Issue #7-8

July-August Report

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A Tale of Itch.io, Cleaning and Summer

Hey everybody, how are you?
Last month I was too lazy to create a report, thus here we have a double one. This were the couple of months in which typically I would have gone somewhere on holiday for some days, but this year was strange. So, no travel. Just work - some work from home, relaxing, but that’s just not the same. Well, on the good side of it, I had more time to play games.

I decided to do a cleanup of the games installed on my PC, by simply uninstalling the “eternal” ones - like Civ, or CKII - and trying to complete the other ones. The strategy is working quite well, now I only have 10 games on my laptop, I will defeat them, I hope.

On the other hand, I started trying random games from the Bundle for Racial Justice, from Itch.io, and I have to say that I’m satisfied for the moment. I found some interesting concepts, some - as expected - incomplete games, but at least one gem: Spring Falls is a great, chill, relaxing puzzle game. I’m not featuring it in the “cover” of the report just for one reason: it is a cool and well polished game, more than Open Sorcery, but the latter is a much more interesting experience. Of course it’s pretty absurd to try to compare two such different games.

* as shown by GOG Galaxy 2.0

• Played & Beaten
• Monthly Theme
• PAGYWOSG

Open Sorcery

8/10

1/1 hours

no achievements

Firewall burns.

Amazing, text-based game! The idea of mixing technology and magic is performed in such a great way, it is really able to make you empathise with BEL/s. And in addition to this, it's also funny. The only negative aspect: it's far too short for being this good!

Played on Itch.io.

Open Sorcery: Jingle BEL/S

7.5/10

1.5/1.5 hours

no achievements

Firewall burns 2.

Good sequel to Open Sorcery. A lot of attention to details and dialogues. Funny setting. Maybe a little too "static" it feels, as there is little new compared to the first one.

Played on Itch.io.

The Last Leviathan

6/10

2.3/16.3 hours

14 of 24 achievements (58%)

Arr!

Pirates meet LEGO: in this game you can build your ship one piece at a time, so that the only limit to the ship shape is your fantasy (and the laws of hydrostatic and hydrodynamics, of course). There is a campaign, with some (pretty repetitive) missions, but the heart of the game is in the sandbox mode. The controls could be improved, as they're not always perfectly controllable. The main drawback is that this Early Access will be Early Access forever: it's been officially abandoned. Thus, the world is pretty empty, as well as many features are missing. It's a pity, as this was indeed a great start for the game.

Played on Steam.

Puzzle Agent 2

7/10

3.5/3.5 hours

50 of 52 achievements (96%)

Another puzzle solved!

A good sequel to Puzzle Agent. Nelson gets back to Scoggins, in order to solve completely the mysteries that he uncovered in the first chapter. There he will meet the usual crazy people, and a lot of puzzles. Tipically very easy puzzles.

Played on Steam.

Pixel Session Vol.1

7/10

1/1 hours

no achievements

Funny arcade minigames.

​A nice project, a collection of funny, psychedelic​ arcade minigames quite challenging but not too hard, usually.

Played on Itch.io.

Attrition: Tactical Fronts

6.5/10

3/3 hours

no achievements

This is war.

​Nice little, hex-based strategy game. Looks like a couple GB game I played in the past. Interesting the dependence of power from the terrain and the unit health, and the special abilities of the various units. On the negative side, AI is too easy to beat. And even more, on this platform the game is abandoned in a beta state.

Played on Itch.io.

Dominique Pamplemousse in “It’s All Over Once The Fat Lady Sings!"

4/10

1.5/1.5 hours

no achievements

Strange thing.

​The game is peculiar. The story and dialogues told through songs, like it was a musical: never seen something like this before. The visual art is pretty bad - but that's wanted, and is cool in some way. The music is funny. "Linear" story, simple game. Right length. The only strange and useless thing in the game: the random talks about Dominique sexuality. They don't mean anything in the story, and every time they look artificial additions to the dialogues.

But there's a lot of issues having this version work on Win 10: compatibility issues, and the need of "Run as Admin"! That's the reason for the low rating.

Played on Itch.io.

Refunct

7.5/10

0.6/2.7 hours

7 of 10 achievements (70%)

Relax and jump.

A relaxing, short experience. A world wonderfully crafted, there to be coloured doing some parkour on it. The art is minimal, but still beautiful.

Played on Steam.

Toaster Jam

8/10

0.6/0.6 hours

no achievements

Funny breakfast!

A short (only 40 levels), joyful experience in which you - a flying toaster - jump around breakfast-themed scenarios, collecting slices of bread and avoiding evil forks and donuts. And you can unlock funny skins for the toaster! In short, it's a casual, easy game, with pleasant art. It looks a lot like a mobile game. As an added value, there's a level editor, so you can (in principle) have an infinite number of levels to create (or download) and play.

Played on Itch.io.

Kingdom: Classic

7.5/10

9.7/21.2 hours

11 of 34 achievements (32%)

Rage quit here.

