beautiful. There are several areas to explore, each unlocking a new skill or tool, and you really get a positive feeling that even small actions can have a big impact! The only real con I can think of is that it’s so short to complete! While you can re-do any chapter and area you want, there isn’t much in terms of replayability though the graphics are adorable and gave me warm fuzzy feelings. Highly recommended!
February 2025 Progress Report
February was a solid month, a rough start and a good end. Naturally, I somehow stumbled into one of the most uninteresting VN’s in my library, which burned me out for about two weeks, and then it was only solid short games from there. I won Boxes from SteamGifts! I tried not to beat it all in a day, but alas, I am a sucker for puzzles and ended up really enjoying it even though the review is so short. I managed to work through more of my Secret Santa gifts. OneShot was amazing; I genuinely don’t understand how people make a game with those sorts of puzzles, but I enjoyed it immensely. I was planning on making Imposter Factory the headline title for this month, but OneShot was so special that I don’t think I’m going to play a game like that again for many years.
Next month I have yet another VN planned. The last two long VN’s I picked to play were kinda terrible so I’m wondering if Togainu no Chi is going to break the streak or make it longer. I’m also playing Death End Re;quest this March, though I’m not sure how I feel about it looking at reviews.
Dog News: Everyone is still ok, and no one is turning yellow from liver failure yet. I check her eyes daily so I’ve been feeling pretty optimistic. Half of me wants to keep saying everything is fine and the other half is waiting for her sudden degradation. Next month is my birthday.
Not feeling good about it.
Total games added to backlog: 2
Total completed: 4
Niko wakes up in an unfamiliar, dark home with no recollection of how they got there. With a voice in their head only Niko can hear and the world's residents recognizing Niko and the light they hold on sight due to a remarkably detailed prophecy – Replace the sun, restore the world, and somehow, make it back home.
4-7+ hours to complete, OneShot is a shockingly amazing puzzle game that blurs the lines between the virtual game and the real world. You, as the player guiding Niko, are known to the residents and Niko themself, significantly changing your usual function to actively participating in the world, instead of using a medium, a character. The immersion is delightful, as are the puzzles! While I consider them challenging, the puzzles are not all that difficult; just exceptionally clever. OneShot is highly recommended and well deserves their rating of 98% Overwhelmingly Positive reviews.
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Impostor Factory
Invited to a very fancy mansion out in the middle of nowhere for a party, Quincy opts to go, because the letter had his name on it, so it wasn’t a mistake, and it’s an outrageously lavish house party. They might have wagyu beef! Little sausages! Expensive drinks! Quincy is a man of ACTION. So what if the manor looks.. honestly super haunted. It’s fine! Everything is going to be ok… right?
3 – 4 hours to complete, Imposter Factory is a linear Lovecraftian murder mystery with exceptional storytelling. Third in a series but can be played as a stand alone title, the previous games in order being To The Moon and Finding Paradise. Quality wise, it’s pretty on par for these developers – High! Excellent storytelling, a solid narrative, delightful humor, and a bit of internal introspection. It’s a funny, bittersweet game that I highly recommend.
Boxes
Boxes is a 3-4 hours point-and-click puzzle game where you solve dozens of beautiful and intricately designed puzzle boxes. Each box has its own unique theme inspired by various mythologies and stories, and opening a box rewards you with a fragment, collecting four fragments grants you access to the next chapter, of which there are five in total. Overall, I had a wonderful experience and fans who played and liked The Room series will also find this game just as interesting. My personal favorite was the murder mystery box, but there are so many to love.
Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk
30-40+ hours to complete, Psychedelia of the Ashen Hawk is an otome visual novel with four romance routes, full voice acting, and a flowchart that makes backtracking and keeping the game to a single save file a breeze. A sequel to Psychedelia of the Black Butterfly with reoccurring characters, so it’s essential to read Black Butterfly first to avoid significant story spoilers. Overall, Ashen Hawk is well-written with exceptionally gorgeous artwork but with significant flaws – it’s boring as hell. If you are playing on auto-read to enjoy the voice acting, it will take nearly twenty hours to start interacting with the plot, which is unacceptable. The game is completely bloated with required side stories to read involving conversations with random townspeople and it’s a ridiculous slog to read them all so you can get points and unlock endings.
