There is no title

I live by one rule. Never not reblog Bebop.

[thatoldstandby]

Games What I Played May 2k26

What's up chat, it's the end of another month. Somehow. I don't know why, but it also tends to sneak up on me. Anyway, I've played a few games, as is usual. Less than normal though; after finish Cold Steel 4, I decided slash was bulled into taking a break. So I decided to read a couple books, touch some grass, the works. It was good. So surely this month will be shorter than normal, right? Right? Ha. Haha.

Oh also, I didn't take a bunch of screenshots for some games, and I took a lot of screenshots for one in particular, so I've dropped a couple of those bonus screenshots in with other games because I have so many. I hope they don't stand out too much, I just wanted to make sure that people wouldn't be confused when Slay the Spire suddenly has a gun, making it 1000% better.

2025 End of Year Entries: GOTY, Epilogue

2026 Entries: January, February, March, April

2026 Demos: Spring (Part 1, Part 2);

Old Games

Slay the Spire

I hate Slay the Spire. I want to be very clear. I hate this game. It doesn’t click with me at all, and I didn’t expect it to. “So then why’d you play it?” Thanks, reasonable person I made up just now, that’s a good question. I can’t think of any indie game that continues to be as influential as it is  Which is to say, maybe the most influential indie game? Even though I hadn’t played this before, I knew that this is probably where the pick-three structure of basically every modern roguelike comes from, where you get to pick one of three cards as a reward for each match. The level select option is brilliant, and while pretty clearly based on something like FTL’s level structure, has itself been stolen by other roguelikes. It’s foundational in a way that I think is weird, and I’ve always kind of had it in the back of my head that “Hey, I should check this out, huh.” And then Slay the Spire 2 came out, and I’ll be damned if I don’t get even the tiniest bit of fomo. So now, seven years after it first came out, I can finally give my thoughts.

And I hate it. I dislike playing it. I beat a run with each of the characters, where beat means I beat the third floor boss; I did not beat the heart, or anything that would come after. (Though I don’t think anything actually comes after?) Some of the characters were a cakewalk; I think the Ironclad and the Silent still have a number of unlocks they could get, and I can’t say I didn’t have fun. This automatically puts it above, say, Demonschool, a game that I hate because I think it is foundationally broken. (Though there’s been a new patch that added a bunch of stuff, maybe it’s gotten better. Who knows. I won’t.) No, I hate Slay the Spire because it does what it intends to do very well, and it makes me feel dumb because I cannot wrap my brain around it.

Slay the Spire is a deckbuilder. Slay the Spire is maybe the best, most pure deck builder that exists outside of like, Dominion. Your character enters the tower with ten cards, some attack, some defense, some with other effects, and you have to beat monsters and climb the titular spire because a whale told you to. Along the way, you’re presented the option of picking up cards. Now, you could pick up cards, and in other deck building games I’ll be talking about later in this very post you may be well suited to pick those cards up. But Slay the Spire doesn’t want you to do that, and will punish you later if your deck is bloated and inefficient.

When this works, it works beautifully. Part of the reason I continued playing through with each character was because the sheer amount of joy I got with my Shiv Silent and Lightning Orb Defect was astounding. I had a level of power in a card game that you don’t really see in card builders. But, those ideal builds were few and far between, and built off lucky streaks where the stars aligned and my card offerings were good. Which is where my issues lie.

If I had played another 10, 20 hours in Slay the Spire, and really knuckled down, I could probably have the necessary skill and knowledge to be able to ameliorate any bad luck, or be able to identify the different effective builds I could go for with whatever card is available. That’s a problem with me, because I have so many other games I want to play that I can’t really allow myself to get too bogged down in something I’m not *really* enjoying. 

But a bigger issue is that I just don’t understand deck building at a fundamental level. I can recognize when a deck is doing what something cool, but I have trouble figuring out what’s worth going for, what can be safely cut without losing too much power, when it should be cut, when a run isn’t going to work, etc. I have this issue with Magic: The Gathering and other TCG games as well. I know this also stems from a lack of knowledge, and I could solve that by netdecking, at least, but that seems to take a lot of the fun out of it. 

Ultimately, I hate Slay the Spire. It’s a good game, a really good game, and I can see how it’s gotten where it is. I may give Slay the Spire 2 a try later on, even, though I’d imagine my issues will never be addressed. But boy am I glad that this doesn’t click with me.

Picayune Dreams

I’ve previously talked about how much I like Vampy Survivy. I love that game, but more importantly, I love the genre it spawned. I’m always willing to try out a new one, so when I saw a streamer bounce off Picayune basically immediately, I had to give it a try.

And I can wholly tell why. This game is one of the most intentionally opaque games I’ve ever played. The character and enemy sprites are jarring and absurdist, the field gets littered with numbers (instead of some other experience indicator) leading to a busy looking game screen, and all the weapon effects are displayed to you in code during a run, so fuck you if you can’t read code or don’t know what the weapon does. All this coalesces into a game that’s so much visual noise.

It took a bit, but I did get used to it, and I found a pretty good Vampy Survivy in there. It’s maybe the hardest I’ve played, and it leans more into bullet hell-style encounters than most of it’s contemporaries, with boss patterns that wouldn’t feel terribly out of place for an early-game Touhou enemy. I’ve had a lot of fun poking at it and trying out various combinations, and every win feels like a triumph, unlike modern-day Vampy Survivy. It’s good, and it’s got a plot that’s fine and told in an interesting enough way. I’ll probably never see the true end (due to being awful at bullet hell), but I’ll certainly continue to try. 

New

Forbidden Solitaire

I was really excited for this, so you’d best believe I picked it up on launch and sat down and played it immediately. And then I stood up five hours later after beating it. Prognosis: It’s good! It’s fun. It’s a good solitaire with a neat wrapper.

I had higher hopes; I think (one of) the team’s previous game, Home Safety Hotline, was more interesting and had better hooks. But I haven’t played an honest to god solitaire game in a while, and it was kind of refreshing. The wrapper story is cute and evocative of both a certain era of games (that I have nostalgia for) and like decade old creepypasta stories (which I also have nostalgia for, but more in that they’re bad). It’s neat, recommended. 

A Planet Full of Cats

Speaking of games that were cute, I’ve been tangentially aware of the X Full of Cats series for a while, because Steam advertises them at me for some reason. They’re essentially cute Where’s Waldo games where you have to find cats (and other things) in a large illustration. They’re simple, cute, and do not appeal to me. But then I saw this one was advertised as a Metroidvania, and I had to figure out how it was a Metroidvania.

And the answer is not really. There’s “upgrades” you find that allow you to access new areas, which is basically the definition of a Metroidvania I guess, but that’s where the similarities end. That and the game map basically takes place on cat Brinstar. The game is still Where’s Waldo, but there’s a few more steps, and the map is slightly more complicated. I enjoyed my time; very much the “Sensible Chuckle” of the month.

Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors

As previously stated, I fucking love Vampy Survivy. Sure, I adore the genre it created, and frankly I still think it feels the best to play of any of the rest that have followed to date. But I also love the aesthetics, and how they’ve moved from blatantly ripping off Castlevania sprites to slightly-less-blatantly ripping off Castlevania sprites. It’s great. Bayonetta is still basically on the title screen! So I was intrigued when they announced Vampire Crawlers as the first spin-off, I was intrigued. Maybe a little dismayed too. I knew how addictive Vampy Survivy was to me, and I knew how addictive Slay the Spire was to others, so a combination of the two seemed like black tar heroin.

Having played it now…. It’s ok. It’s fine. It plays basically the same as Slay the Spire, though there’s more emphasis on playing with a larger deck. Each card has a mana cost, and you have limited amounts of mana. The trick is, though, that if you play cards in a run (that is to say, sequentially), the later cards in the combo will have more power, which means more damage or more mana or armor gain or stat buffs. It’s a simple change, but I think it lends itself more to a large deck that you’re trying to shuffle through or, in the ideal, draw all at once and have 30+ cards in your hand to play with.

I don’t think this is as elegant as Slay the Spire. I think Slay the Spire is a better designed game with better deckbuilding. But I like Vampire Crawlers more; it’s ethos is way more suited for how I play games and the collecting I want to do. And more than that, I think this emulates the way Vampy Survivy feels in a slower paced, less actiony environment. It’s kind of a miracle? One that I’m fine with. I really enjoyed my time, and I’ve now gotten every cheevo. There’s one last thing I will probably do, but may be putting down until some kind of content update. And there’s room for more content here, so I’ll be super interested to see how it evolves in the future.

Marathon

I hate this game, because now I have to offer a revision to what I said back in… February, jesus. I wasn’t fully wrong, in that review of the demo, that’s a lot of what Marathon is. Marathon is an extraction shooter with short time to kill, and extraction games are games made for perverts. The thing is, I was wrong about whether this was a genre for me. It is. I just need the Bully.

The match that really convinced me I was wrong, I loaded in with a free loadout, which the game provides if you’re poor and need a handout, and the loadout included the Bully SMG. I don’t know that it’s the best gun in the game. I do know that it’s my favorite. The speed, accuracy, and audiovisual feedback of shooting the gun triggered every good brain feel that an FPS can give me. So I knew that I was fully grabbed. But on top of that, I think I finally understood Marathon. Marathon is a game that’s made of two halves, and which half you’re playing depends on if you’re with anyone else. When you’re solo, you’re in a stealth horror game. The best way to play is move slowly, scoping out zones before running in, and keeping a mental note of the environment around you and how you can escape if violence suddenly explodes around you. And encounters have a way of exploding. It’s great, it’s tense, and every escape feels like a victory. It’s reminiscent of the best stealth games, another genre I love. Aces.

The second half is just as good, but much more madcap. Whenever you’ve got friends with you, congratulations, you’re playing a game with friends. It’s automatically a good time, because you’re hanging out with people you like. And here, you get to act like a fireteam who have each other’s backs. You can move faster, because you’ve got automatic support, and you still have to pay attention, but at least you’re (hopefully) close enough.

