Cool Stuff I Liked in April 2026
Playing
Castle Chase - An old, old RPG Maker otome game that I played yeeeears ago. I thought I might even have posted about it on tumblr back in the day but I don’t have anything tagged Castle Chase. But, looking at when I was most actively into otome games and playing everything that was available in English at the time (Yo Jin Bo, Starry Sky, Star Project… man what a time), it was probably around 2012. There were only so many, so otome game fans were playing absolutely anything that was available. Castle Chase tends to get mentioned alongside Original English-Language VNs from the time (like Re:Alistair) even though it has RPG Maker gameplay rather than being a VN. I needed help from a walkthrough at a couple of points, and found that the only way to refer to one was to use the Wayback Machine. (I’m kind of thinking of remedying this by making a Carrd or something just to copy the content of the official walkthrough and making it more easily accessible with a regular web search - do you think I should? 🤔) I’m glad I went through the extra effort of checking out every branch and seeing all of the endings, especially the rare variations where you get the only chance to see a few rooms of the castle that are otherwise inaccessible (the King’s room and the treasure room). By doing so, it unlocked a trailer for a sequel, which doesn’t look like it’s ever been made available, but I did find a video about it from the developer.
I wish there were more games like this - a quick and simple storyline that’s doable in one session, but with lots of replay value because small choices open up drastically different branches (or make them inaccessible - for example the choice between giving the gold chain to the knight or to Clair) and rearrange the state of the maps (different NPCs moving to different areas as time passes or as you achieve various things). The adventure game-like structure of picking up lots of items and figuring out where to use them, or who wants them, is always my number one favorite style of gameplay.
Stand By Me: Otome Isekai RPG (Demo) - Pretty cute, and a fairly substantial demo because I haven’t actually reached the end of it yet. Seems like the heroine’s life would be a lot easier if she just claimed that the coma she woke up from caused amnesia so that the other characters would explain some things, instead of being told “Hey, go to [location she doesn’t know] and talk to [character she doesn’t know],” and responding like “Oh, gee, okay!” and struggling to figure everything out on the fly. But if it WERE that way, then we’d miss out on piecing together the lore and worldbuilding in the way the author intends, and the pacing would be ruined because (assumedly) the whole situation would be explained as soon as the heroine made it known that she doesn’t know. So 🤷. It’s cute though!
Alba: A Wildlife Adventure - First posted about this in my 2025 summary, but I hadn’t actually finished the game yet at that time. Earlier this month, I picked it up a couple more times to finish the last few in-game days of gameplay. What a super sweet story! I even 100%ed all of the wildlife pics. 💪
Touch Detective 3 + The Complete Case Files - Finally finished this collection yeaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!! So, Touch Detective on the DS is a game that I physically owned back in the day, and I’m very nostalgic for its silly and surreal world. The second Touch Detective game is one that I played once I started getting into roms and emulation, which also feels like ages ago, and I’m also nostalgic about it in a different way. I, in fact, DID NOT KNOW AT ALL that there was a third game in the series, up until the exact moment that the trailer for this collection dropped. It’s a good, cute, and very strange game series (affectionate), and it’s too bad that the only localization for the third game is through Nicalis because it’s rife with awkward grammatical and punctuation errors. So, the third game is missing some of the punchiness of the earlier two, but I’m still glad to have been able to experience it at all.
Stones of Solace - I’ve picked up and played this now and then every once in a great while over the years that this game has been available, but this is the first month that I’ve dedicatedly loaded it up and crafted a fancy little bowl o’ leaves with regularity (not strictly every day, just most days). It’s calming and grounding and I quite like the ritual of it. There should be more games like this, where you just enjoy putting together something that looks pretty and then you are done for the day.
Casual Gaming
Guess the Poorly-Described Game - A new spinoff of the daily “Guess The Game,” which I've played fairly regularly for a while. Can be easier than the usual Guess The Game, because you might be able to recognize what game it's describing even if you only vaguely know what that particular game is about (in the regular Guess the Game you might just not ever be able to recognize the random zoomed-in screenshots if it's a game you've just never seen before).