The female lead is an idiot. The only possible reason she could have made it to adulthood must have been divine intervention, as she actively makes harmful choices to herself throughout the entire novel and only seeks short-term solutions to long-term problems. She has no critical thinking or survival skills to speak of despite being a handyman other than basic cooking. She has a sword and cannot use it. She is a witch and has no magic. Everyone in town, who I’m convinced is a cult, is looking to kill her to stop a curse and she chooses to tell other people she’s a witch when actual innocent people are being murdered just for being suspected of one. She doesn’t like keeping secrets, even when that secret is the only reason she’s alive.
The worst thing about this novel is that despite the story being centered around the female lead, she often feels like a passive observer. While she is present during events, she rarely participates in them. She mainly serves as a stand-in for the player, receiving most of the key information from other NPCs. Instead of uncovering the mysteries of the town herself, the answers are simply handed to you, leaving no room to come to your own conclusions and nothing to investigate. All of the NPCs, except one, can be taken at face value and it’s almost distressingly boring. None of the romance was convincing and after reading every ending, I genuinely got the impression that the only good ending was the true ending where ironically, you avoid all the male lead routes to get to.
January 2025 Progress Report
First report of 2025! Overall, a positive month ending on a depressing note. I played a lot of games (and gifts!) I got from Secret Santa and while I’m still scratching the surface; I’m fairly happy with the outcome and looking forward to the games next month… However I was given bad news today; one of my older dogs was acting strange and hiding around the house, so I took her to the vet where they let me know she has liver cirrhosis. She’s been on liver meds for years though as her numbers have always been a little wonky, but I’m trying to come to terms that she might not be here next month, and it’s throwing me off quite a bit.
I usually talk about next month’s game here but I’m not in the mood and I’m not sure how well I’ll do.
Total games added to backlog: 0
Total completed: 4
Play as Teuta, a sharp and intelligent journalist with a special ability arriving in New Sieg, a city full of crime, corruption, and hidden agendas! Investigating a morally grey lawyer named Limbo leads you to witnessing his murder, and in an attempt to stop it, Teuta uses her gift to turn back time immediately gaining his, and his friends, attention. Now entangled in the lives and secrets of five men, explore a new world full of danger, intrigue, and of course, romance!!!
15-40 hours to complete, BUSTAFELLOWS is an otome visual novel set in a noir-inspired world. There are 5 romanceable characters, each with their own distinct personality, backstory, and motivation. Fully voice acted with more adjustable voice options in settings and a significant amount of CGs, this game is already well worth playing. Something to note however, is that the story doesn’t end when your romance route does! Only by completing every route, can you read the other half of the novel; every route focuses on a separate part of the storyline and relates to that character’s background, and it’s worth playing through them all to tie up the loose ends and understand the full story. Highly recommended and I’m excited to read BUSTAFELLOWS 2!
Little Kitty, Big City
3-6 hours to complete, Little Kitty Big City is a wholesome adventure game that will take you on a heartwarming journey through a semi-open world area. As a very lost indoor cat trying to find their way home, encounter a variety of animals who will offer side-quests or assistance as you navigate through the busy streets.
There are many activities to discover, such as collecting and recycling cans, tripping and being pet by humans, finding many hats to wear, gathering “shinies” for a mischievous crow, and collecting feathers for a tanuki who’s figured out how spacetime works. Overall, a cute little adventure game that can be finished in one playthrough.
The Spirit and the Mouse
A thunderstorm approaches the small town of Sainte-et-Claire, knocking out most of its power and leaving electrical appliances malfunctioning! In an attempt to cheer people up, a small but determined mouse chooses to make a big difference. Gaining electrical powers after a fortunate accident and meeting Lumion, a guardian spirit, team up to restore light – and power – back to the residents.