A cool strategy/resource management game, extremely easy to learn, and very hard to master. You play simply using one button to interact, and 2 arrows to move. The playtime is divided in 2: during the day you can explore, build and so on; during the night, monsters will attack your village. There are two kinds of workers you can hire, and two kinds of fighters. You must plan well, avoid wasting money and leaving your peasants unprotected by walls and archers. In the end, winning means destroying all the 4 enemy portals, but you must avoid attacking before you are very ready: the consequences would be terrible. There is more or less just one strategy that will bring you to victory, and an error - tipically due to haste - will not be forgiven, and you will probably have to restart from the beginning.

In addition to this, the music is fine, and the pixel art is really good-looking.

Played on Steam.

Skulls of the Shogun

7.5/10

14.6/21.5 hours

12 of 27 achievements (44%)

Samurai skeletons!

A funny turn-based strategy game, set in an interesting afterlife world for Japanese samurai warriors. It offers quite a number of different units with their special abilities, and some (not many) mechanics for collecting resources and upgrading units. Overall it is a quite simple game, perfect for relax. The cartoonish graphics is good, too, and the game dialogues feature a nice sense of humour.

Played on Steam.

Dominique Pamplemousse and Dominique Pamplemousse in "Combinatorial Explosion!"

5.5/10

0.8/0.8 hours

no achievements

Strange thing 2.

The aesthetics is in the same style of its prequel: "ugly", but in a stylish way, with a reason. The experience is good, with funny music. The situations and scenes are pretty varied and totally absurd. But it's not a game. A funny experience, anyway.

Played on Itch.io.

Sheepless Nights

5.5/10

3/3 hours

no achievements

Math card game.

An ok-ish math card game, inspired by ​UNO and Hearts. With a couple of rules to let you use math. Mainly focused on children: an adult will be quickly bored, as it it really easy to beat. The game is extremely luck based, and strategies are nearly impossible to implement, due to the endless deck. The AI is not good, and there are not real differences in the various difficulty levels. Also, there are random bugs that let you play more cards than you should. From the artistic point of view, the decoration of the cards is nice and funny.

Played on Itch.io.

Spring Falls

9/10

1.5/1.5 hours

no achievements

Peaceful puzzle.

​A great, peaceful experience, where you have to bring water to flowers in order to make them grow. Really relaxing are the ambient sounds and music, and pleasant are the visuals and the colours. From the point of view of the gameplay, this game offers a collection of puzzles - pretty straightforward in the most cases - with a slow increase in the difficulty curve and the addition of new mechanisms going forward ​with the levels.

Played on Itch.io.

Hector: Badge of Carnage

6/10

5.5/7.4 hours

no achievements

Good P&C game.

An ok P&C adventure. It's pretty stupid, and as usual the solution to some puzzles is just "senseless". But still, this was funny. One drawback for non-native english speakers: this game focuses a lot on dialogues and puns, and the dialogues are usually in a slang, not in correct english. Thus it may be hard to understand what is being said.

Played on Steam.

1 2 3

July: Steam Sales

I don't usually buy games from Steam...

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August: Decades

That's strange, I found just one game in my library fitting the theme, and I wasn't in the right mood to play it. So it goes.

July: Mouse's favourite things

Tennis World Tour

4/10

19.3/43.8 hours

21 of 29 achievements (72%)

50€? Seriously?

Yeah, the story of this game is long and well known, the bad behaviour of the devs, the incomplete form of the game at the beginning, and so on. At the current version, the game is not bad. For a price tag of 5-10€, at least. Sure this is not what you can expect after spending 50€ for it. Content-wise: a lot of tennis players missing, a lot of tournaments missing. Extremely low level of personalization, extremely low variability. Just, one match after another. Gameplay-wise: the movements are often clunky, and the physics is pretty strange. Sometimes you ask for a certain shot, and your player does another one. When the player "engages" the ball, he will shot it quite well in the opponent's field - even if he is running in the opposite direction, falling out of equilibrium, catching it just with the tip of the racket. On the other side, he will sometimes completely fail to engage a near and simple ball. Also, AI is not really good: all the players play more or less the same, thus beating king Roger will be as simple as beating the weakest of the players.

Played on Steam.

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August: Mouse's favourite national days

This month was a pass for me.

September is coming.

Just want to share my satisfaction about completing a huge challenge: I finally went through all the Itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality!
Now I have added all the games that look at least worth a shot: next step will be playing them! :D

Issue #6

June Report

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A Tale of Challenge Me, Watchmen, and Itch

Not many games, and not many words, for this month. But the few, were mainly very good. I played quite some games for my first participation in the “Challenge me” event, going from incredibly good puzzle games (like Portal and The Talos Principle) to emotional experiences (I’m talking about Life is Strange: Before the Storm).
I really enjoyed all of them, and all of them surprised me in some way.

I knew Portal was a classic, but having played Half Life, and seeing how it felt old, I feared to have the same sensation from this; and instead, this was just great, and full of humour.
I had huge expectations on The Talos Principle, but still I didn’t really expect the mystical and deep experience this game can offer. Sometimes a little too wordy, and too much playing with words; but an extremely interesting experience it was. Not considering the good puzzles, usually very well polished.
Going back to the Life is Strange saga, I feared to be deluded by this prequel chapter, and ruin the emotions I had towards the original one. Instead, the work made by the developers here was good and delicate, being able to find an equilibrium between being just a tribute, and being too different and ruining the atmosphere. It caught me from the beginning, and carried me to the end without a stop.