Everything else about Marathon is as impeccably designed. The maps are sprawling, and each of the areas has interesting map design that lead to good fire fights. Map design is a science, and god damn if Bungie doesn’t have it down. The aesthetics are on-point. I’ve got so many screenshots from this game, because the sky boxes are brilliant sci-fi paintings, and the world design is an intentional weird, plastic look because everything is 3D silk-spit printed. The codex is fascinating to read, has great audio logs, and is a good callback to the terminals in Marathon Classic. It all coalesces.

It’s not perfect, it’s very much not for everyone, and if I’m being honest, I think it’s kind of doomed. Sony bought Bungie for (frankly) too much at the time, and Bungie was, and maybe still is, extremely mismanaged, which led to Destiny 2 falling off and then dying. I don’t know how long Bungie has left, and I don’t know how a niche genre is going to thrive in an era where Sony is realizing that GaaS games don’t print money, especially games as niche as Marathon. But until then, I’ll enjoy what we have, for we have already lost it. 

Real Media

The River Has Roots

I don’t talk a lot about the alternative media I experience. A part of that is because I have trouble finding time to sit down and actually watch or read stuff. It’s not impossible; y’all have read my games musing for a year and a half or so at this point, I clearly have the time. I just have trouble being the mindspace for a new show or book.

Luckily, I’ve been able to force myself to read for fun a bit more than usual, and one of the books I’ve had in my TBR for…. A year? A half year? has been The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar. El-Mohtar has been running in SFF circles for a while, primarily as a short form author and reviewer. I’ve read a few of her short stories, I believe, not a lot of her poetry. I think it’s safe to say that she became more widely known as one of the two authors on This is How You Lose the Time War, particularly after noted Twitter reviewer bigolas dickolas wolfwood gave a glowing review. If I can be a bit of a hipster for a second, I was always in on This is How You Lose the Time War, mostly because I was aware, and a fan, of Max Gladstone’s other works. Three Parts Dead was so good that I threw it against the wall more than a few times out of jealousy. Hate it, highly recommended.

Anyway, pulling it back, only to immediately go on another tangent; I love reading romaence novels. I will never discuss them with people, and I don’t really critically consume them. As much as it’s a genre I enjoy, I don’t really have a broad enough experience with it to really critically approach it, and I don’t really feel like discussing it with people at large. But, one of the reasons I enjoy it is the adherence to a formula. It’s mentally satisfying, like a procedural show, to have a framework for understanding what’s going to happen. And then the genre is entirely about two people coming to a mutual understanding. It’s great.

All of that to say, The River Has Roots is a romaence novel. Of sorts. It’s also a faerie tale. Of sorts. But the reason I’m discussing it here is that it’s more than that; it’s maybe one of the most beautiful love letters to the idea of language as a whole.

This story is about a pair of sisters whose job is to sing to willows, because in singing they impart some kind of magic to them. Their home is on a river, which is downstream of some fae nonsense, and fae nonsense is suffused throughout the story. It’s a love story, a lot of love stories. A love story between sisters, between lovers, and most of all with language. It’s beautiful, and worth the effort to work through, especially for how short it is.

[lakevida]

Put me on a crane and I would instinctually know how to operate it. It would be like reuniting with a love from a past life to me

when children reach an age that they can sit upright unassisted they should be placed in the cab of lots of different types of heavy machines to see what they can innately pilot

[smolwriter]

i went at not writing island and saw all of you there

[starknstarwars]

Me on not writing island, looking at you on not writing island knowing we’ll both be here tomorrow.

[niraves]

[cloudabserk]

WARNING do NOT start reading books and comics or watching movies or looking at art!!! you will start wanting to create art yourself. or god forbid. writing.

[cambriancrew]

[thatoldstandby]

Games What I Played April 2k26

I'm going to be real; I genuinely didn't think I was going to get this done on time. Sure, this doesn't have any hard and fast deadlines. And maybe I let it slide to the first of the month a couple times in the past to make it more accurate to the games what I played in the month conceit that I have. And maybe no one cares about the timing.

But I do. I care. And I had to get these bits done and out on time. And chat, oh but there are bits in here. Bits for no one but me, which is why I don't have an editor who could tell me "Hey, this is dumb. Don't do it."

I'm sorry for what's about to happen. But not so sorry to scrap it and start over.

2025 End of Year Entries: GOTY, Epilogue

2026 Entries: January, February, March

2026 Demos: Spring (Part 1, Part 2);

Demos?

About Fishing

I don’t actually like fishing. This is weird, since I’ve always grown up around a lot of water. Hell, I grew up on the shores of Lake Huron and just off another, smaller lake. But something about standing around and watching a bit of line, or getting out in a boat too early in the morning to sit around doing nothing, and then the thought of cleaning the fish afterwards? Nah, I’m out.

This aversion largely spreads to video games as well, where I view fishing as a waste of time when I could be doing the more fun parts of games. This is *especially* bad with RPGs, which is probably my favorite genre, where they put clear statistical advantages behind this boring, boring activity. I blame Breath of Fire, as I do with many things.

So I didn’t have high hopes for About Fishing, a game that’s in playtesting now that I was gifted by a good friend. But, because I trust my friends implicitly, I tried it out. The game opens on a mermaid releasing a fish onto a hook, which is then pulled back by a small child, who shows it to her… grandpa? Her grandpa talks about stuff, as grandpas are wont to do, who then beseeches her to name the fish, and then catch more. For you see, once you catch enough fish, he will let you have curly fries.

I was immediately enamored. Graphically, it exists in the PSX realm, with super blocky characters and stretched facial textures. But the real draw here is the fishing. It’s an actual simulation of fishing. You control the direction and strength of the rod as you cast the line at a specific part, you control the line while it’s in flight, and then you control the bob and reel-in after you land. It’s complicated, meditative, and it works. It reminds me of a game I haven’t played, but love the idea of. Skate Story, released last year, is many things, but the most important of those is more a simulation take on skateboarding; where the trick-heavy high scores of Tony Hawk is replaced with more of a focus on the act of skating. Tricks are there and important, but getting from point A to B is more important.

It’s an approach I have a lot of love for, as my previous paens to other sim-games may imply. On top of that, the narrative stuff is obviously influenced by David Lynch’s films. Specifically the films too; as much as Twin Peaks shares a lot of similarities, it’s not quite what About Fishing is hitting. 

One of my favorite things about games, and one of the reasons I like compiling these lists, is getting hit by something I wasn’t expecting. This doesn’t happen as much anymore, in part due to the sheer number of things I’ve played, but when it does I’m definitely thinking about those titles for a while. In the hour I played of About Fishing, I went from knowing nothing about it to being one of it’s biggest fans. The only reason I haven’t played more is that I’m more interested in the final product at some point in the future. Definitely one to watch.

Old

Marathon (1994)

I decided to jump in to what the kids are playing these days and try out Marathon. Honestly, not sure what they see in this game. First off, graphically, it’s ancient. It looks like Doom with goofy cartoon characters. It controls super weird, the movement is shockingly slow for a game called Marathon, and the mouselook is kind of jank. On top of that, the level design is best described as fucked. I don’t know what the kids are talking about. Luckily it’s free, but at best it’s a historical curiosity.

Did I download and play this solely for A Bit? Yeah fuck you, it’s happened before it’ll happen again. Wait sorry I didn’t mean to be aggro with that. Let’s forget this ever happened.

Project Warlock

You know what’s a better shooter? Project Warlock is a boomer shooter released in 2017. I’d say it’s influenced by Doom, but like. It’s done in GZDoom, the game engine designed to feel like Doom. 

You play as the Warlock, a rogue warrior fighting through the dark forces of hell itself. As you are a tresspasser going through the dark corners of the earth, you have one job: GTFO amidst the ultrakill of hell. 

As a Doom-clone, the game gives you plenty of gun to do that with. Luckily, it’s one of the better arsenals too. A first person shooter lives or dies based on how the guns work, and the guns work pretty ok. It’s not the best shotgun in gaming (that’s Doom 2’s Super), but it’s respectable. You’re going to need them as your heretic runs his marathon through the pathways into darkness. There are four worlds, each themed and with some fun enemy variety. Sure, most of the enemies are dealt with in the same way, but that’s a Boomer Shooter for you.

That said, there’s a few things that set this apart. There’s a rudimentary level up and perk system, so your battlemage marginally improves in statistics and abilities throughout the game. You have access to various spells and abilities, so you could theoretically choose to cast magestorm instead of bulletstorm. And if you do choose to rely on your gunmetal, each weapon has two forms you can choose between to give yourself a bit of variety.

Much like Sprawl, another boomer shooter I played last year, this isn’t exactly going to set your world on fire, and there’s some weird bits. Enemies frequently spawn in behind you with no notice, even in rooms you’ve already cleared out, which can be frustrating and make navigating more difficult. And while no one lives forever, I think I only died a few times on the Ultraviolence-equivalent difficulty. It’s a fun little amuse-bouche of a game, and there’s a sequel that seems to lean into the RPG a bit more. I’m excited to take a look at that. Duke Nukem 3D.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel 4

For all the many, many complaints I’ve made about Erebonia and Rean Schwarzer, I am sad that it’s done now. There’s only so much I can say about a Trails game at this point. I’ve played through nine of them, and I’ve nearly completed three of the major story arcs. The Trails strengths have only gotten better; the focus on presenting a relatively living world compared to any other JRPG is incredibly rewarding. Even the minor characters feel like characters; they’ve got stuff going on and they react to changes in the world. I now smile whenever my good friend Anton shows up to be the greatest loser across the continent. It’s great. It’s not just side characters either. The playable cast continues to be excellent, much as I may dislike them initially. The games are long, and big enough, that each of the minor characters gets their own moments to shine. While some aren’t super strong (Machias continues to be a nerd, but at least he chills out some, and I think Gaius will always be boring), others get enough big moments that I genuinely enjoy them (Looking at you, Jusis and Millium and Fie and Emma and Altina and….)