4-6 hours to complete, The Spirit and the Mouse is a casual game with easy puzzles, a semi-open world, and collectibles. As an electric mouse, zip through power lines, collect static from metal objects, and discover light bulbs to obtain additional abilities such as a useful electric dash, a lightbulb locator, a photo mode, and maps of the four districts. Special note; The Spirit and The Mouse offers a colorblind mode and has a dedicated squeak button as well as fun hat apparel to wear. Overall, a warm, feel-good adventure that’s easy to recommend.
MAMIYA
Natsume dies… but he doesn’t exactly end up in heaven. Instead, he wakes up in an endless library and is assigned the job of a “Spectator.” His task is to read through countless books – each representing a unique universe – and select the “true end” among all its drafts and variations. But Natsume wasn’t supposed to have his memories intact after death, and he sure wasn’t supposed to get assigned the fate of his original world!
25-46 hours to complete, MAMIYA is a dark psychological horror mystery that I can’t and won’t recommend for a few reasons. The start of the novel focuses heavily on four characters engaging in self-harm, murder and suicide and I struggled to understand what the whole point of the novel was for about 9 hours. While it does get more coherent as you progress, it’s emotionally disturbing and a difficult read, especially if you are sensitive to themes of gender dysmorphia, mental distress, and acts of violence. Objectively, MAMIYA excels with its gorgeous art style and it’s well written, however, the overall bleakness of the story will make it hard for most people to stomach due to its graphic nature.
The most frustrating aspect however is the paywall. The base game only includes Episode 1 and 2, while the conclusion, Episode 3, is locked behind a $20 DLC. That means despite purchasing the full game, you’ll need to pay an additional fee just to experience the ending which feels both unfair and exploitative.
December 2024 Progress Report
This is it, huh.
The last Progress report of 2024. This year, I’ve completed 45 games and was on track to completing my new year’s resolution of beating 23 games more than I added until the great PAGYWOSG Secret Santa and.. fell quite short of the goal. Anyway.
I had a really good December and I’m looking forward to 2025! I completed my White Whale, Cookie Clicker, which I purchased Jan 1st of 2022 making it three years since I bought it, and I’m quite satisfied to have it be the last completed game of 2024. The first game of 2025 will be Horizon Zero Dawn: Forbidden West and I loved the first game, so I’m excited to get into it and complete my gifts! Thank you everyone! Happy new year!
2025 resolutions:
- Beat 4 games every month.
- Have fun.
Total games added to backlog: 19
Total completed: 4
Cookie Clicker is an infinite Idle game where the goal is to make cookies as fast as inhumanly possible. Start out in humble beginnings hiring grandmothers, buying farms, and baking cookies before ascending to the heavenly realm, purchasing upgrades from the Skill Tree to make your next reincarnation even more productive. Eventually, you’ll end up hijacking other idleverses and messing with the stock market mini-game to keep cookie production at an all-time high.
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There is a free browser version – the original – you can play at any time and buying it on Steam is largely unnecessary, but there are benefits to doing so! On the paid version there are no advertisements, you get access to cloud saving so you won’t lose your data, you have access to mod support and the steam workshop, plus you contribute to the developers. Overall, I highly recommend the game regardless of the version you play in and I don’t regret any time invested (or idled) in Cookie Clicker.
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Inheriting the abandoned Haven Park from their grandmother, Flint takes on the duty of the old nature reserve’s caretaker to restore the island to its former glory. Rebuild broken-down campsites, repair bridges, and re-discover the winding paths, dizzying cliffsides, hidden coves, and brilliant mountain tops that once made this historical park so widely known.
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3-5+ hours to complete, Haven Park is a casual walking and camp building sim. 12 campsites to discover and repair; the goal is to collect wood, metal, cloth, and money from campers to complete quests, requests, and re-build roads to access more of the island. As Flint builds and collects things, they gain EXP and level up to earn skill points the player can use to purchase skills. Overall, it’s a simple and cute game to play with only one complaint – It’s impossible to turn off the bubble noise that happens whenever you interact with something and after a few hours, it gets a bit exhausting.