Talking about my backlog, I was really good with the Steam sales, as I only bought 1 small game, and a couple of DLCs. But on the other hand, I bought the Itch.io megabundle for Racial Justice, so now I’m spending hours just going through all the stuff in there, and sorting out the good/interesting ones. So I think I will choose one month to be an “Itch.io only month”, and I will play lots of them.
And I was also incredibly lucky on SG: I won 3 games, in June, after 3 months of nothing from that point of view. Cool month! :D

During this month I also read the Watchmen saga. Cool stuff, a different point of view on superheroes. Much more human, much more metropolitan and - I may say, even if not right - noir.

BTW, no graphs or donuts this month, next month probably they will be back.

• Played & Beaten
• Monthly Theme
• PAGYWOSG
• Challenge me!

Fearless Fantasy

3.5/10

3.7/4.6 hours

14 of 24 achievements (58%)

Poor mobile game.

A poor mobile game, "converted" to PC. The gameplay is just a series of turn based battles; the story is classic and not really deep; the enemies all look the same with different dimensions; the art goes from bad to awful. The only positive part is the presence of some funny irony; but that's not enough to make this game worth the time you spend playing it.

Played on Steam.

World Ocean's Month

Not many games I played, none fitting here this time.

Live. Die. Repeat.

I tried one game, was too hard, spent too little time, and failed in the end. Next month may be better.

DISTRAINT: Deluxe Edition

7/10

2.0/6.9 hours

10 of 16 achievements (63%)

What goes around comes around.

A disturbing experience. A reflection on greed and humanity, carried out with a horror-styled, nightmarish game. The story is pretty clear from the beginning, and develops through puzzles - pretty easy, typically. The art style, the lights, the sound and the effects all together work very well, in order to create a really creepy atmosphere for this descent into darkness, towards the final event.

Played on Steam.

The Talos Principle

8.5/10

31.8/33.3 hours

33 of 40 achievements (82%)

Are we human?

This is something more than a game. It's an impressive experience, that required a lot of work from the creators. The gameplay in itself is pretty simple: a collection of "portal-inspired" puzzles. Usually not too easy, but even not too hard, perfectly balanced and very well polished. Exception made for the "bonus" ones, to find the stars: they go from pretty hard to hellish. All this is set in the framework of a somewhat futuristic Biblical story, where the main character is a robot, and has to go around and do things following the will of his God, and withstand temptations. Or fall into it. During your exploration you will find, in very suggestive and mystical locations, pieces of text, audio records, or dialogues, that will offer you philosophical reflections on life, death and being human - particularly deep reflections, sometimes, for a videogame. In the end, it's a very cool rewriting of an old-know story.

In addition, I played the Road to Gehenna DLC. A great addition to a great game. The story is related, even if not that much biblical. The interactions with the world and the characters are quite different, but still well designed. And there are some more puzzles, pretty harder and larger than in the original game. Cool DLC.

Played on Steam.

Life is Strange: Before the Storm

8.5/10

14.8/17 hours

34 of 34 achievements (100%)

Welcome back, memories.

I thought I recovered from the scars left on my soul by the original Life is Strange. I was wrong. From the first note of the soundtrack, I got thrown back to Arcadia Bay, and all that events and feelings were back too. Even worse, because this game is a prequel, so you already know what will be the fate of the main characters; and because you had already grown fond of the characters before.

The developers did a great job in creating this game. The story is good, even if shorter than the original, and with much less choices with consequences. Some mechanics are different, but of course the game is different. The music is great, as it was in the first chapter.

Played on Steam.

Portal

8.5/10

3.4/3.4 hours

7 of 15 achievements (47%)

The cake is a lie.

A classic, I finally came to play, thanks to the suggestion in this event. A familiar setting (having played Half Life not that much time ago), but sure much more modern, talking about graphics. It's a clever puzzle game, also filled with a great and strange irony. I don't know why, so often, I find that in movies and videogames the characters with the best level and kind of irony are machines. XD Anyway, this was clearly the inspiration and starting point for many successive puzzle game, it's pretty clear. The only "negative" thing, for such a good game, is that it was too short.

Played on Steam.

July is coming.

Issue #5

May Report

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A Tale of Madness, Donuts, and Real Life.

This month represents the first steps towards normal life. After the quarantine. That means: back to work! That means: less time to play.
But still, I found some time to try to tweak a little my report style, and now I have donut charts for my progress, what an incredible success! XD

Anyway, I was able to perform a huge and successful attack on my SteamGifts backlog, that now is getting very short. PAGYWOSG helped a lot, with 4 games fitting the theme. Yay!
In particular I played Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and that was quite an experience. One of the best games I’ve played so far, dealing with mental issues, but in an epic context. Just amazing, and very immersive.
Unluckily, compared to that, most of the other games I played this month didn’t feel so great, even if they were at least acceptable. As an example, I played Oxenfree, and it didn’t give me anything, I couldn’t feel it - so I want to replay it, in some time, because I feel like I simply wasn’t in the right mood to get caught by it.
For the monthly theme, I tried to play The Town of Light, developed and set in Italy, but I had major technical issues with the sound, so I abandoned it for the moment, and played Dishonored instead, developed in the near France. A really enjoyable, dark game. Particularly fit for someone who played most of Skyrim in stealth mode!