This has always been the strength of a Trails game; that initial friction as you get introduced to a tropey character archetype getting worn away as you spend time with them and they can develop interesting unique characteristics, but it’s especially prevalent with the Cold Steel games because of their length. These are all far and away the longest Trails so far, for better or worse. I think mostly worse, if I’m being honest. As much as I like the main cast, there’s too many of them. There’s multiple times where your party will split and you’ll run two to three parties simultaneously, and. Look. Mr. Trailsman, designer of the Trails games, I need to be so real with you. I’m never going to actually equip and build out more than the four characters necessary for my main party, and if they die I’m going to throw the fight and retry it. And that’s just with two or three parties. I actively refuse to kit out 16+ characters. Fuck you, respect my time more.

So not only is there massive cast bloat; but I have never gelled with the main plot of the Cold Steel games. I’ve spoken (at length) about my annoyances with Rean as a character, but like. The story he’s in equally annoying. I don’t like Erebonia as a place, it’s awful. But it’s also stupid. Cold Steel 4 happens during the second Erebonian Civil War to take place in two years, and you are actively working against the strongest the government has been in any of the games. There are magic robots flying around, insanely powerful mercenary squads moving around the nation, and Dracula and his coterie of minions are in controle. Despite this, Rean, Rean’s old classmates, and Rean’s combat ciddies are able to freely move around the nation and do whatever they want to do to weaken the government’s position on the literal eve of the biggest war to ever happen to Erebonia. They’ll even be assisted by government forces! On top of that, this is also another incredibly bloodless conflict. It’s disappointing, and the most anime (derogatory) the series has been, especially after Crossbell. Rot 13: Naq tbq qnzzvg, Pebfforyy'f sngr vf yrsg gb gur fnzr fyvqrfubj sebz gur raq bs Nmher. Jung n pebpx bs fuvg gung vf. Guvf vf ubj Fpbhevat bs gur Fuver snaf srry jvgu gur raq bs gur Ybeq bs gur Evatf.

It’s not enough to kill anything for me; I still think Trails is maybe the consistently best ongoing RPG series, and Cold Steel 3 and 4 definitely has some of my favorite characters and moments. But I don’t know that I love it. Hell, it’s gotten so long that even if I did love it, like I love Shadowbringers and Endwalker, I couldn’t possibly recommend it to anyone due to the time investment. I don’t regret this pilgrimage down the many trails life has to offer, but I can’t recommend it to anyone. Can’t wait to start Reverie (in about a month, to assuage my friends that I’m not burning myself out; I’m not depressed and in law school anymore so I can’t Yakuza again.) [At least, that’s what I’ve told them, but what they don’t know is that I don’t have self-control, so we’ll see how long that month stay lasts.]

Oh and while I’m here; Emma > Fie > Laura > Alisa, though Crow is basically the canon answer. Sara would be tops but is automatically disqualified as your high school teacher; Musse, Altina, and Juna are likewise disqualified as your students (though if Musse were slightly older I actually really like how their relationship built out over CS4). Elise is super disqualified as your stepsister, but I’ve a feeling that’s something Mr. Trailsman and I will have to have Words about. 

Guilty Gear -StrIVe-

HEAVEN OR HELL Start (2S or 6P or IAD+S or 236K+K or 2D or 44+236K+K or 6K if I’m feeling spicy) to Footsies, fish with f.S/IAD+S, fish for BnB of c.S+f.S+2/5HS+236HS+HS (I know it should be 623S but I can’t DP reliably); either reset to neutral or keep pressure going with 236K+K or 214P+P; make sure to disrespect them with some 6D. Reset with 236236HS, make sure to delay HS if initial is blocked because no one (at my rank) blocks the second hit. (Editor’s note: I wrote that while I was in high-bronze; now that I’m in low Gold, people are blocking it. It’s less safe to throw out, but still occasionally works.) Remember to RC occasionally, bonus points if it was actually a good RC.

IF I WIN:

By a lot: Nice

By a medium amount: Nice

By a little: Nice

IF I LOSE:

By a lot: What the fuck they’re smurfing

By a medium amount: God I’m terrible

By a little: Fuck that guy I’m better at footsies I just need to up my combo game (I will not up my combo game)

Unnamed Space Idle

From the Management: No trailer I could find on this one; so look at this other trailer instead. Will it be good? I don't know I'm not your boss or the arbiter of quality, I'm writing a blog about games I played.

I don’t talk about my phone games here. Part of that is that they’re not super notable. There’s only so much I can say about the picross game I’ve been playing for close to a decade where I’ve solved over… eight thousand (that feels fake) puzzles. They’re fine; overly ad-infused and probably stealing my information, but that’s fine. Such is the world we live in.

Unnamed Space Idle is an idle game, that is not really designed for a phone landscape. It’s fine, number go up etc. But I’ve gotten to a point in it where it needs slightly more conscious control and planning, so I just installed it on my PC. I don’t have a lot to say about it honestly. It’s certainly a free game.

New

Berry Bury Berry

The difference between an Idle game and an Incremental game is minute. Some would say academic. I would probably say academic, but I’m also trying to differentiate the genres and so I probably shouldn’t. Anyway, Idles and Incrementals begin the same way; you have a repetitive task that you do to collect some form of currency to improve your ability to do that task.

In Berry Bury Berry, that task is dropping berries into a hole, which in turn shoots out coins. You use these coins to buy upgrades at the end of the day; more berry spawners, upgrades to those berry spawners, longer days, etc. If this were just an Idle game, the loop would effectively end there; you would start the next day, accumulate berries, put said berries in the hold, get money, upgrade, and onward.

Where Incremental games differ is that the loop gets more complicated. Mechanics get added that require you to do more than build the most efficient berry-hole-machine. Here, you unlock the ability to move the hole around the world and maybe put more than berries in. From there, the rest of the game unfolds as you throw more things into holes and figure out the rest of what’s going on.

This is the true wonder of Incremental games. As much as I love number go up Idles, they’re really nothing more than dopamine devices. Cookie Clicker doesn’t really require much conscious thought, you just get the joy of making a lot of cookies into a lot more cookies. But a good incremental can break that mold and do something with the genre.

And Berry Bury Berry is a good incremental. There’s shit going on here that I don’t want to talk about because I think it’s cool. I was relatively cavalier with the overview of the plot of Cold Steel 4; I will not be here. But this game has some of the best pacing of any I’ve played this year. I cannot recommend this enough.

Black Hole Fishing

Conversely, Black Hole Fishing is an idle game. You use a black hole to collect fish which you put into the black hole for money. Rinse repeat. The game doesn’t really evolve all that much. It doesn’t have to, mind, it’s a decent idle game. But I completed it more out of obligation than any real enjoyment of the process. I will say, it has a lot of heart; the dev put a picture of him and his kid on the splash screen at the start, and the descriptions are full of little messages like “My wife designed this fish, so I’m leaving it in.” It’s really cute; I kind of hope it does well so he can have something nice to point at.

The Ratline

Oof. I don’t really love writing these all the time. This is one of those times. The Ratline is another deduction game in the mold of Obra Dinn or Rootrees. You play as a private detective in 1971 who is contacted by a Mysterious Third Party and essentially hired to find people. Specifically, you’re hunting down nazis in South America, trying to suss out their identity and where they currently are based on a series of interconnected documents and phone call transcripts. Each chapter gives you one to three (possibly more) individuals to identify, and then you have to go digging for the clues and photos yourself by reaching out to individuals or searching keywords in the library.

This should be my shit. See also: The Rootrees are Dead, TR-49, The Golden Idol series, or the fucking Return of the Obra Dinn. This is not my shit. To get the minor complaints out of the way, the UI is miserable. The amount of space you have to work with clues is super limited, which sucks because you need to blow the individual documents up to make anything out, and sometimes you need to be looking at multiple clues at the same time to help figure out what the game is looking at. So I spent a lot of time pulling one clue up, closing it out, pulling another clue up, closing it out, pulling clue one up and then trying to pull clue two up. And god help you if you need to access your phone or rolodex at the same time. Forget about it. And then, and this is the biggest minor gripe I have, your detective has a dog. That dog is probably adorable, I guess. But that dog is also always asleep. And it snores. And it has one snore sound effect, and that sound effect goes off every second or two. The option screen has a dog slider, and you best believe I turned that shit to zero right quick.

So with the minor stuff out of the way, I have to try to work out how I really feel about this game. And it’s not great. As a top level decision, I don’t know that any of the puzzles or writing were especially engrossing. As much as I enjoy a puzzle game, I admit that I do eventually reach the point where I hit the hint button a time or three. Usually though, I’m in the end game, the last quarter or tenth of the game where I’ve puzzled most everything else out and just need a bit of help with the more obtuse stuff. I was hitting the Ratline hints pretty regularly at about end of chapter four; which is around the halfway point as far as I can tell. In all that time, I don’t know that I really enjoyed any of the puzzles. A part of that is that the game never really gives you a wide array of things to solve at once; there’s no Rootree family tree or Obra Dinn ship where you’re presented forty to fifty puzzles to work through at once; you’re always super limited by what’s on the screen. And while some of the puzzles do call back and refer to older chapters, not enough do for my taste, and I don’t think I recall any especially fun solves. And then the most recent chapter I played introduced a mechanic where you get a magic machine that can give you recordings and images from specific rooms in a building, but only if you know the number of the building, the number of the room, and the assigned numbers of the individuals who were in that room conversing. I don’t really understand that puzzle, and it’s super abstracted from anything else in the real world that it put me off of it. I basically entirely relied on the hint system, which has super soured me on the title in general. 

It sucks, I don’t like being here, and like, I don’t know if it’s because I think it’s bad (Demonschool), if I played it when I wasn’t in a good headspace for it (Trails 3rd), or if it’s just not for me (basically any Civ game). I don’t like it. I don’t know if I’m going to go back and finish out the game or what; I’ve got two chapters left, and then an achievement for just letting it idle on a case for two hours. Maybe I will, but I don’t feel a burning urge to. That feeling in itself is probably damning.

Aaaand that's it for the month. Did you find all my bits? Did you find the secret link to the secret Director's Cut? Does all this annoy people more than not? Who knows! I mean it probably does, but at least it's out there to annoy you all. Ok thanks we'll see you next month when I talk about more Trails games and probably some dumb bullshit bye!