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Wavetale
Sigrid is a young girl raised by her grandmother on a small, quiet island with a lighthouse. Forbidden from going near the water, her life is simple, boring, and peaceful until one normal day a terrifying dark fog surges in like a tidal wave and monsters invade from the ocean. The lighthouse flickers and dies, and the dark fog seems like it would swallow Sigrid whole until something strange happens; There is a solid shadow in the water, a true reflection mirroring every step she takes until she steps into the sea. Leaving everything she has ever known, Sigrid walks on water leaving her island behind to find new energy sources to light the beacon, push back the fog, and save her home.
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4-9+ hours to complete, Wavetale is a fairly linear game that takes place in a submerged city newly named Strandville and its lingering survivors. A simple, straightforward game that’s easy to beat and complete. Despite the presence of sea monsters, combat will rarely give a significant challenge as the storyline is the main focus just as much as the surfing and gliding on the water is. Character customization is available with a wide range of outfits, hats, and hair dyes that unlocks as you progress through the game. Overall, Wavetale is pretty enjoyable!
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SUMMERHOUSE
1-3+ hours to complete, Summerhouse is a casual sandbox game in which you build small dwellings, big houses, thriving hotels, and with a bit more creativity, towns, towers, and hobbit homes. You start with a small amount of walls, roofs, and decorations but by placing special blocks next to each other, you gradually unlock more building options. In addition, you can remove the pixilated graphics for more modern ones in the settings. There are four maps and three settings, daytime, rain, and nighttime.
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Summerhouse is a lovely game worth its price tag, but it’s nothing extraordinary. Even with unlockable building options, it’s very limited in what you can do unless you get especially creative. There are only four types of rocks, a couple of trees, no bushes but you can make them by sinking a flowerpot into the ground. A handful of walls, a couple of stairs, and roofs that don’t always match up with the wall sizes – but regardless, it’s a solid way to spend a few hours.
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October 2024 Progress Report
Just three games this month! I tried to at least beat Coral Island, but I have 92 hours into it and I have a nagging suspicion I’m only halfway through. The Cub was a cute little game I picked up in a bundle, It was pretty fun aside from the few weird platforming sections and the ending was pretty surprising in a fun way. To The Rescue almost made the headliner title, but it’s pretty buggy despite being perfectly enjoyable and weirdly addicting. I loved all the dog breeds and that your hired NPC employees were competent and could handle the tasks you assigned to them, and that fully vaccinating a dog made them more adoptable - as it would in real life. For Fatal Twelve, it started out good, midway was excellent, and the ending kinda flopped for me as it was very “friendship is magic”, over-explaining things with a weirdly placed info dump. I’m pretty sure the original plan was to have two romanceable characters that was cut out to be just one because there was a pink hair girl who was seriously too involved in the story but had no effect on it - if she got removed nothing would have changed. Still a good VN, but, weird.
Next month.. November. I wanna play The Witcher 3, but I’m more behind on Coral Island than I anticipated so I’m not really sure what to do here. I might buy a short-medium game but I think it’s just gonna be farming for me, folks. Also, has anyone seen my little emote cat? They appear to be missing…
Total games added to backlog: 2
Total completed: 3
Shishimai Rinka is a second-year student at a girl's private high school who was caught up in a terrorist bombing on her way back home. She died, and woke up again safe in bed, her death undone. Chosen by the Goddess Parca in a twisted Divine Selection, Rinka and eleven others who died at the same time must discover three vital pieces of information on other victims to eliminate them – their names, what killed them, and their regrets. Only the winner can continue living, the eliminated participants following their original fates, but Rinka isn’t alone. Her friend Miharu is trapped with her.