On the reading side, instead, Sandokan adventures are still going on, also because I have less time to read, due to real life, and a 2k pages volume is not that easy to carry around…
But in addition to this, I was happy about my readings on the comics side.
I finally concluded the epic saga written by Neil Gaiman, focused on the Lord of the Dreams, Sandman. It was a really long read, started several months ago, and this month I reached the end. It was a really nice character, and the adventures created by Neil Gaiman usually go from good to amazing, involving so many different mythologies and folklore. Sometimes a little harder to understand everything, with so many characters, and madness flying around - but totally satisfying, in the end.
Also, this month I read something totally different, a shorter comic - that I consider a real hidden gem. Its title is Daytripper, written by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba, and it’s set in contemporary Brazil. In the end it’s a reflection on Life and Death, performed in 10 chapters, that tell 10 key moments of the life of the main character, a writer. The style, the colours, the art, the setting, the main themes - this all gave me some Macondo vibes, reminding me the great work by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I really enjoyed it.

* as shown by GOG Galaxy 2.0

• Played & Beaten
• Monthly Theme
• PAGYWOSG

Aporia: Beyond The Valley

6.5/10

8.4/18.7 hours

23 of 41 achievements (56%)

Explore an ancient, abandoned world.

This is mainly a walking simulator. Set in an ancient world, long abandoned: you explore the remains of a once great civilization, in order to try to find out what happened. The story is explained mainly through egyptian-style murals, that you find during your explorations. There is also a number of puzzles to solve, in order to progress with the story: they're usually quite nice, pretty balanced in number and difficulty. The graphics is nice, but the game is really heavy on resources for what it offers - probably it's badly optimized - so I wasn't able to appreciate it completely.

Played on Steam.

Think locally

Dishonored

8/10

22.3/23.1 hours

30 of 80 achievements (38%)

You won't see me.

An interesting game. Set in a steampunk world afflicted by a terrible plague, you are an assassin with great weapons and supernatural powers, and you have to reach your final target, and restore your honor, successfully completing various consequent missions - missions that typically involve the elimination of a key character. In this game you can chooose different approaches to each mission: you could kill everyone in your path, or be a stealth ghost and reach the target without being seen. And typically there are different ways also to eliminate your final targets, creative ones, which encourages you to explore the environment every time. Also because your choices matter, in the end. In addition, a couple of DLCs add some depth to the story of one important character in the story.

Played on Steam.

May The 4th Be With You

Stikbold! A Dodgeball Adventure

6.5/10

5.6/8.1 hours

14 of 26 achievements (54%)

Hit me with your best shot!

A funny game, to spare some time, especially with friends. The basic mechanics is: dodgeball! Hit your enemies with the ball, and avoid being hit! Add to this a stupid story (involving hippies, bikers, and the devil itself), various fields with funny harasses peculiar to each of them... And it can become a dodgeball adventure. On the negative side, the AI is not really good, and sometimes you really feel it.

Played on Steam.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

9.5/10

10.1/13.3 hours

13 of 14 achievements (93%)

A journey into darkness.

This was an amazing experience. Following Senua in her double journey into darkness: on one side, exploring the most brutal aspect of the Norse mythology, trying to reach Hela in her kingdom; on the other, exploring the darkness inside Senua's mind. The world you see, you see through Senua's eyes, and everything is magnified: so the beautiful moments are really beautiful, but the dark ones are really dark, and the scary moments are truly terrifying. The immersion in this game is total, so you are totally involved in Senua's feelings, you can really empathise with her. Thanks to the story, also. And to the amazing voices and music. And of course the great graphics and landscapes designed. It took a huge work, with a lot of effort, to create this game; and a lot of courage to base it on a theme like mental issues. On the gameplay side, it is mainly walking around, sometimes solving simple puzzles, collecting lorestones to discover Norse myths, and some battles - pretty well balanced, hard (but not too much) and satisfying.

Played on Steam.

Shuyan Saga™

6.5/10

5.3/7.8 hours

9 of 9 achievements (100%)

Kung fu panda meets Mulan.

A nice visual novel, whose gameplay is mainly based on the choices you have in the various dialogues. Even if there are not many different paths to choose, in the end. It tells a classic story, set in a medieval China, where kung fu and magic mix up: there is the powerful enemy, the hero that runs away to master his power, and in the end defeat the enemy. The story is pleasant and keeps a good pace, and the art is pretty nice. On the other hand, the combat system is not great, sometimes not perfectly responsive, and the dynamics of the fights becomes pretty boring quite fast.

Played on Steam.

Machinarium

6.5/10

3.3/6.2 hours

12 of 12 achievements (100%)

Little robot, great hero.

A funny point and click adventure, pretty classic, with all the pros and cons of it. In particular, some puzzles can be hard because you may not get how the dev thought the puzzle should be solved. But overall, it's a relaxing short game, with funny robotic characters and locations, and very nice art.

Played on Steam.

June is coming.

Issue #4

April Report

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A Tale of Quarantine, Sandokan, and Stadia.