[hateusandseeifwemind]

[yuzupool]

hey what's good. optic blast

[verycloudberry]

[thatoldstandby]

Games What I Played March 2k26

Chat, I must confess, this one feels weird. In part, I want to say it hasn't been that long since I did the demo thing, and that was a lot of fun. But also, I dunno, March just kind of feels like it didn't happen. I even took an all too brief vacation, but like. I dunno, I can't believe this month happened. But I woke up today to find roughly four thousand words about roughly ten games, so like, something happened somewhere. So let's see what past-me thought; hopefully the stream of thought is legible.

2025 End of Year Entries: GOTY, Epilogue

2026 Entries: January, February

2026 Demos: Spring (Part 1, Part 2);

Old Games

Really Big Sky

So, I’ve been looking for a new second screen game; one I can pick up for a run, play a few minutes, and then put down. Low impact, kind of mindless something to fill my brain or reflexes while I’m “watching” YouTube or stealing time from work. I don’t know why I felt this was necessarily a good choice, but it’s fun to go back to. Really Big Sky is a side-scrolling shmup that I can barely make heads or tails of, but I enjoy watching and playing it. It’s fun; though I’ve never been good enough to pick it up long term, and if I’m being honest I’m not well enough versed in shmups to really say if it’s good or not. It’s also a touch too high intensity for a second screener. Ah well, the search continues.

Blocks that Matter

So, my Steam account has four major categories of games. The first is for games that I’ve Beaten (261 games at time of writing). How a game gets here is obvious; I have to roll credits at least once (assuming the credits are at the end of the game.) Occasionally I’ll pull something out and put it back in the main mix, but by and large I’ve gotten what I wanted out of them and they can rest. The next are for Fightgames (9) specifically; games that you can’t really Win per-se and I may feel like revisiting every year or so. The third are games that I will Never Again (68) play; these are games that I bounce hard off of for whatever reason (Mercenary Kings, X-COM Interceptor), games that are dead and aren’t worth powering up again (The Ship, Dark Horizons: Mechanized Corps), or games that would be… detrimental to my health if I picked them up again (Depression Quest, MechWarrior Online.) On review, there’s a lot more 4X style games in there than I care to think about, huh. Anyway, most of these games are in Never Again either for quality or lack of multiplayer reasons. I don’t often grab things from here and move it back into rotation unless I really feel like I’ve missed something. The rest are Uncategorized (189), which is my catch-all for things that are *technically* still in rotation. Most are games I haven’t played, some are games I want to replay, fewer are games that I have played but haven’t categorized. They may sit there for years, but one day I’ll get hands on.

One such game is Blocks that Matter, a 2011 puzzle-platformer that I have had for years and never touched. I probably picked it up through one of the many Humble Bundles. So, in a fit of wanting to make some forward progress, I picked a random one to try it out. It’s interesting the differences between indie games now and in 2011. I tried to give this a better shot, but the thing that really got me was that the Block-bot main character controls really poorly. I’ve been conditioned by modern games to expect responsive characters, and I spent more time being frustrated by the bot not responding to a jump and having to restart the level as a result. I tried, I did, but after a half hour I was not having fun, so into Never Again it goes. I am not, at time of writing, super interested in reconsidering, so I think it can stay there for a bit. Maybe I’m missing out on a classic, but I doubt it.

20 Minutes Till Dawn

I technically wrote about this last January, but those entries were bad, so, let’s try this again. The problem is I don’t know if this paragraph is going to be much different from the previous paragraph, since my fundamental use of the game hasn’t really changed. 20 Minutes ‘til Dawn is a Vampy Survivy-like with a few major mechanical differences. Instead of building up a bevy of weapons, you have only have one main gun that has ammo. Once your gun fires through the ammo you have, you spend a few seconds to reload. And since you don’t get new weapons on level up, each level up allows you to choose one of four passive upgrades to work on your build. By time played, it’s probably my second-most Vampy Survivy-like, though I think it has some massive mechanical issues. Namely, the builds you create tend to feel same-y since they’re all passives and there isn’t such a wide-variety that you’re going to see massively different choices every game. The game *tries* to ameliorate this problem by having essentially prestige choices available if you max out two or more specific paths of upgrades, but the game also doesn’t give you a way to affect which passives you get or re-roll at all, so I think I’ve seen these prestige upgrades in two or three runs, and those tend to be at lower levels due to the larger number of upgrades you get. It’s kind of disappointing, but I think the rest of the game is strong enough to override that. I’ve now gotten everything done in it. It’s great. Hopefully whatever update is allegedly happening actually does.

Trails of Cold Steel IV

Hey guess what. I’ve continued working through Cold Steel IV. It’s still pretty good! It’s kind of got all the flaws and strengths that the Cold Steel series has had the entire time. On the one hand, the characters are mostly pretty ok! On the other hand, everything rotates around Rean F(ucking) Schwarzer to an extent that the Trails series has pretty well avoided, and on top of that there’s a prophecy now? Look, this is good, but it’s good because I have a deep and abiding love for everything that’s not Erebonian here. I dunno, I think next month might have a bit where I grapple with the fact that while I can recommend up until Azure pretty handily, I don’t know that I can recommend anyone get this much further into the Trails series. Unless you’re mad, like me, where you’ve already determined that you’ll play through everything, common sense be damned. 

I guess I should give a slight update; I’ve officially reached the start of Act II and everything is opening up, which, based on Cold Steel II, means that everything will take forever to go through, even playing through with a spoiler-lite walkthrough.

Proverbs

Look, it’s another one of those Mosaic games I’ve discussed…. Three? Times now. It’s not as good as Mosaic of the Strange because it’s still not really a puzzle game, but it’s satisfying to fill in. Ok, necessary spiel out of the way. Netherlandish Proverbs is a work of art from 1559 by Pieter Bruegel the Elder showing a scene of people, animals, and things enacting proverbs and idioms. It’s a fascinating piece of work I’ve never seen and kind of love; the Wiki article I linked lists out 126 proverbs. I mention this because Proverbs, the game, is literally just that; only it pops up what the proverb the section you’re working in is describing when you finish a section. It’s a deeply weird way to engage with another work of art; programming and developing a game based on it, but I kind of dig it. There’s some wildass proverbs too.

Digseum

No trailer for these next two; here have some soundtracks that play in my brain 24/7. - Management

This is going to short, but it’s a pretty short game. I picked this and the next entry up in an effort to look for a good idle game. This isn’t quite an idle game; it’s an incremental clicker where you click to dig through some dirt for relics, get paid based on the relics, and continue. It’s fine; maybe a bit long with a poor reward ratio. The initial rewards take a while to build up and it’s a slow start, and then in the mid-game you start building enough of the incremental reward in a single life that you’re buying through the prestige upgrades five to ten nodes at a time. It’s fine. What really got me was that the end credits were just a really nice note from the dev to the players. I wasn’t expecting it, and I think it’s a nice touch when the dev directly thanks the players. I’d recommend it just based on that honestly. This was a good couple hours.

nodebuster

Gonna have to pull together a list of things I've linked instead of trailers so I don't repeat myself. - Management

I picked this up with Digseum, and luckily, this is much more of an idle. It’s really similar to A Game About Feeding a Black Hole. Here, you are… a square? And you move your mouse around a screen full of squares and intermittently do damage. It’s a fine; it’s a bit abstract for my taste, and if I’m being honest, I think Black Hole does everything this game does, but better.

Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3

This one kind of snuck in at the last minute; it’s been pretty heavily pushed to me by Steam for what I think are obvious reasons, and I’ve been wanting something that’s marginally puzzlier than usual. Puzzle games are fun y’all. One of my favorite bits of Cold Steel 4 is the return of their Puyo Puyo (Puyo Puyo was created in Zemuria before TV and with the advent of the internet), and I spend a lot of time on my phone playing a bunch of puzzle games. And less than puzzle games, but still, some minimal amount of brain tunage. So I gave CRDM3 a shot, and it’s fine. It’s puzzle quest, but with a meta game dev story wrapper about a game that failed to launch in basically every way. Like I said, it’s fine. The dialogue isn’t great and I skipped through tons of it, there’s some bits in there that elicited a sensible chuckle, but never a heartfelt belly laugh. I’d honestly probably be more negative on the thing if the credits hadn’t been a message from the devs about the rocky history of the game and a heartfelt thanks. That was enough to get me to go back through and wrap the bits that remained too, so, mission accomplished I guess. If you’re hankering for more Puzzle Quest, then you could certainly do worse.

New Games

TR-49

Two notes on this before we begin. First, on review, I did not take a ton of screenshots of this game. I contemplated going back to grab some screens, but as a puzzle game, and a textual puzzle game at that, I kind of run into the issue where basically anything I provide is going to include spoilers of some variety. That feels bad to me, unless I truly loathed the game, so I haven't gotten more screenshots. What I'll do to break up the paragraphs is drop some unrelated Trails screenshots in, because I have so many of those. Second, I think I’m going to end up meaner to this game than I intend to be, and I’m going to do that by being mean to a game that is generally enjoyed. I’m not quite sure how this is going to look, so I’m going to be blunt: TR-49 is fine, but. 

I didn’t know anything about TR-49 before I watched a trailer for it. The trailer was fascinating, so I looked up the Steam page, as one does. The blurb got me pretty hard in my interests. The game explicitly lists the following inspirations: The Rootrees are Dead (I wrote about that in one of my early entries in this series, February 2025 [Management apologizes for the mess; this was before I had stumbled onto a format I like. I liked Rootrees fine, end parenthetical]), The Return of the Obra Dinn (It’s one of the Perfect games), Type Help (I know nothing about this), and Her Story (Well. Can’t go four for four for quality I guess.), and audio dramas/podcasts The Magnus Archives (Didn’t grab me at all) and ars PARADOXICA (Loved it at the time, I do not have memories beyond being confused near the end). Of those, I love one, like two, am ambivalent of two, and actively dislike one. It seemed like this game was pretty promising.