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15-18+ hours to complete, Fatal Twelve is an LGBTQ+ Yuri visual novel where choices matter. There are seven endings in total with one love interest and 56 unique CGs. Relatively high-quality graphics and voice acting, with little to no spelling errors. Overall, it’s a good VN that’s easy to recommend. I only have two minor complaints – there are a lot of characters and side characters, and a few could have been removed without impacting the storyline. The true end drags on with too much info dumping and hand-wavey magic which kinda killed the emotional impact the story was building.
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The Cub
In a society that’s solved world hunger and death, a new terrifying ecological disaster approaches and the best solution is to bring humanity to Mars. With civilization able to be sustained and reusable rockets built, they left Earth with a portion of the population and the ultra-rich with promises to come back to pick up the rest of humanity only to never return. Abandoned and left on a mutating planet, fighting broke out with others evacuating to safer cities. During the evacuation, a child was separated from his mother, and fearing the gunfire, fled into the forest to be raised by wolves. Decades passed, most of humanity failed to adapt, and the Martians can be seen returning to Earth to see if it’s habitable again… but mostly, to play Golf.
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3 hours to complete, The Cub is a post-apocalyptic puzzle platformer with catchy radio music. There are three games so far that take place in chronological order that can be played separately – Golf Club Nostalgia, The Cub, and Highwater. While the platforming is a bit clunky, the game is pretty solid and worth playing if you enjoy storylines about surviving the aftermath of a collapsed society, no zombies. Not difficult to complete with easy collectibles and chapter-select for quick backtracking, I recommend playing The Cub if you want a short, chill, linear game to spend a couple of hours in.
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To The Rescue!
Moving back home to the bustling town of Yawning Falls, a lost dog shows up in your front yard, and finding their owner sends you on a new career path you never could have imagined. With the assistance of friends, employees, grants, and the funding and approval of the mayor herself, build the greatest and most highly rated animal shelter the city has ever seen! ᓚᘏᗢ
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7+ hours to complete, To The Rescue! is an Endless shelter management sim where you name and build your own Dog shelter, room by room. Hire employees, delegate tasks, and do your best to help dogs be healthy, bathed, and well-vaccinated to find their forever home! While sometimes buggy, there are still frequent updates since its release in 2021.
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Overall, I found it pretty fun and time-consuming, as there is always something to do especially if you focus a lot on expansion. The employees you hire are competent and do their jobs well with little to no micromanagement on your part. There are a bunch of random events! You get super old, injured, or disabled dogs, litters of puppies, and disease outbreaks making your day-to-day different and unexpected. Aside from the game itself, I loved all the menu options and accessibility settings, making minigames and the game as easy or as difficult as you want it to be.
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September 2024 Progress Report
September already?!?
This month was pretty good, I played a lot of games I liked, won two off SteamGifts, and finished a VN, Hashihime of the Old Book Town, that I ended up adding to my sparse favorites list - I’m calling it a win even though my stats got messed up! I won Loddlenaut and Coral Island, one was short enough to beat this month and Coral Island will definitely be showing up as completed in October, I’m really enjoying it! I ended up buying TASOMACHI: Beyond the Twilight for myself as a treat since it’s been a while since I bought a game just for me.
For real-life news - I went to Germany! AND Paris! I revisited my childhood home, saw the hill I hurt my knee on, looked at all my old childhood friends’ houses, and saw the entrance to the now locked-down bunker that I broke into as a child. The park I spent so much time in every day as a small brat is inaccessible and overgrown with the thorny blackberries I used to snack on that were planted in a circle around the park - they got super dense and I would have needed gloves and thicker pants to even make the attempt to get in. I took a train to Paris and spent a few days with my aunt, her husband, and my cousins before spending the last day in the city checking out the Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, and then the Arch of Triumph. Except for the Notre Dame, which was inaccessible due to the fire, the others were incredibly disappointing as the Tower and Arch had a barricade and armed guards around them which you could only get near by paying money. My mom hated it as well since she told me last time she was here, you could sit under it. Everything was all very commercialized and there were many people with clipboards and people sitting around trying to make you donate or calling out to sell you things which ruined the experience. My favorite part of Paris was honestly the metro and trains, after experiencing the wonders of public transportation (I couldn’t read but could still use the metro as everything was color-coded and marked) I hate my car even more. I don’t think I’ll go back, except to see Germany again.
