Mae Burns Down Thedas

a sideblog for @maedaeme so I don't spam everyone with my liveblogging lmao. no real content here, just yelling about games. header by 8pxl!

[maewrecksthedas]

more demos this month, plus some shorter games - going to be adding visuals to these because going back to skim them is rough on my adhd. readmored further down for length.

Entropy demo - recommended by a friend. inverted camera controls are kicking my ass, please let me toggle them. otherwise grimdark fantasy that casually messes around with gender is very my shit, but I am terrified of companion permadeath.

Virtue and a Sledgehammer demo - recommended by the same friend by saying 'it's going to hurt you and I think you need to hit things' and he was extremely correct. will be buying it when it's out. already very heavy on exploring familial trauma, so be warned. also heavy on the eyestrain.

The Alighieri Circle demo - Unfortunately, I think tumblr has made dante's inferno funny to me, so I don't think a game centered around taking it extremely seriously was ever going to land. other than that, if walking sims with a sprinkle of puzzle for flair are your thing, this seems like a solid entry. demo is short.

Red Tape - short and sweet exploration game about falling out of of heaven for mystery reasons and getting a corporate job in hell. definitely just fetch quests: the game but charming all of the same. one of those things i'd recommend to a very particular kind of person, and you'll probably know in 5 minutes if that person is you.

Crossroad OS - Pony-island-esque game with slightly less polish. Didn't overstay its welcome, and didn't take itself too seriously. Pretty solid if you like puzzles with silly-spooky set dressing, or if you just really wanted to walk around in the old microsoft maze screensaver for a little while.

The Dark Queen of Mortholme - uses the ol 'what if you were the boss of a dark souls game' concept to have a surprisingly thoughtful dialogue about growth, change, and why we push forward. genuinely enjoyed the writing. went back and got all endings and i would not recommend 'winning' unless you've finished the other two because it does not hit the same. very worth $5.

[maewrecksthedas]

perusing the new dark heresy info and i want to make it clear this is legit just me trying to figure stuff out but like

isn't this less a forbidden romance and more like... a flavor of doomed romance? like. less 'i forbid you to kiss' and more 'we can try to kiss but when I get within 5 feet of you there is a 80% chance i will bleed from the ears and pass out' kind of situation?

[maewrecksthedas]

trek through backlog continues!

Radiotext demo - bounced off. wish it was more of an 'explore the os' type of game. may try again later.

Forbidden Solitaire - exactly what it needed to be. story is nothing to write home about but. as the game says. it's fucking solitaire! would play several more games like it.

You Shouldn't Be Here - a not-subtle vn/horror game about how society fails people. one of those games that feels like it was made because the dev needed to get it out. i could see it hitting some people as pretentious but one monologue really got to me.

Dragon Ruins (1 & 2) - calls itself an rpg for lazy people and basically is that. I'm a lazy people. Has potential but is currently a little shallow on the lore for me, which, to be fair, it doesn't try not to be. 1 is skippable, basically a $3 proof of concept.

Greenhearth Necromancer - should be my type of idle game, but... it's just not getting its hooks in. I think this is definitely a game for somebody, just not for me.

Sledding Game - did straight up get giddily emotional making coco with friends so like? maybe this game fixed me

[maewrecksthedas]

just go for the throat then. okay

[maewrecksthedas]

April games - i've really had a horror game itch lately. i thought i played way more of them. maybe i've just been watching a lot of youtube.

WATER WOMB WORLD - scientist goes to the ocean to find god. free! wish it was longer (like 20 minutes tops, I enjoyed running through twice for the dev commentary) but can't complain. net mechanic took me a minute to figure out.

Horripilant - horror-ish game hindered by being an incremental clicker. love the art style and kingsfield-dark-souls vibe though and i'm still playing it so that says something.

Vampire Crawlers - new go-to 'brain tired but needs enrichment' game.

All Hail the Orb - fairly short as far as idle games go, but to avoid overstaying its welcome I think it needed to be. kinda goofy.

Parallel Experiment - on the fence about this one. decent co-op puzzle game that doesn't really do anything new with the story. felt like a simpler/more straightforward Cube Escape/The Past Within.

Diorama Break (demo) - 4th wall-breaking RPG that decided to make it the core feature instead of a twist. liked it way more than expected. reviews complained about not enough combat, but I kinda wish there wasn't any at all lol.

RUNT (demo) - horror VN about having the worst family ever. fucked up (positive). desperately want the full game to come out because I need to know wtf all of that was about.

[maewrecksthedas]

further game updates (the sun is finally out thank god):

broken reality - fun exploration game with pretty much every shortfall you would expect a 'distilled internet' game to have. especially one that leans hard into vaporwave.