Ok, second month stuck at home. Trying to do smart working, but I feel pretty bored. Luckily the season is warm, so I take some time to read, open air, sunglasses on… And explore the islands around Mompracem, in the Adventures of Sandokan! I feel 15 years off, reading those books I used to love when I was a child (and still I do!).

Yeah, the fight agains my backlog is going well, this month I reached a milestone: I completed half of the games won on SteamGifts! Of course it’s not that hard, having won just 24 games this far, since I only enter games from my wishlist, and that list is pretty short… But still, it’s a milestone! :D
“Play A Game You Won On SteamGifts” events really help me, this month I was able to play two games fitting the theme, so I’m pretty satisfied… And also one game fitting the BLAEO theme! Even if it was not on Steam, but on Uplay.

And then a new obstacle appeared: Google offered Stadia Pro for free, for two months, with 9 games that can be played. And since one of them looked interesting, and another one was on my wishlist… Well, you know how it ended. It’s an interesting experience, playing a game you don’t have installed on your PC, on streaming: if the internet speeds will grow and be stable in the future, this may be the future of gaming. Today, at least where I live, in certain periods of the day it’s still too hard to get a connection fast and stable enough to play this way in a proper way.

Total Backlog (as shown by GOG Galaxy 2.0)

Steam Backlog

Won on SG

• Played & Beaten
• Monthly Theme
• PAGYWOSG

Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap

8.5/10

8/10 hours

no achievements

A classic with a great brand-new style.

I fell in love with this game. A remaster of an old classic - that I'm too young to know. But this remaster is made in a great way. The art is just lovely: the characters are really well designed, as well as the various enemies and the environment. The music is amazing too, the main theme is carried on in the different lands and dungeons and is always recognizable, and always different. And very pleasant, it gives you the strenght to defeat the monsters :D Thanks to these aspects, I can forgive some technical defects, related to the sometimes slippery movements of the character. It's a nice experience.

Played on Twitch.

Hidden Mysteries: Civil War

2/10

2.8/2.8 hours

no achievements

How HOGs should not be.

In my mind, this is not how HOGs should be. The idea is very nice: talking about a historical event, and telling it through the personal stories of a couple of soldiers, their lives, their letters and so on. But the technical application of this idea is simply awful. Random unrelated stuff from different epochs, and with random dimensions, scattered on a landscape, and with the difficulty due to the bad graphical resolution of the game, make it really hard to get inside the atmosphere of the game. Or even simply to appreciate it.

Played on Steam.

A Short Hike

7/10

2/2 hours

no achievements

A pleasant, relaxing hike.

This is a relaxing games, with some inspiration coming from Animal Crossing, I think. You go around this island, talking to ~~people~~ other animals, helping them and getting rewards. You can start digging stuff, fishing, you can play beachstickball... And reach the top of the mountain, that is the final goal of your not-that-short hike. Everybody you meet is gentle and kind, and also the game is gentle, as it doesn't ever get hard, or even challenging. If you need something relaxing for a couple of hours, this could be a nice choice.

Played on Epic.

Hidden Mysteries: Titanic

3.5/10

3.6/3.6 hours

no achievements

Not really good HOG.

Not a good HOG game, even if it's far better than the other title focused on the civil war. Still there are random objects of random size. Still the graphic quality is pretty bad. This time, at least, the items are not hard to find just because they're extra small in the far background. The game follows the story of a character on the Titanic, living strange adventures - I don't know why, but that's the way you can put HOG inside that story, so it's ok. But still, there are far better HOGs around, in every aspect.

Played on Steam.

The Mooseman

7/10

3.7/5.5 hours

15 of 15 achievements (100%)

A cultural insight.

Another nice insight into mythology and folklore: this time they come from an old Russian population. You travel across all the worlds of the living and the dead, and meet the significant spirits that populate them. Not much of a game, of course: some small and pretty easy puzzles are the only gameplay part, the rest is just walking and reading; but still an interesting experience. On top of this, the art is pretty nice.

Played on Steam.

GYLT

7.5/10

6/6 hours

no achievements

We are the real monsters.

This is an exclusive of Google Stadia, created by Tequila Works - I was curious about this game, having really enjoyed one game from this group (The Sexy Brutale). It is indeed an interesting game, with Little Nightmare vibes (or at least I think, I've never played this other title XD). The main character is a schoolgirl, who has to find her disappeared cousin. The location is the school, during the night, populated with monsters. A nightmare atmosphere, well done. Those monsters represent the theme of the game: the phenomenon of bullying at school. So every space, every room changes its appearance in a nightmarish way, and everything makes you think about that problem. On the gameplay side, it is pretty simple, both in "stealth" sequences and "fight" ones; and you are pretty guided towards the places you have to reach, every time. So in conclusion: a good game on an important social theme, but it could have been better.

Played on Google Stadia.

SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech

7/10

15/15 hours

no achievements

To kill a dragon, you need a steam-powered sword!

A nice game, from the creators of the great Steamworld Dig games. They tried to do what they had to do: keep the style, but change the game, to avoid repeating themselves forever. They had courage, and the result is indeed good. A classic epic fantasy story, where you create your team, fight enemies to level up and increase your skills, towards the final fight agains the big boss. The combat system is similar to the one of Slay the Spire, thus you have to build your deck of cards and play them during the battle to attack. If you add to this the funny style and sense of humour typical of the Steamworld games, you have a really enjoyable game. Even if the battles, after a while, get pretty repetitive, and always longer. But still... I liked much more Steamworld Dig.