Gaming next month, I’m planning on AI: Somnium Files, Coral Island, and Fatal Twelve. I might try to slip in Sound of Drop - Fall into Poison but the reason I dropped it before was because I couldn’t figure out how to start the second part of the novel, so I’ll see how that goes. Happy gaming!
Total games added to backlog: 3
Total completed: 3
Tamamori has suffered hallucinations all his life and turns them into stories he shares with his three childhood friends, but as he grows older, it turns into a genuine struggle to determine what is real and what isn’t. Adulthood becomes incredibly difficult, as it’s hard to study for higher education when words tend to slip off paper and Tamamori falls behind his three childhood friends, one already with a successful military career and the other two in university. Able to find work in a mysterious bookstore that only opens when it rains, life flows on quietly until one of his friends is murdered, masked as a suicide. To discover the truth, Tamamori must investigate with his delusions and try to re-connect with his friends to keep them safe, and find the killer.
The flowing river’s current is ceaseless, and yet the water is never the same.
16-31 hours to complete, Hashihime of the Old Book Town is LGBTQ+ supernatural psychological detective VN with 5 endings. Each time you finish and start a new game, you get a different, pre-determined character’s ending making each playthrough unique – although you can still replay your favorite routes and the first one is considered the “true route” so you don’t need to read the others if you don’t want to. Excellent quality with voice acting I genuinely liked, I highly recommend playing Hashihime of the Old Book Town. All the characters are flawed with their own struggles and despite them being pretty stupid, I found myself loving this VN for the sheer uniqueness, writing, and storytelling that I’ve genuinely never encountered even a similar perspective of. Highly recommend.
TASOMACHI: Behind the Twilight
Yukumo is a girl on a journey, flying an airship and soaring through the clouds when a mysterious shockwave damages her engine and she’s forced to crash-land on an Island covered by fog. Kogara, a stranded member of the Nezu cat tribe, finds her and asks for help in a mutually beneficial relationship. By restoring the Sacred trees, the fog will leave the city and its citizens will gradually return, and by collecting the tree’s lantern fruits – a fuel source – Yukumo can restore her Airship and continue her adventure. Solve puzzles, make friends, and revitalize the land in an experience no one will soon forget!
3-10 hours to complete, TASOMACHI: Behind the Twilight is a puzzle platform object collection game that revolves around collecting lanterns in an abandoned city smothered by fog. As more shrines are completed, citizens – the Nezu Tribe – move back in and the towns become operational again, enabling jump pads and more accessible areas. Puzzles are skippable, you can collect money in the streets and pay 20 coins for a teleporter to the end of a puzzle if it’s too difficult. Gameplay is pretty smooth, and after the story is completed, you get access to airship racing. This profitable mini-game significantly lessens the grind of purchasing all six outfits and furniture for your house should you want it.
3-7+ hours to complete, Loddlenaut is an underwater open-world cleaning and pet sim. Restore biomes by removing oil and trash then replant native flora and re-introduce the wildlife, the Loddles. Depending on what they eat or what you feed them as they grow up, they can change into one of 13 different types! They can follow you around and help clean up areas, but they usually stay where you put them and can play with crafted toys.
Admittedly, there isn’t much of a story – the company that caused all the problems already got shut down, you’re just the guy hired to clean up the aftermath. No enemies, no puzzles, nothing time-sensitive, no quick time events, and nothing ridiculously grindy. It’s a colorful game with plenty of things to do, especially with the most recent update, and the only thing I can say it lacks is a photo mode.
August 2024 Progress Report
“Next month! I’m gonna be super serious! Promise!”
So that was a lie.