Unfortunately, and this is where I’m going to be mean to this game, it’s less Obra Dinn and more Her Story. In TR-49, you are digging through a computer database that’s been corrupted somehow. Your goal is to uncorrupt the database by associating the name of each entry’s book, magazine, or letter with that specific entry. So, for example, an entry under AC17 may be the first issue of the Author’s Compendium journal. The names of each piece of writing can be found in various other entries, and from there you have a fun enough logic puzzle for each of the fifty entries (and some super neat surprises elsewhere that I’d be remiss not to mention, but I’m not going to go into details because I thought they were cool.) 

The narrative thrust of the game is delivered in two ways. First, you have a few people in the world outside the database talking at you. Through this, you learn about the immediate concerns of the world…. Kind of. It’s all pretty vague and inexplicably sci-fi. The rest of the story is told in the entries, which further (kind of) expound on the status of the world and illustrate the changing relationships between the system’s creators and maintainers. 

The problem with this, and it is a problem since this is attempting to be narrative forward, is that TR-49 largely bases it’s narrative design around Her Story. Her Story, for those who don’t know, is a “puzzle” game where you go through a database with responses from a woman’s interview. The story, such as it is, is told through her responses, because you don’t get to hear the questions she’s asked, and you don’t necessarily know what the context around the question or response is. Once you’ve seen enough of the interview, the game ends. There is no further explanation. Maybe you’ve pieced something together. You probably haven’t, though, because everything is too broken up. It’s an interesting experiment, and in a better designer’s hand something could maybe be done with it, but Sam Barlow is neither that writer or designer.

TR-49 provides more narrative bone for the player to latch on to, and I think it’s mostly successful with the interpersonal stuff it jumps into, but as to the state of the world? While I was playing, I was mostly lost as to what was actually going on, until the game decided to just tell me what to do (which it does after you’ve identified everything.) In part, I was able to stumble through because I’m a braingenius and I deduced the actual labeling conventions super early, so I ended up, ah, brute forcing something like 80% of the entries. This is, in retrospect, not the ideal way to engage with the narrative or narrative design. Whoops.

It’s fine. I don’t know that I’d really recommend this to anyone after playing, but if you’ve already played Obra Dinn or Rootree? You could certainly do worse. Certainly better than Her Story or Immortality.

Resident Evil: re9uiem

I think I’ve scrapped this bit and started over three times now. I don’t know if it’s clear from the rest of this series, but I don’t edit. I write down my thoughts, give it a once over, and call it good. There’s horizons to explore and games to pontificate on, I don’t have time for this editing bullshit. So I’m not entirely sure why I’ve had such troubles with this. I mean, it seems like a slam dunk. Resident Evil: requiem is the ninth(ish) mainline entry in the long running series, which in itself is one of the big legendary franchises. Even if you pay a quarter of the attention to the hobby that I do, you are at least aware of RE. I could, reasonably, just end this bit here by saying “Hey, it’s a new RE game. It’s pretty good. It’s not as good as RE4, but that’s maybe the least fair comparison I’ve made, even in this post today where I compared TR-49 to Obra Dinn. This isn’t the best starting point, but it’s still worth playing, and frankly the RE plot isn’t really worth worrying about even if I think it’s fun.

And that certainly sums up my thoughts on it, but it feels incomplete, certainly for the purposes of my own bloviating. Like, I have a weird history with Resident Evil that the above doesn’t really touch upon. Growing up, I was a Nintendo kid. My first console was a transparent OG Game Boy circa 199something, followed by an N64 near the end of its lifespan, and then I picked up a Gamecube when that was released. So, I didn’t have anything that Resident Evil reasonably came out on until RE4 in 2005. And yet, I have a weird amount of nostalgia out of envy of the people who could play it, appreciation of the art behind the game design, and second hand knowledge from creators who are hella entwined in the series. And on top of that, you have the fact that I abhor horror and being scared. I should probably hate Resident Evil.

But I don’t; Resident Evil is one of my favorite series, and has been pretty consistently. While I haven’t played every game, and I have definitely ducked out of a few out of fear, I still count it among my favorite series. A part of that is definitely the ridiculous plot; it’s Bad in a really fun B-movie schlocky way, but also in a way that is so close to being good. Like, now that the Good RE games have been remade, there’s a few that are next up. One that gets mentioned frequently is Resident Evil 5, which will never be remade because it was probably a mistake the first time. The optics on it ain’t great. The thing is, Resident Evil 5 is about a western corporation, headed by a genetically engineered blonde haired blue/red eyed superman, pillaging the land at the expense of the people who live there. I am not the right person to write this, but this feels to me like something that could be made better, even approaching good. And to be clear, the rest of RE’s plot is Not Good, to the point that Resi9 literally ends with a 60 page “This is what the story of this series is, never ask me for anything ever again,” document. But it’s fun, and it makes for good games.

No, I primarily love RE because survival horror is a genre I really mesh with. I hate using items in games. It actively causes me distress. I’m the idiot who ends every RPG with as many elixirs as exist in a game. I actively hate Final Fantasy 8 because it turns magic, which is already normally tied to a resource I hate using, into consumable items that you also need for stat growth? Forget about it. Fuck that noise. So you present me with a genre that rewards you for hoarding items? Hell yeah.

On top of that, survival horror games also reward you for methodical game plans, which is something that I really twig to in stealth games. I’ll probably talk about this more if I ever replay any given Metal Gear or Hitman game, but I appreciate being presented with an area, allowed to sit back and watch it for a bit, build a mental plan and then execute on that plan. It’s super satisfying when it works out, and if it doesn’t work out then hopefully I have enough werewithal to save myself.

This is a lot of words and preamble to say that every ResiEvil game is appointment gaming, ignoring the fact that I got to this like a month late. Luckily, Requiem is one of the good ones. Modern Resident Evil essentially has two different gameplay styles these days, both of which are represented in Requiem. The first style, introduced in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (or, if you’re a weeb, Biohazard 7: Resident Evil), is from a first-person perspective, which emphasizes the horror of the setting. Remember when I said earlier that I haven’t played every ResiEvil game? The big one is 7, it’s Big Scary. This version of the series is seen through the eyes of Grace Ashcroft, who is great, as she primarily explores the Rhode Hills Care Center. Rhode Hills is one of the best designed Zone 1s that the series has ever had, by the by. But, Grace has way fewer weapons and way more zombies. She would have trouble with this game’s Crimson Head equivalent, but I never ran into that due to how much of a boss I am at these games. Grace and her sections are excellent, no notes.

The other half of Requiem is Leon’s sections, which are the more recent action oriented style of Resi4 onwards. This is, as always, great. Resident Evil 4 nailed third person combat in a way that no other game had until that point, and as a franchise Resident Evil has remained best in class at what it does. I think this is because RE makes their player characters kind of slow and tanky. You have a lot of movement, especially compared to the zombie (or equivalent) you tend to fight, but you have to commit to getting somewhere. On top of that, the guns all feel weighty and excellent. They are maybe the best feeling guns in gaming this side of a first person shooter, and RE even puts a lot of FPS games to shame.

Unfortunately for Requiem, this is kind of where the issues lie. I love Leon, and his sections are mostly great in a vacuum, but swapping between the points of view means that the game is going for two different gameplay tones that don’t entirely mesh. The enemy variety is kind of weak for Leon’s gameplay purposes. There are effectively…. Five? Six? Different enemy types, and the second area is an area dedicated to Leon that’s more open-world than the average Resident Evil area. It’s fine; the problem is that the section is a little bit too long and it’s visually drab. Everything is a beige or grey tone.

Honestly, Leon’s sections and systems feel somewhat tacked on, more out of obligation than any design sense. So like, he has more weapons than Grace, but not too many more, which leads to an RE with a very limited arsenal. He can upgrade weapons, but the upgrades are bought using a generic point counter that’s maybe the most video game-y currency I’ve seen in a ResiEvil, and it’s done through a boring menu at the item box. The menu-design itself feels less fun than previous games.

A part of this is that I’m comparing Requiem to Resident Evil 4. Resident Evil 4 is perfect, and RE4make is pretty close. On the one hand, it’s not Resi9’s fault that it’s not perfect. Requiem juggling a lot of plates that RE4 never did and it’s doing an admirable job of it. Namely, it actually cares about the overall plot of Resident Evil and is acting like a capstone on the Umbrella chunk of it. I’m going to be honest; this is not the PSX classic franchise that I care about the convoluted plot overmuch. Maybe I would if I replayed through the series; and maybe I will once I finish my Trails pilgrimage, but the game is doing a lot of franchise-referential design and callouts. I loved the ones I recognized, I was able to place another couple, but a lot of the specifics were probably lost on me.

Luckily, Requiem’s plot and focus on Leon and Grace can stand on it’s own. I am invested in Leon S. Kennedy, as someone who I've seen and played for upwards of twenty years. He’s at his most super heroic, which is kind of ironic considering that he’s dying of a slow T-virus infection and spends the last third of the game hacking an old-man cough. I’ve already said how much I love Grace and her evolution through the game, and the lab section may be the best lab that Resident Evil has had.

It’s great. Resident Evil: Requiem is a fantastic game that does precisely what it needs to. It’s not as good as RE2make or RE4make, and I’d probably say Village is better, but it’s still great. I’m excited for what comes next, and I’m super curious what the Mercenaries is going to look like and whatever DLC is coming. I’d believe more that this is the end of Leon’s story if Ada showed up at all, but there’s time to reveal that his wedding ring was from Ada.

Ok I think that wraps it up. I really liked it. So, the following message is for Capcom and Capcom only. If you’re not Capcom, stop reading here this isn’t for you. Ok, I think they’re gone. Hello Capcom, you’ve made some of my favorite games and I love playing your stuff, even if it’s kind of mid. I’m really looking forward to Pragmata! But, if I could make one tiny suggestion. Please stop giving us CP to spend on unlocks in games. I get that that probably stands for Completion Points or Capcom Points, but like. It means something else in English that isn’t great. Trust me, you’re not alone, I have issues with the Trails series and their incorporation of the Epstein Foundation, and I imagine we’ll get there eventually, but like. It kind of sucks to quit out of a session and find out I’ve been awarded thousands of CP for playing the video game. It’s a tiny thing! I know. But please, maybe consider changing those couple letters. Oh, and give me a remaster of Mega Man Legends 1 and 2 ok thank you I love you bye.