Played on Google Stadia.

TOGETHER-20

I am a single player type of gamer, so I think I will only play games with AI companions. Like Child of Light, where you add companions to your team during the adventure, starting with a firefly.

Child of Light

7/10

12/13 hours

no achievements

A fairy tale.

This is a nice alternative way to tell a fairytale, and it's done in a pretty good way. The story is pretty classic but nice, and sometimes emotional; side quests and characters are not too flat and boring; the music is relaxing, and the art is really pleasant (even if a little too cold, in the colour spectrum). The continuous rhymes in dialogs also increase the sensation of being in a fable. On the other hand, the combat system is not that nice, as battles get (very) long and boring towards the end, even if you will probably never get beaten: there is something unbalanced below.

Played on Uplay.

Happy Easter! Happy Fool's day!

Guacamelee! 2

6.5/10

13/16.1 hours

27 of 49 achievements (55%)

Chicken, chicken, and more chicken.

The Chosen Juan returns! This sequel is just like the first one, full of humour, with more of everything. More enemies, more moves, and especially MORE CHICKEN! But there is nothing really new, nothing that could make it memorable. In the end it results in a funny game, but nothing memorable. And some platforming parts are just too hard to be reasonable.

Played on Steam.

Deponia: The Complete Journey

6.5/10

20.1/22.8 hours

64 of 105 achievements (60%)

Mix two random things, and explode.

A nice P'n'C adventure, where you play as Rufus: a genius of absurdity. You have to collect stuff, combine it, interact with npcs, to achieve senselessly reasonable effects and reactions, and progress with the story. And usually make something explode. And in the end, you may also save the world. The art is good, the dialogues are funny, the puzzles are often pretty difficult - sometimes overwhelmingly difficult, as the usual logic is pretty perpendicular to Rufus' mind - but in the end, it was a nice adventure.

Played on Steam.

May is coming.

March Report

Trying to get back to backlog killing, this month. I decided to try to attack my Epic and Twitch backlogs, as well as the huge Steam one. And I’m focusing on games I have already started in the past, and abandoned for some time. At the moment I have more than 30 games installed on PC: too many! I have to free some disk space.
Also, I’m beginning to use in a (hopefully) continuous way the GOG Galaxy 2.0 launcher, to manage all my games on different platforms in a single place. It looks really nice, and I think that in some months it may become a perfect and visually appealing tool for a gamer.

Steam Backlog

Won on SG

• Played & Beaten
• Monthly Theme
• PAGYWOSG

Stories Untold

6.5/10

6.7/6.7 hours

no achievements

More

This is an interactive fiction, divided into 4 chapters. Each chapter is a short, somewhat spooky and very strange story, and they are all connected together in the last chapter, so that in the end you understand the senseless stuff happening in the first three stories. Some stories are really nice, also for the visual style and "gameplay" (like the first one, House Abandon, that can be also tried for free); others are far weaker and dissatisfying. In the end, it's a really short experience (it could be played in one long session), and it was worth its price.

Played on Epic.

Half Life

5.5/10

3.4/12.8 hours

no achievements

More

22 years late, but I came to this game. It has nearly my age. And it can be seen and clearly felt. I know this game changed the rules of gaming, in the late 20th century. And you can feel its modernity, sometimes. But overall, in the year 2020, you mainly feel its being old and clunky. A game that is hard to appreciate, nowadays.

Played on Steam.

Monkey Island™ 2 Special Edition: LeChuck’s Revenge™

8/10

4/6.5 hours

7 of 12 achievements (58%)

More

The second chapter of a great, classic saga. A super funny game, really enjoyable even if it has some years. It is based a lot on dialogues - full of irony dialogues. It is pretty different from today's games, so sometimes it may be hard to know what you're supposed to do precisely... But it's good to have to use your brain, sometimes! Indeed it is a nice adventure, with an unexpected ending!

Played on Steam.

A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build

6/10

2.5/3 hours

no achievements

More

A nice, short puzzle game, where you have to roll snowballs in order to build snowmen, composed of one large, one medium and one small snowball. 30 levels in total, pretty short. Most of the puzzles are pretty easy, while a couple are much more complicated. Nothing special, nor in good sense, neither in bad sense.

Played on Twitch.

LEGO® The Hobbit™

4/10

9/9 hours

18 of 39 achievements (46%)

More

Quite meh. Yeah, LEGO and their funny sense of humour, The Hobbit and its nice story... But. The gameplay is quite boring and repetitive, destroy everything you find. The story is 99% equal to the movies, nothing is original. Legolas and Tauriel are a thing in the game. AND IT'S UNFINISHED! IT ENDS WITH THE SECOND CHAPTER, OUT OF THREE!

Played on Steam.

Never Alone: Foxtales DLC

7.5/10

1.3/5.2 hours

19 of 19 achievements (100%)

More

Finally I was able to get this DLC at a great price, and complete the nice experience that I had with Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna). This is a nice addition to the main game. It tells a new story - a shorter one, but still nice. Pretty easy, with the same little issues with physics and controls. And adds some new insights on the Inupiat folklore and culture, that are really nice.