I ended up with COVID-19 (Which I still have, and I’ve had since the 23rd.) and spent nearly the entire month on Royal Road reading “A Nerubian’s Journey” instead of gaming. While I did finish Hashihime of the Old Booktown, I still have a couple of routes to explore so that will appear next month. Fortunately, it wasn’t a total loss, 40 hours of gaming is 40 hours, but I’m still disappointed I didn’t finish all the things I wanted to.
Next month is gonna be a bit wonky, I’m flying to Germany to visit my childhood home then taking a train to Paris to meet my Aunt for the first time, so I’m super anxious about that 15-hour flight and also I’ve never been on a train before. And I don’t speak German. Or French. Gaming-wise, I’m hoping to play AI: The Somnium Files, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Graveyard Keeper, and finish off Hashihime of the Old Book Town but I’m sure I’m going to be just as clueless as you are as to what my next post will look like. At least I’ve removed a couple games from my library. Farewell, Fairy Fencer series, and Dragon Star Varnir.
Total games added to backlog: 0 (-4?)
Total completed: 2
Life has always been pretty bleak for Natsuki; after being disabled from a childhood accident that took his leg and his mother, and then having to drop out of school as a young adult due to his grandmothers passing, he inherits her boat, her submarine, and her debts. A small glimmer of hope lies a couple 30 meters under the sea behind Natsuki’s submerged childhood home; his grandmother was an accomplished ocean geologist in her lifetime, and surely, she has some expensive equipment he could salvage from her locked storehouse! What he finds, however, is a girl, an android named Atri sleeping peacefully beneath the waves. Sell her to get a fresh start in life, or try to win her heart instead… if she has one.
11-13 hours to complete, ATRI is a bittersweet VN where most of the earth has been swallowed by the sea. It is very high quality; the art is excellent and there is full voice acting. A Bad End and a Good End must be played to unlock the True End. Overall, it’s an incredible and well-written visual novel well worth playing that’s almost perfect without any faults. Almost. The protagonist Natsuki gets creepy near the end, he confesses his love daily and gets rejected just as often, and twists those rejections in his favor. “Was she sad I confessed to her? No, that can’t be right. People cry when they are happy too.” and is under the impression the only reason she’s not returning his affection is because “Even she isn’t aware of her true feelings.” Due to his inner narrations and outlook, the ending gave me a much darker impression than I believe was intended. While I’m not fond of the male protagonist of ATRI, it’s still an excellent novel.
Fallen Hero: Rebirth
Los Angeles has fallen due to numerous natural disasters and in its ashes rose the rebuilt city of Los Diablos, a lawless city untouched by the government and run by those with power – literally. Heroes and Villains are in a constant battle for control and in the aftermath of the Heartbreak Incident, the telepathic hero Sidestep is presumed dead. Armed with the knowledge you shouldn’t have and secrets that were buried long ago, remake yourself into the greatest villain the city has ever seen.
6-13 hours to complete, Fallen Hero: Rebirth is a text-based RPG with a rare villain protagonist. LGBTQ+ friendly with optional romance, it’s a pretty amazing fallen superhero novel where every choice you make feels like you’ve made the correct one where you choose the tone and level of violence. 385,000+ words and the first book of three, the next in the series being Fallen Hero: Retribution then Fallen Hero: Revelations. Reaching the end of the novel saves that game and brings it into the second novel, and so forth. Overall, it’s a fantastic novel to invest your time into; the only thing I can complain about is the lack of a save/load system and the fact that you can’t backtrack to see the results of other choices unless you start a new game.
July 2024 Progress Report
Hello again! I hope everyone had a good July, it went pretty well for me although I got derailed from my plans, I got super into one of my Summer Sale purchases, Dave the Diver, and it’s big enough I didn’t have time for much else after finished The Divine Speaker, a 20+ LGBTQ+ VN. On one hand, I did not get much done, on the other hand, still got a +1 on my backlog and knocked out two big games.