Clair Obscur Update

Games I’ve beaten in 2026 before finishing Clair Obscur (To be updated every month until I finish Clair Obscur)

Trails of Cold Steel 2

Ace Combat 7

Discopup

Mosaic of the Strange

Feed the Reactor

Silent Hill f (x 5)

TIE Fighter

TR-49

Resident Evil: re9ium

20 Minutes till Dawn

Proverbs

Digseum

Nodebuster

Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3

[missjoolee]

Guys, I think this might be more upsetting than chocolate guy.😭

[andmaybegayer]

[adastrabbit]

these new tumblr ui changes are getting out of hand

[thatoldstandby]

2k26 Demo Watch pt. 2 Electric Boogaloo

Once upon a time, a fool mindlessly scrolled through the Steam NextFest and didn't bother screening anything. That fool, if you'll believe me chat, downloaded twenty-one(ish) demos, but who's counting. This is particularly egregious because this fool knew he was going to do a writing project like this and so was aware of how much extra work this would be.

I know this seems a tall tale, chat, but learn from this dreadful tale. For it could happen to you, as easily as it has happened to me. If you happen to take on a writing project that no one asked you to and has limited practical application.

What I'm trying to say is, here's the other half of my NextFest haul, the remaining ten of 21 demos.

2025 End of Year Entries: GOTY, Epilogue

2026 Entries: January, February

2026 Demos: Spring (Part 1, Part 2 is what you're reading right now, thanks!)

The Big Hollow: 1982

A detective and reasoning game where you play criminal profiler in the 80’s working to identify a possible serial killer based on collected evidence and interviews. The demo solely has you working off a couple of photos. Setting aside the efficacy of criminal profiling (last I saw they were pretty roundly denounced, though they make for a compelling investigative story), this is fine. Visually it’s kind of…. Webcomicy? And there’s too much dialogue for the amount of puzzle solved in the demo, but it’s also the introductory baby’s-first-deductive reasoning puzzles. This might be fun? I wouldn’t go out of my way.

Vesper Hotel

No trailer on this one, surprising no one, so have another song from one of my playlists I guess? - Management

So, first thing on booting this game, Windows Firewall popped up a window and was like “Hey. Do you want this game to connect to other networks?” And I’m like…. “Ehhhh?” This is not, inherently untrustworthy. But I also don’t think it’s a great initial first impression. So, after cutting off Vesper Hotel’s contact from the outside world while I gave it a spin, I decided that I’d follow it through while live….skying? Tweeting? Skeeting? What verb are we supposed to use for this shit; I’ve never been good at socials.

Chat, I did not play Resident Evil 9 that night. In short, 10/10 would recommend wholeheartedly.

Nophenia

Liminal spaces are weird things. They’re places that kind of exist, but only really as a place that you can travel to. It’s the waiting point between A and B. I happen to quite like them; they’re chill places where you can exist. No one else has any expectations of the place, so why would they put any on you? Nophenia… is a game all about existing in those places.

You play as a wolfgirl who wakes up one night and then wanders around a series of empty rooms. You can jump, sit down, and howl.

It’s weirdly cute, and the vibes are pretty immaculate. Each area has lofi ambient soundtracks and a soft patter of rain.

There’s a few problems. One of the areas, an abandoned park at night, chugs weirdly. I got this game to less-than-single digit frame rates by playing on the. . . wait fuck what’s that bit of playground toy called. You get on and you spin it as fast as you can not because it’s safe, but because it’s fun and you’re a stupid child unaware of what pain is. A roundabout? A merry go round? One of those little fuckers. The worst part about this game would probably be the window itself, though. The game doesn’t fullscreen well, and when it launches. Well. My YouTube browser window for scale.

It’s a walking simulator for *ants*. 

But it’s neat, and the vibes are pretty immaculate. 

Tomohigara

Once more, no trailer. Getting tired of this. - Management

I’m surprised I haven’t run into more rough stuff this demo dive. Like, there’s been some bad stuff, but nothing that’s been like “Oh, I get what you’re going for, and you’re almost there.” Tomohigara is almost there. You play as Ilya, a tiny, white haired child who wakes up in a techbed with a robut nearby. Your job is to escape the facility. To do so, you have to solve a series of puzzles throughout the facility that are based on item usage, steps, and player weight. It’s surprisingly clever; if a bit rough in the graphics and writing department. I had trouble with basically the first puzzle after the tutorial completed. There’s a lot of moving parts, and they definitely make it difficult. It reminds me of a much rougher Void Stranger. I should go back to Void Stranger.

Hypnos

Visually, this may be my favorite game I’ve played this fest. This is an important thing to be, because Hypnos is just a walking simulator. You play as some guy walking around and looking for a kid with red hair. The plot doesn’t make a lot of sense, but, that’s because it takes place in one of the more interesting parts of the Cthlhu mythos. You wander the city of Kadath, a city of dreams beyond the elder gods in the Dreamlands. That gives the designers free reign to make the landscapes you walk through weird and unnatural, and I think they did pretty good? It’s neat.

It's neat.

Dead Watch

This is a demo I’ve been sitting on for a while. I don’t know that I could describe why I grabbed it; the character designs were reminiscent of other things I’ve liked, and the store page talks about it being a time loop puzzle, and I love anything that reminds me of Ghost Trick. This isn’t Ghost Trick. This is… Bad Outer Wilds. You play a disembodied hand in an Unreal 5 castle. As you explore, you meet an anime woman, an anime girl, a skeleton, a cat, and a stock photo man. As the cycle reaches it’s conclusion, the Anime Woman is killed, and coming across her body is how you reset the day. Your job is to figure out the environmental puzzles and save her. Turns out this is only the first chapter, and the puzzles actually aren’t awful. It’s not necessarily something I’ve never seen, but there’s some clever work going on, and I haven’t fully explored the demo. I don’t know that I will, because the writing is kind of cringe. For every time I laughed at the absurdity the game presented me, it gave me dialogue that felt meme-y. Like, everyone complains about Borderlands 2, but I never really felt it was that bad, but this? This was bad. There’s a line that references 4chan, in the year of our lord 2026. Not a bad look; I kind of regret sitting on this for so long.

Parasite Mutant

I’d like to say that it’s not often that something is so nakedly trying to just be a sequel to one of it’s influences. I’d probably be lying, I’m pretty sure in one of these I just described something as “It’s X, but again.” Guess what, this one is Parasite Eve, but again. If you don’t know, and you shouldn’t because there were only two games and definitely not a third, Parasite Eve is a PSX era RPG experiment from Square (not Enix) which combined turn based combat with action-based dodging, by which I mean that Aya had action bars that filled up, and once a bar filled she could select an attack or ability to cash that skill in. While waiting for the bar to fill, you could dodge around the battlefield to avoid attacks and set yourself up for whatever your next attack was. It’s a really great system, and kind of a shame that it hasn’t really been used anywhere else, and it would be a shame if a theoretical third game dropped the system entirely.

Enter Parasite Mutant, which is literally just that system. You wander around an overworld, get into random battles, and fight them with skills Aya Brea would understand. It works as well as it used to, and I’m excited to play more. Which I will. The plot doesn’t seem as buckwild; here, you’re an android girl dropped into an island where all the inhabitants have been mutated for some reason. It’s not quite as gripping as an opera house where the cast and audience catches fire (due to the mitochondria, see), but what’re you gonna do. If I have some small complaints, uh, the main character is very much designed along the 2B or (theoretical) 3rd Birthday Aya design schemes; it’s a touch too horny. I’m not going to complain too hard, but even the default isn’t… look, that jacket’s not really doing it’s intended purpose of keeping rain off all the parts. It’s fine, it’s not going to kill the game at all, but it could be better. Lotta bugs too, if that’s an issue.

A Study in Blue

I noticed two things early in the Study in Blue demo. First, the language defaulted to French. I was afraid that I had downloaded another demo that did not have an English translation. Luckily, I was wrong, and there is, you just have to go into the options menu and hope you understand enough French to swap it over to English. The next thing I noticed is that the build is labeled “0.0.4.” Now, I’m no game dev, but that seems early.

Which bodes well, if I’m being honest. A Study in Blue is an adventure game where you play as Kenneth, a 20-something private-eye who is taking care of, and Blue, a 15 year old runaway with a chip on her shoulder. The demo doesn’t really give any more details on the two, and is one of the sidestory investigations. Along the way, you meet some NPCs and have some events and maybe solve the case. I was having a fine time it; it’s fine. At least, I was until the end, when the game took a sudden and violent turn I wasn’t expecting. If it sticks, I have a feeling that’s massive ramifications on the plot, and I could have avoided that by making alternative choices. The demo opens by telling you that your choices matter, but like. Let’s be real. I’ve played enough games with choices that matter that do not matter that choices mattering is maybe the biggest lie ever told. This seems neat; I hope it’ll keep up.

Subjectivation

Swear to god I'm going to have to make my own trailers for these things, and no one wants that. - Management

It’s harder to rate a demo when it feels like more of a tone poem. Subjectivation’s demo drops you into what is explicitly a lucid dream of a maze. You have to find your way out, and you do so by running through corridors, maintain your body heat at various points, and roughly stab some humanoid-shaped enemies. It’s not un-interesting, and the visual style is rusty hallways and nightmare monsters. I don’t know how interested I am for what’s going on in the background, and I’m not sure what all I can add to it. It was short; it’s fine. It’s fine.

The Mermaid Mask

One of my favorite games of a few years ago was Crow Country, a neat throwback to classic ResiEvil that was really sharp. Like, I think it only has one bad puzzle (fuck you the mushrooms) and it’s a really strong, tiny package. I love it, and I will play anything this team makes.

Flash forward to the SteamFest where I heard that The Mermaid Mask was the team’s next game. Of course I immediately downloaded it. And what I encountered was an extremely charming point and click adventure game that’s fully voiced and animated. It’s really cute, the voice work is good, and I’m sure the overall puzzles are probably pretty good. This demo actually ended after the first major puzzle, which I solved in about 17 minutes, which is the perfect amount for this demo, since I already knew I was going to buy it.