Lost Wiki Kozlovka - my type of game but the depth just wasn't there. could have felt better if it built more atmosphere, maybe? won't be too hard on it because it was only $5.

The King is Watching - solid time killer. just enough strategy to be engaging while still throwing a movie on, which my adhd brain likes. I think i still prefer Loop Hero for this kind of thing.

Slay the Spire 2 - 9/10 having a great time.

[maewrecksthedas]

game updates:

TR-49: solid puzzle game. 90% reading. some solutions are half logic, half brute force. took me about 5 hrs but I got up in the middle to cook. didn't do anything super new storywise but it didn't really need to.

Eclipsium: absolutely 100% my shit. love this game. probably need to play it like 8 more times to actually understand what happened but it made me feel some kind of way. downside: the shaders gave me a headache.

[maewrecksthedas]

Quick wrap-up of the more casual/background games I've been playing this month while i work thru my movie backlog:

Forward: Escape the fold - more engaging than i expected for this type of card roguelike, but after an hour it feels like you've really seen all there is. which is a bummer, because there's potential.

Slots & Daggers - this only came out a month after cloverpit, but it feels like fantasy cloverpit lite. still fun.

Monsters are Coming! Rock and Road - the bullet hell+tower defense combo can be REALLY GOOD but something about this just doesn't feel cooked yet. still being updated, which is promising.

BallxPit - 100/10 nothing has had me going 'one more round' this much since vampire survivors

[maewrecksthedas]

finished Asylum - had previously heard this one handled mental illness well. It so doesn't lmao. i have opinions. that aside, the mystery was interesting but the ending felt like one of those half-endings you get before unlocking the 'true' ending on a 2nd run. i looked it up. it isn't. made me roll my eyes pretty hard. filing this under 'it was fine' because my grievances could apply to like 99% of games in this genre. ymmv.

[maewrecksthedas]

attempting to better track my media backlog in 2026 to trick my brain into doing my hobbies.

on that note, so far in 2026 I've played:

Jump the Track: bit on the nose, but I liked it. art was good.

Chronicles of Taldun - The Remainder: feels like this game was made in a lab for me specifically. difficult rec for that reason.

taking my Dark Knight girlfriend to the corner store: cute. short. clearly made for fun but not in a bad way.

L.S.Ds (Love Sucking Demons): interesting fictional account of stonewall - not a bad game but not for me. pov character being a fed felt odd. I get what they were going for but. yeah.

EXTREME MEAT PUNKS FOREVER: extremely heavy-handed, which is probably the point. endearing for the first few chapters, lost me in the last few due to pacing issues.

Mediterranea Inferno: feels like an arthouse horror film in both good and bad ways. very pretty game though.

Space Marine II: ok, I get the appeal of playing as a massive dude in a suit of armor now. (I am still tired of ultram_rines)

[maewrecksthedas]

did the whole 'randomly open a game in my steam library because my brain is ick' thing and ended up playing carimara

which turned out to be a phenomenal thing to do. worth $5, please buy it, get the secret ending, i need another one.

[maewrecksthedas]

good achievements also

[maewrecksthedas]

did the whole 'randomly open a game in my steam library because my brain is ick' thing and ended up playing carimara

which turned out to be a phenomenal thing to do. worth $5, please buy it, get the secret ending, i need another one.

[maewrecksthedas]

i don't think this game intended to make me root for a divorce

[maewrecksthedas]

gave eternal strand a go since it was on sale - if i was to say anything, it's that the first 2-3 hours of the game feel early access, but once you kick past that and get to the actual core gameplay loop it's pretty fun. I think i'm 10? hours in? and it feels way more solid than it did 4 hours ago. some of the lore does make me go 'this is just dragon age but... again' in places.

also - one core mechanic is built around grinding to craft better armor, but combat is not actually difficult enough to constantly stonewall you if you don't do that. like. you will have to at some point, but you can clear decent chunks without planning that hard, until suddenly you do.

boss mechanic is neat, weather mechanics are neat. maybe i'll feel differently once i see how much is here but rn like... buy it on sale and it's a good time. it feels like a solid $20 game. $40 feels like a lot unless there is way more here than I'm expecting.

[maewrecksthedas]

playing a few other w_rhammer games. probably won't be quite as livebloggy. currently between mechanicus and (eventually) chaos gate. maybe darktide at some point if I get fun money.

anyway I appreciate that scaevola is kind of a dick 24/7

[maewrecksthedas]

trying to find community resources for this is definitely a supreme roulette wheel. going into every thread/video/audio/whatever like 'gee I hope this is an interesting insight and not just racism'

[maewrecksthedas]

listening to a 40k lore podcast. it's over for me