Next month! I’m gonna be super serious! Promise! Planning on ATRI, Hashihime of the Old Book Town, and AI: The Somnium Files. Not really liking AI, I meant to finish it this month but the protagonist is a huge creep and the comedy does not make amends. I started with the intent to finish it but after watching a grown man start sobbing over a porn mag and after some.. issues.. with the storyline, I just wanted to play something I actually liked. Hopefully, it gets better! but right now, I’m genuinely not sure how this man has a job as a police officer of all things.
Total games added to backlog: 2
Total completed: 3
24-46+ hours to complete, Dave the Diver is a single-player RPG where you dive for fresh fish in the Blue Hole by day and serve your catches by night in a restaurant-style management sim. Hire employees, farm fresh ingredients, prepare the menu, and get rewarded by having customers upload photos of their orders online to increase your rankings! Surprisingly roguelike, the areas you dive in randomly change, and fish vary based on night or day diving. Weapons and support items are randomized, aside from the firearms you build and bring with you. There are boss fights! All are pretty fun and have different mechanics, my deepest regret is that I can only cook them once.
As an extra tidbit, I highly suggest picking up the free Godzilla DLC before the licensing expires on November 23rd, 2024 as well as the free DREDGE DLC. As strange as it sounds, it’s not intrusive to the overall Dave the Diver gameplay and both DLCs have a pretty amazing amount of content and fun menu additions to add to your restaurant. Don’t miss out! There is an accessibility setting to automate button tapping for most of the QTEs.
The Divine Speaker
Raen is one of the orphans of Aurelia Cavella, a town protected by the gods and led by the Divine speaker; a man who chooses a child’s destiny and path in life from the day they are born, to who they marry, to the day they die. Surrounded by an endless forest of death and monsters, this town is the only place with human life; it’s been this way for thousands of years until Raen turns 18. Preparing to enter adulthood and get matched up to have children, mysterious markings appear on Raen’s arm and he is exiled from Aurelia Cavella. Here, in the forest, he meets an impossible hermit who speaks incomprehensible truths – his entire life was a lie. It’s time to make a new one.
17-35+ hours to complete, The Divine Speaker is a fantasy LGBTQ+ uncensored VN with multiple endings and three love interests. It's fully voice-acted with options in the settings to turn off individual characters' voices. It is super high quality, I highly recommend playing it as it’s a fantastic experience! My biggest complaint is that the ending is unsatisfactory due to the unresolved questions, loose ends, and the cliffhanger it ends on clearly setting up a Divine Speaker 2, which concerns me as I don’t see any news of a second game at the time of this review, more than two years after the Divine Speaker was released. (The Divine Speaker: The Sun and the Moon is a prequel, not the sequel.)
Aka
A retired soldier from war, Aka leaves the battlefield with his war friend Thom to one of the islands in the east, in search of a peaceful life of farming and blissful normalcy. Make new friends, visit the city on occasion, go hiking, cloud watch on beaches, play some music, and find a place to settle down. Just don’t let the ghosts of your past haunt you too much.
5-7+ hours to complete, Aka is a hand-drawn casual farming sim where you play as a war veteran. There are four islands to explore and one city, with two houses you can move into - one being your starter home that’s already furnished. Farming is simple and only really needed for quest progression at the least, the scale of what you want to grow is up to you. Overall, it’s a nice casual sim with optional minigames as well as its own card game. There are plenty of fun things to do while short enough to not be grindy. The only cons I can think of is unlike most farming games, your fully grown crop plants rot if you don’t collect them, but any planted flowers stay.
| 501 | games |
| 4% | never played |
| 5% | unfinished |
| 13% | beaten |
| 75% | completed |
| 2% | won't play |
- Won on SteamGifts 40
- Favorites 31
- Reviewed 323
- Completed 2021 74
- Completed 2022 78
- Completed 2023 55
- Completed 2024 45
- Completed 2025 21
- POP Short 5
- POP Medium 5
- POP Long 5
- POP Very Long 28
- Holiday Gifts! Priority! 8