Of course, in doing research, it turns out this is actually the second or third game in this particular series, so. Guess I have some homework to do.

What have I learned from this?

What are you talking about, learning? Psh. Nothing. You know what this did do? I think I put most of the games that I was even halfway interested in back onto my wishlist; so my wishlist is back to burgeoning and I'm looking forward to a bunch of indie games coming out this year. Thanks games.

Ok right back to the usual schedule now; I prommy. I think. Probably.

[thatoldstandby]

2k26 Demo Watch pt. 2 Electric Boogaloo

Once upon a time, a fool mindlessly scrolled through the Steam NextFest and didn't bother screening anything. That fool, if you'll believe me chat, downloaded twenty-one(ish) demos, but who's counting. This is particularly egregious because this fool knew he was going to do a writing project like this and so was aware of how much extra work this would be.

I know this seems a tall tale, chat, but learn from this dreadful tale. For it could happen to you, as easily as it has happened to me. If you happen to take on a writing project that no one asked you to and has limited practical application.

What I'm trying to say is, here's the other half of my NextFest haul, the remaining ten of 21 demos.

2025 End of Year Entries: GOTY, Epilogue

2026 Entries: January, February

2026 Demos: Spring (Part 1, Part 2 is what you're reading right now, thanks!)

The Big Hollow: 1982

A detective and reasoning game where you play criminal profiler in the 80’s working to identify a possible serial killer based on collected evidence and interviews. The demo solely has you working off a couple of photos. Setting aside the efficacy of criminal profiling (last I saw they were pretty roundly denounced, though they make for a compelling investigative story), this is fine. Visually it’s kind of…. Webcomicy? And there’s too much dialogue for the amount of puzzle solved in the demo, but it’s also the introductory baby’s-first-deductive reasoning puzzles. This might be fun? I wouldn’t go out of my way.

Vesper Hotel

No trailer on this one, surprising no one, so have another song from one of my playlists I guess? - Management

So, first thing on booting this game, Windows Firewall popped up a window and was like “Hey. Do you want this game to connect to other networks?” And I’m like…. “Ehhhh?” This is not, inherently untrustworthy. But I also don’t think it’s a great initial first impression. So, after cutting off Vesper Hotel’s contact from the outside world while I gave it a spin, I decided that I’d follow it through while live….skying? Tweeting? Skeeting? What verb are we supposed to use for this shit; I’ve never been good at socials.

Chat, I did not play Resident Evil 9 that night. In short, 10/10 would recommend wholeheartedly.

Nophenia

Liminal spaces are weird things. They’re places that kind of exist, but only really as a place that you can travel to. It’s the waiting point between A and B. I happen to quite like them; they’re chill places where you can exist. No one else has any expectations of the place, so why would they put any on you? Nophenia… is a game all about existing in those places.

You play as a wolfgirl who wakes up one night and then wanders around a series of empty rooms. You can jump, sit down, and howl.

It’s weirdly cute, and the vibes are pretty immaculate. Each area has lofi ambient soundtracks and a soft patter of rain.

There’s a few problems. One of the areas, an abandoned park at night, chugs weirdly. I got this game to less-than-single digit frame rates by playing on the. . . wait fuck what’s that bit of playground toy called. You get on and you spin it as fast as you can not because it’s safe, but because it’s fun and you’re a stupid child unaware of what pain is. A roundabout? A merry go round? One of those little fuckers. The worst part about this game would probably be the window itself, though. The game doesn’t fullscreen well, and when it launches. Well. My YouTube browser window for scale.

It’s a walking simulator for *ants*. 

But it’s neat, and the vibes are pretty immaculate. 

Tomohigara

Once more, no trailer. Getting tired of this. - Management

I’m surprised I haven’t run into more rough stuff this demo dive. Like, there’s been some bad stuff, but nothing that’s been like “Oh, I get what you’re going for, and you’re almost there.” Tomohigara is almost there. You play as Ilya, a tiny, white haired child who wakes up in a techbed with a robut nearby. Your job is to escape the facility. To do so, you have to solve a series of puzzles throughout the facility that are based on item usage, steps, and player weight. It’s surprisingly clever; if a bit rough in the graphics and writing department. I had trouble with basically the first puzzle after the tutorial completed. There’s a lot of moving parts, and they definitely make it difficult. It reminds me of a much rougher Void Stranger. I should go back to Void Stranger.

Hypnos

Visually, this may be my favorite game I’ve played this fest. This is an important thing to be, because Hypnos is just a walking simulator. You play as some guy walking around and looking for a kid with red hair. The plot doesn’t make a lot of sense, but, that’s because it takes place in one of the more interesting parts of the Cthlhu mythos. You wander the city of Kadath, a city of dreams beyond the elder gods in the Dreamlands. That gives the designers free reign to make the landscapes you walk through weird and unnatural, and I think they did pretty good? It’s neat.

It's neat.

Dead Watch

This is a demo I’ve been sitting on for a while. I don’t know that I could describe why I grabbed it; the character designs were reminiscent of other things I’ve liked, and the store page talks about it being a time loop puzzle, and I love anything that reminds me of Ghost Trick. This isn’t Ghost Trick. This is… Bad Outer Wilds. You play a disembodied hand in an Unreal 5 castle. As you explore, you meet an anime woman, an anime girl, a skeleton, a cat, and a stock photo man. As the cycle reaches it’s conclusion, the Anime Woman is killed, and coming across her body is how you reset the day. Your job is to figure out the environmental puzzles and save her. Turns out this is only the first chapter, and the puzzles actually aren’t awful. It’s not necessarily something I’ve never seen, but there’s some clever work going on, and I haven’t fully explored the demo. I don’t know that I will, because the writing is kind of cringe. For every time I laughed at the absurdity the game presented me, it gave me dialogue that felt meme-y. Like, everyone complains about Borderlands 2, but I never really felt it was that bad, but this? This was bad. There’s a line that references 4chan, in the year of our lord 2026. Not a bad look; I kind of regret sitting on this for so long.

Parasite Mutant

I’d like to say that it’s not often that something is so nakedly trying to just be a sequel to one of it’s influences. I’d probably be lying, I’m pretty sure in one of these I just described something as “It’s X, but again.” Guess what, this one is Parasite Eve, but again. If you don’t know, and you shouldn’t because there were only two games and definitely not a third, Parasite Eve is a PSX era RPG experiment from Square (not Enix) which combined turn based combat with action-based dodging, by which I mean that Aya had action bars that filled up, and once a bar filled she could select an attack or ability to cash that skill in. While waiting for the bar to fill, you could dodge around the battlefield to avoid attacks and set yourself up for whatever your next attack was. It’s a really great system, and kind of a shame that it hasn’t really been used anywhere else, and it would be a shame if a theoretical third game dropped the system entirely.

Enter Parasite Mutant, which is literally just that system. You wander around an overworld, get into random battles, and fight them with skills Aya Brea would understand. It works as well as it used to, and I’m excited to play more. Which I will. The plot doesn’t seem as buckwild; here, you’re an android girl dropped into an island where all the inhabitants have been mutated for some reason. It’s not quite as gripping as an opera house where the cast and audience catches fire (due to the mitochondria, see), but what’re you gonna do. If I have some small complaints, uh, the main character is very much designed along the 2B or (theoretical) 3rd Birthday Aya design schemes; it’s a touch too horny. I’m not going to complain too hard, but even the default isn’t… look, that jacket’s not really doing it’s intended purpose of keeping rain off all the parts. It’s fine, it’s not going to kill the game at all, but it could be better. Lotta bugs too, if that’s an issue.

A Study in Blue

I noticed two things early in the Study in Blue demo. First, the language defaulted to French. I was afraid that I had downloaded another demo that did not have an English translation. Luckily, I was wrong, and there is, you just have to go into the options menu and hope you understand enough French to swap it over to English. The next thing I noticed is that the build is labeled “0.0.4.” Now, I’m no game dev, but that seems early.

Which bodes well, if I’m being honest. A Study in Blue is an adventure game where you play as Kenneth, a 20-something private-eye who is taking care of, and Blue, a 15 year old runaway with a chip on her shoulder. The demo doesn’t really give any more details on the two, and is one of the sidestory investigations. Along the way, you meet some NPCs and have some events and maybe solve the case. I was having a fine time it; it’s fine. At least, I was until the end, when the game took a sudden and violent turn I wasn’t expecting. If it sticks, I have a feeling that’s massive ramifications on the plot, and I could have avoided that by making alternative choices. The demo opens by telling you that your choices matter, but like. Let’s be real. I’ve played enough games with choices that matter that do not matter that choices mattering is maybe the biggest lie ever told. This seems neat; I hope it’ll keep up.

Subjectivation

Swear to god I'm going to have to make my own trailers for these things, and no one wants that. - Management

It’s harder to rate a demo when it feels like more of a tone poem. Subjectivation’s demo drops you into what is explicitly a lucid dream of a maze. You have to find your way out, and you do so by running through corridors, maintain your body heat at various points, and roughly stab some humanoid-shaped enemies. It’s not un-interesting, and the visual style is rusty hallways and nightmare monsters. I don’t know how interested I am for what’s going on in the background, and I’m not sure what all I can add to it. It was short; it’s fine. It’s fine.

The Mermaid Mask

One of my favorite games of a few years ago was Crow Country, a neat throwback to classic ResiEvil that was really sharp. Like, I think it only has one bad puzzle (fuck you the mushrooms) and it’s a really strong, tiny package. I love it, and I will play anything this team makes.

Flash forward to the SteamFest where I heard that The Mermaid Mask was the team’s next game. Of course I immediately downloaded it. And what I encountered was an extremely charming point and click adventure game that’s fully voiced and animated. It’s really cute, the voice work is good, and I’m sure the overall puzzles are probably pretty good. This demo actually ended after the first major puzzle, which I solved in about 17 minutes, which is the perfect amount for this demo, since I already knew I was going to buy it.