Played on Steam.

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom

8/10

4.5/5.3 hours

9 of 12 achievements (75%)

More

A pretty nice discovery, this game. It may be considered a little gem. A good puzzle game, with some platforming aspects. Pretty hard, especially because it often requires that you do the right things, and you do them fast. There is some kind of funny story to link the levels, and it's always told in rhyme, like it was a nursery rhyme! And the funny music and the pleasant black and white graphics, together with this, create what is a pleasant experience indeed. Even if it's so hard.

Played on Steam.

Mondrian - Abstraction in Beauty

6/10

0.2/2.9 hours

23 of 39 achievements (59%)

More

First point: this has very little to relate to the great painter from whom the game takes its name. This is a casual game, inspired to the classic Breakout. Of course it adds a lot of evolution to the theme, but the main game is: bounce a ball to break all the bricks. Here you can unlock a lot of visual styles, colorful and retro, as well as changes in the behaviour of the ball and the paddle. All this adds variability to the game, but not that much. From the technical point of view there are also some strange bugs that make you miss the ball with the paddle, sometimes, even if the paddle is well placed.

Played on Steam.

PAC-MAN™ Championship Edition DX+

9/10

0.3/2.4 hours

11 of 12 achievements (92%)

More

No need to review PAC-MAN. This is a great version of a great classic, with different maps and music/video styles inspired to the various historical versions of the game. Great speed, great controls, great fun!

Played on Steam.

Let's March!

I was not really in the mood.

Life of Pi

Jalopy. I won it on SG nearly an year ago, I tried it and then abandoned... And now decided to finish it. And noticed it could fit in the theme, great!

Jalopy

4/10

12.4/17 hours

11 of 23 achievements (48%)

More

An interesting idea, performed so badly. An on-the-road experience, on an old car, from Eastern Berlin to Turkey, in the period just after the fall of the Wall. So many possibilities to tell stories, and create a great atmosphere here! So many different experiences, in the different states, that could have been caught! But this game fails completely in it, and the gameplay is a monotonous driving from a town to another, in a landscape where you can barely recognize anything, and also the typical things that you see are just useless. Adding to this the fact that the game is really buggy, and the physics and volumes sometimes act pretty senseless - this game becomes an annoying experience. Quite a pity, the idea was good, and it deserved to be performed in a far better way.

Played on Steam.

One Finger Death Punch

9/10

11.7/11.7 hours

89 of 152 achievements (59%)

More

This is exactly why indie games will never die. Because any crazy idea you can have, can become an indie game. A kung fu fighting game, played only with the two mouse buttons. Simple to learn, hard as hell to perfect. Always harder, always faster, until you start sweating. And, of course, the only (?) game with the "No Luca No" mode.

Played on Steam.

This is the end.

February Report

Hard times for my playing part, and for my backlog killing! Lots of things to do, not much time, and a more or less free subscription to Xbox GamePass kept me away from Steam. I played a couple of nice games, anyway, very happy about playing Gris and My Friend Pedro.

Steam Backlog

Won on SG

• Monthly Theme
• PAGYWOSG
• Played & Beaten

Out of This World

This month I was unable to play any game fitting the theme, next month may be better!

Love Is A Hurting Thing

Nothing to see here, either.

My Friend Pedro

9/10

6.7/6.7 hours

17 of 40 achievements (43%)

More

This is a fantastic game. And I typically don't like shooters. Not much story, of course, but a lot of actions, new ways to move around and kill enemies, and of course a floating banana to help you, say senseless things and rate your performance at the end of every level. A great way to spend some hours.

Played on Xbox GamePass.

Gris

9.5/10

5/5 hours

More

An amazing experience. Visually stunning, a real work of art. The vision, the colors, the sound... This is not precisely a game, the puzzles are quite simple. There is not a real story. It's an exploration, an exploration in the mystic landscape of emotions. Probably a couple of runs should be needed to get everything, to understand everything. Also because the first time it fills your senses so much with its beauty, that you may lose the underlying message.

Played on Xbox GamePass.

Silence

6.5/10

5.1/5.1 hours

15 of 42 achievements (36%)

More

A nice, short adventure in a magic world. Visually it's pretty good, and most of the riddles are quite easy, so that the game results relaxing. But there are some absurd puzzles; the controls are sometimes clunky; and the story has some weak parts.

Played on Xbox GamePass.

September Report

My first month as an Assassin!
A successful month, I would also say, with 2 really good games, 2 nice games, and unluckily a not so good game. Also, a high percentage of achievements unlocked: 74%, not bad for not being a completionist.
Next month I will sure play Monkey Island 2, and maybe something scary related to Halloween… Might be a nice time to finally complete Dead Space on Origin!
And I’ll try to also face the monthly themes of BLAEO and PAGYWOSG… Wow, quite a number of games already!

Monthly Theme

Deal with the DLC

Just in time!

12 is Better Than 6: The Apostles

8/10

3.5/11.5 hours

46 of 46 achievements (100%)

More

A nice expansion to the main story of "12 is better than 6", that is itself a really nice western game, with a very peculiar art.