Murdoku - Like Queens (which I mentioned I was enjoying playing in February) but with more obstacles in the sections, and interesting parameters for placing the “suspects” in relation to them. This makes it much more visually interesting than Queens and that can be all it takes for me to like something more lol. Wish it had a comprehensive hint system like that specific version of Queens Ultimate that I linked above, but, I'm getting better at using what I've learned by playing Queens and applying it to this game as well. 💪
Reading
The Burning Page - The third volume of The Invisible Library series. Don’t pick this one up if you haven’t read the others because it won’t make any sense without context from the earlier entries. I got ~40% through this and then my hold lapsed so now I gotta wait to get it back. 😭 I wish I’d gotten a little bit further because then maybe there would be some explanation for, I don’t know, anything, because things were very “WHAT IS GOING ON, WHY ARE WE BEING ATTACKED” at the point where my hold lapsed and that makes it hard to want to continue. I need just a shred of an answer or a clue to latch onto rather than just watching the characters helplessly not know. 😅 But the hook is probably, like, ten pages away from where I was cut off. 😭
…Did I really not read anything else this month, not a manga or anything? Sounds like it’s time to dive into another of the Manga Classics.
Watching
Witch Hat Atelier - 🤩 SOOOO BEAUTIFUL. Just as spectacular as we all anticipated. I don’t know if I will continue watching the whole thing or maybe stop at about the same point where I dropped the manga. When things start getting despairingly painful for the kiddos, I usually tap out. But morbid curiosity might keep me in 😑, plus the fact that everything else going on is very, very investing.
Princess Tutu - What a beautiful story. 🥺😭 Such a triumphant ending! 💪🦢 …It felt a bit silly to go from this to Rozen Maiden lol.
Rozen Maiden - This is another Classic™️ of the 2000’s internet era; most online folks in anime spaces at that time associate it with the Desu meme, but Rozen Maiden is also required viewing for Jfashion fans who inevitably encountered it through brand collabs that officially released some of the dresses, dolls, and even official tea sets. I really had no idea what this was about at all so I was very surprised to learn that the central character is a boy and also that the dolls all fight each other (to the death???). Grateful to be watching something that only has 12 episodes. 🙏 But it does have more seasons that I might move on to if I like it.
Oh My Goddess: Flights of Fancy - This is the second season of the 2000’s adaptation, and I’m recognizing more from some of my favorite chapters of the manga, and also it took this long for one of my fave characters, Peorth, to be introduced. 🌹
Panyo Panyo Di Gi Charat - Another season of Di Gi Charat that reimagines Dejiko as a princess in a fantasy kingdom. This series makes more sense than the original run, with an actual storyline and consistent cast of characters (who are all REALLY REALLY cute!!!) and a more interesting fantasy world setting. For some reason, Rabi en Rose is missing, but I like Rinna (the very kind and gentle teal-haired one) so I forgive them.
Sailor Moon S - I think we’re in the back half of this, where Rini has befriended the ~mysterious, frail, dark-haired girl~ and Sailor Pluto has joined the squad. I’m pretty sure that as a youngin, I never saw a lot of these episodes at all (especially from that first half, before Sailor Pluto had shown up and Uranus and Neptune had unknown, seemingly-ulterior motivation). Felt like I would check in on the show on TV and suddenly there were all these new Sailor Scouts that I had no context for, so I’m really glad to be seeing how the story reached that point now.
Super Mario Galaxy Movie - This was way back at the start of the month and now I’ve gotta remember it lol. Good fun and a delightful time, really liked the inclusion of Yoshi and seeing more of the world the Toads live in (the montage of solving various Toad Problems was great). And, man, Star Fox!!!!!! The animated sequence where Fox described his backstory, and all of the Star Fox music during space battle scenes really stole the show. Oh, and I liked Yoshi rescuing the babies. 🐣
Star Fairies, Bitsy Bears - I’m always interested in one-off episodes of 80s/90s toy lines, and both of these were notably cute. The Star Fairies are super sweet and I actually recognized a couple of the Bitsy Bears characters from toys that I had. Into the giant folder of cartoons for randomly shuffling whenever I ‘want to watch something but don’t know what to watch’ they go!