Of course, in doing research, it turns out this is actually the second or third game in this particular series, so. Guess I have some homework to do.

What have I learned from this?

What are you talking about, learning? Psh. Nothing. You know what this did do? I think I put most of the games that I was even halfway interested in back onto my wishlist; so my wishlist is back to burgeoning and I'm looking forward to a bunch of indie games coming out this year. Thanks games.

Ok right back to the usual schedule now; I prommy. I think. Probably.

[swampthingy]

[actuallyapathy]

[the-lumpfish-queen]

I love environmental storytelling

[belphegor1982]

[hotlegsharker]

[berlynn-wohl]

[harleyklawz]

Its fucking hieroglyphs with you people

[necronomipod]

Can't just leave this in the comments

[omegasmileyface]

ask not for whom poob has it

[thatoldstandby]

2k26 Spring Demo Watch pt. 1

I know it hasn't been long chat, but I did say BRB. Last week was the Steam NextFest for this.... spring? Is it spring? Will it soon be spring? What is time. What are seasons. Anyway, I went down a bunch of lists and grabbed a random assortment of games. Some of these are rad as shit. Sorry I couldn't get this done in time. But I had to complete Silent Hill f(romage) five times. And Cold Steel 3 once. Anyway.

2025 End of Year Entries: GOTY, Epilogue

2026 Entries: January, February

Sweepcremental

There isn’t even a trailer for this, please enjoy the above linked music provided from a playlist I listen to more than I care to think.

Look, I’ll be real. The description for this game is as follows: “minesweeper, but with a skill tree.” That is the entirety of it. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s Minesweeper, but you get money based on your performance, which you can use to buy upgrades on an upgrade tree. Have you ever thought “This game of Minesweeper is simply scintillating, but you know what would better? Passive upgrades that would allow the game to play itself.” I have not. You have not. I would normally say no one has, but someone clearly did. And you know what? It is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s Minesweeper, but with incremental improvements. It is precisely what it wants to be. I don’t know how to approach this one. I guess if you’ve ever wanted minesweeper, but with a skill tree, this has you covered.

ClickTown

Same deal with trailers as above. Thank you for your patronage.

I like a good town builder or idle game. This is neither of those things. You have resources, you place buildings, you collect resources, rinse, repeat. There’s nothing here. It’s kind of plain, there’s no interesting economy. It’s not trying to accomplish a lot, and it sure hits that mark.

ACE Strategy: Mecha Nova

I don’t need to play more of this, which, given it’s a mecha themed game is probably all most people who know me need to know. It’s fine. It’s another deckbuilder where you go through a map, choose your path when presented a few options, choose one of three cards, and then play them on a grid. I don’t really like deckbuilders, and this is one of those, even if it’s skinned as a thing I really like. C’est la vie. 

Here Comes The Swarm

This is just a straight up RTS in the vein of Age of Empires. So, you’re dropped into a map with a central core. Your job is to build up a base with a working economy while withstanding occasional waves of monsters attacking your base. Once you’ve explored and killed enough of the map, or survived enough waves of monsters, you win. This is actually shockingly strong? The RTS genre isn’t exactly burgeoning genre these days, and even when they were popular they were difficult to balance. But this seems to have a pretty firm grasp of what they want their economy and enemy balance to be. I suppose it helps that they’re only designing one faction. Unfortunately, I’ve never quite been good enough at RTS games to really pass judgment. I played a lot, but most of my strategy led to making a deathball and just rolling over everything. I’m going to keep my eye on this one though; this might be neat to pick up. Once it’s out of early access anyway.

Wild Blue Skies

I love Star Fox 64. It’s an amazing game that’s kind of the pinnacle of what an arcade rail shooter should be. It’s never been topped, mostly because of needless fucking with the formula in every sequel. Which has led to more than a few indie game devs to say “Hey, what if Star Fox 64, but again?” And that’s worked out pretty well! I like Ex-Zodiac the most of what I’ve played, I feel like it plays the best, but I’m waiting on it to actually finish before passing judgment.

But this isn’t Ex-Zodiac, this is Wild Blue Skies. Wild Blue Skies is just “What if Star Fox 64, but again?” You play four animal pilots who fly Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-An-Arwing, and you shoot down enemy ships as you maneuver around a rolling landscape. The major difference between all the other Not Star Foxes is that this is absolutely gorgeous, probably the best looking one I’ve ever seen. The opening is a lavish cartoon which gives it a real Saturday morning vibe, the 3-D graphics are how I remember Star Fox 64 looking. The audio and comms chatter is really strong. This looks and sounds amazing.

It… doesn’t play great? The thing feels kind of sluggish in a way that’s not fun. The plane feels like it has maybe a half-second of lag. This doesn’t kill the game, but it makes it feel kind of “off.” On top of that, the charge button is a separate button from the normal guns, which don’t continuously fire by default. The fact that they don’t continuously fire in Star Fox makes sense, since the fire button led into the charge button, but it makes less sense here when the buttons are detached. There’s an option to fix it, but it’s weird that it’s not on by default. Overall, i mean, it’s gorgeous, but I’m not in love with it, which is weird in my “Year of Flying.” I’ll wait for more reviews, but this is probably a sale game.

Lootbound

Speaking of games I feel like I should like more than I do, Lootbound is an RPG where you go down a Slay the Spire-esque map doing some really basic turn based battles. The gimmick is that instead of abilities or cards, you collect gear and equipment that you put on your character in an attache-case inventory. As far as I could tell, every item you could shove on your character can affect their stats. But…. I don’t know. It’s lacking something; I ended up quitting out because I was bored rather than hitting a natural end point. The art is rad, this is probably a better game than I’m giving it credit for, but like. I downloaded 21 of these little shits, not all of them are going to get the focus they deserve.

Vultures: Scavengers of Death

The entire pitch of this is turn-based Resident Evil with PSX-polygon graphics. It’s good at that. Does that appeal to you? It appeals to me. I have some complaints; the backgrounds are gorgeous, but that also means that items you can collect or read don’t really pop on an initial glance of the room. Each interactable has a small white circle above it, but the circle is small and kind of difficult to see. And I’d really love an undo button and some way to speed up animations. These are minor quibbles; survival horror works well in a turn based setting, and I’m looking forward to poking this some more.

Annihilated

This game is not in English. Whoops. This looks like a dark fantasy dungeon crawl RPG full of Dangan Ronpa blood and a UI that’s *really* reminscent of Sting games. Not quite as unique as Riviera: The Promised Land or overbearing as Yggdra Union, but definitely taking some design cues. The combat is neat, you’re presented whatever options you have available for combat, and then you do a timing on a bar minigame where you can score a crit by clicking within a certain window. Every enemy has an armor bar and a health bar, and once you’ve damaged the armor enough you can damage the health. Some of your options are limited in how many times you can use them, like a Fire Emblem weapon. And occassionally, you can attack twice in a turn. Somehow. And then you’re exploring a dungeon by selecting an option from a map and dealing with the consequences, and there are VN segments with your party after the run. Maybe there’s something here? It seems neat? But uh. I don’t read Japanese, so, I can’t really say one way or another. I have wishlisted it, since it looks like the trailer was translated, so maybe?

Titanium Court

This game is super rad and impossible to describe. The game itself is a merge-3 RTS tower defense game shown in garish graphics reminiscent of early VGA graphics. It’s wild, and I felt like a genius when my strategy worked. This gameplay happens around a story that is… interesting? You wake up at a court, and the quick reveal is that you’re the faerie queen who has to lead her court to victory in whatever war is currently going on. Your supporting cast is the cast from Midsummer’s Night Dream (Get it? Because it’s the Titania(um) Court) It’s rad, the writing is funny, and it’s full of visual gags. This quick review is slight for as much as I liked it; it’s a simple enough game, but it’s done exceptionally well. I’m excited for it.

The Eternal Life of Goldman

I’m no animator, I’m just a humble lawyer, but I’m aware of what keyframes are. In animation, keyframes are the main drawings of the characters and scenes, and they’re the ones that really stand out when looking at them. But, keyframes are expensive and most cartoons don’t have all that great of a budget, so each 60 seconds of animation are usually composed of a solid number of keyframes (generally 24? I think?) and the rest are tween frames, bits of animation that go from keyframe A to B. This saves time and cuts down on the animation budget.

As far as I can tell, the animators on The Eternal Life of Goldman have never heard of a tween animation, and so all the animation looks to be keyframed. This leads to it looking liquid smooth in motion and is one of the most lavishly animated things I’ve seen. It’s gorgeous; and that works well for something that appears to be a decent to good side scrolling adventure game. You play as “Goldman,” a character who jumps around a world with a cane. You use the cane as a pogo stick and bounce around. It’s fun, it’s probably good.

This is good, because holy fuck is the story not fun. The Eternal Life of Goldman appears to be a framing story being told to a kid who’s not only at a hospital, but seems to be not having a great time. It appears to be like a Princess Bride situation, only by a much-put upon and very tired mom telling it to a kid who’s pretty sick. And the text of the Goldman story itself has a bunch of dead kids kind of around the worldbuilding of the game. This is not a happy game; maybe it ends well, but I cannot imagine it going to happy places somewhere in the middle. I’m still probably going to keep an eye on it, but something that could have been a grand slam might be something to be careful around. I didn’t fully finish the demo; I think I’ll pick up the full game? I haven’t decided yet; so I guess I’ll find out if I regret this.

Prolegomena To a Hyperdimensional Interface That Will Be Able to Manifest from Three-Minute Interchanges Experimental Demo

Pro·le·gom·e·non: Noun, pluralized to prolegomena, a critical or discursive introduction to a book. Look, I’m not gonna lie, I picked this up because I heard about the title, which is ridiculous. That said? This is kind of rad? It’s super experimental; but the gist is that this anime woman is talking to you, yes, you, dear chat, and trying to see if they can talk to someone across dimensions. I’m not going to say a whole lot else? This is a super simple demo, and takes about three minutes? Like the title says. 

Ok cool that's about half of them. Now I just have to do the other half. Ugh why'd I do this to myself.

[mostlyghostly66]

Baba is fridge magnet