It adds some variations to the base gameplay, and also some difficulties, but it results really enjoyable anyway.

Special: Play a game you won on Steamgifts

Yay, I was able to do it! Just one game, just in time - but it was hard.

Munin

7/10

12.8/12.8 hours

16 of 18 achievements (89%)

More

A nice puzzle game, with an interesting setting in the norse mythology.

The gameplay is simple in its logic, but it can become really challening when going on through the different worlds, each characterized by its own element (water, fire) or obstacle. The only negative aspect is the graphics, that is not up to the rest of the game.

Played and Beaten

Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders

7/10

7.9/7.9 hours

40 of 50 achievements (80%)

More

The story is inspired by the book by Agatha Christie, and it results very intriguing. In the game you are the inspector Poirot, and you have to collect hints and evidence, draw conclusions and solve the mystery using your most powerful weapon: your "little grey cells".

To be honest, there aren't many riddles in the game, and they are usually quite simple. More interesting are, instead, the logical chains needed to draw conclusions, and the interrogations of the suspects. The graphics is not stunning, and the controls are sometimes clunky. All in all, this is a good way to meet a nice Poirot investigation.

The Big Journey

8.5/10

0.7/4.8 hours

25 of 31 achievements (81%)

More

The hero: a catball rolling and jumping around!

The mission: finding Mr. Choo, following a track made of dumplings across different levels, also meeting new friends!

Funny, cute, colorful, relaxing and challenging in a balanced way: I say YES. The only flaw: movement controls are seldom lightly bugged.

Goosebumps: The Game

4/10

1.4/2 hours

22 of 40 achievements (55%)

More

Monsters from the "Goosebumps" book series are in town: save the world, and stay alive!

The idea is ok... The game is not. Nothing interesting in this point & click game: not the story, nor the graphics, neither the gameplay. The nostalgia effect alone cannot be enough.

Sintassi speciale.

Una bella BARRA DEI PROGRESSI!
Posso copiarla dalla pagina dei miei giochi qua.

Qua iniziano i giochi.

Da sinistra a destra:
Unfinished, Completed, Never played, Beaten.

• Baseball Mogul Diamond
  

  26 minutes playtime

  no achievements

• Last Day of June
  

  4 hours playtime

  21 of 21 achievements

• Deponia: The Complete Journey
  

  3 hours playtime

  0 of 105 achievements

• FootLOL: Epic Fail League
  

  6 hours playtime

  13 of 15 achievements

Qua metto IMMAGINE, LINK E SCREENSHOTS, VOTO, TEMPO DI GIOCO, ACHIEVEMENTS, e anche una RECENSIONE

Verde = <div class="panel panel-success">
Azzurro = <div class="panel panel-info">
Arancio = <div class="panel panel-warning">
Rosso = <div class="panel panel-danger">
Bianco = <div class="panel panel-default">

Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders

7/10

7.9 hours

40 of 50 achievements (80%)

More

La storia - ispirata al romanzo di Agatha Christie noto anche con il titolo "La serie infernale" - è molto intrigante. Il gioco ci permette di vestire i panni dell'investigatore Poirot, e di raccogliere indizi, trarre conclusioni e svelare il mistero utilizzando la nostra arma più potente: le "celluline grigie".

In realtà gli enigmi non sono molti, e sono relativamente semplici. Più interessanti invece le catene logiche per trarre conclusioni, e gli interrogatori dei sospettati. Graficamente nulla di speciale; i controlli a volte non sono molto precisi e mettono in difficoltà nell'eseguire certe azioni. Nel complesso, consigliabile per avere un modo differente di conoscere una bella indagine di Poirot.

Codici colore:

#5BC0DE = Azzurro (Completed)
#5CB85C = Verde (Beaten)
#F0AD4E = Arancio (Unfinished)
#D9534F = Rosso (Will never play)
#EEEEEE = Bianco (Never played yet)

Icone dei launcher

Steam: <img src="https://img.icons8.com/fluent/48/000000/steam.png"/>
GOG: <img src="https://img.icons8.com/fluent/64/000000/gog-galaxy.png"/>
Epic: <img src="https://img.icons8.com/fluent/48/000000/epic-games.png"/>
Uplay: <img src="https://img.icons8.com/fluent/48/000000/uplay.png"/>
Twitch: <img src="https://img.icons8.com/fluent/48/000000/twitch.png"/>
Itch: <img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/60/000000/itch-io.png"/>
Origin: <img src="https://img.icons8.com/fluent/48/000000/origin.png"/>
Xbox: <img src="https://img.icons8.com/color/64/000000/xbox--v1.png"/>
Battle.net: <img src="https://img.icons8.com/fluent/48/000000/battle-net.png"/>

##Donut!
https://medium.com/@heyoka/scratch-made-svg-donut-pie-charts-in-html5-2c587e935d72

https://img.icons8.com/ios-filled/21/A94442/nintendo-switch.png

img style=”vertical-align: -3px” src=”https://img.icons8.com/ios-filled/21/A94442/nintendo-switch.png” title=”Played on Switch”

##TABELLA!

• Monthly Theme
• PAGYWOSG
• Played & Beaten