Yet another break

There's always a time period during which stuff is kind of not going as you want it to go, but you're not sure if you can still manage or not.
Well that time period is over now. I have reached the conclusion that... no, I can not manage.
I 100% blame my university and how they put an unacceptable amount of work into this semester that is not backed by any course points, meaning that aside from the coursework that I had planned for myself for this semester (which was already quite a lot), they gave extra, mandatory, and unforeseen work.
The result is that I have to work for 60-80 hours each week, which would be ridiculous (also unpaid, since I'm not getting anything from this aside from not getting tossed out) overtime, were we looking at this in a job's context instead.

What that means for this place, is that I simply don't have time for it anymore. I will return when, through some miracle or through doubling down on doing stuff, forsaking all my free time, I once again have time to not deal with schoolwork. New year's, maybe.

End-of-week Report

[Last week's report is still relevant. This is all I have time for.]

End-of-week Report

I'm just trying to think of a witty joke to conceal my time-shortage related stress right now. New games? Yeah, someday. For now, two software projects and preparation for writing my thesis next semester, as well as other sprinkled bits of work. Deliver me from this, please.

The games aren't relenting either, still growing in number. I'm contemplating some lapses on judgement on my part these past weeks on what I've been adding, but... Screw it. I can't find it in myself to care at this point in time. This shall be my future self's problem. Have a report.

• Games in backlog: 228 (+6)
• of which Early Access: 54 (-1)
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

Still playing Crusader Kings II, which takes as much time as any of the other micromanagement games like Dwarf Fortress or Factorio. Aside from the obvious (school), it is mostly the reason why I haven't played many new games lately, and also the reason why I try to avoid games of such length until I've mostly caught up with everything else. However, it's fun, and... I'm not going to give that up. I'll just finish this one game (which is a gigantic task), then probably not play for a while as I tackle other games.
I've also nearly finished my almost-biannual Terraria playthrough after about 4 months of very irregular play. Always feels nice to finish a long game. And then there was that random review this week, so it's not all dead.

Meanwhile, my Steam Wishlist finally passed 300 titles, so that's worrying for me. I'm contemplating a purge of 50+ games, but then again, just looking through them all again would take a long while that could be spent on playing them, so I don't know. Maybe a bit later.

• Games in backlog: 222 (+4)
• of which Early Access: 55 (+1)
• Games reviewed last week: 1

Never Split the Party

Never Split the Party caught my eye and skipped in line due to being free, and being multiplayer. My friends and I are always burning through games we can (and might want to) play together faster than they come out, so any half-decent opportunity is worth jumping on.

Sadly, the opportunity was the only half-decent thing here. The game itself tries to be a copy of The Binding of Isaac, except they kind of butchered all aspects of it and it's a buggy mess. But as I already mentioned, it's multiplayer, and it's free, except for most character classes which cost nigh 20€. Absurd, really.

In case my bashing hasn't been clear enough, don't even take a look this game's way. If you wanted a multiplayer Binding of Isaac, then you'll have more fun playing that simultaneously on different computers and talking about your experience than you will playing this game.

End-of-week Report

I have severely underestimated the amount of work I've had to do. It's usually the end of a semester that robs me of all my time, not the beginning. At least unlike with my games, there's a constant feeling of progress. I just hope it's actually faster than the amount of new work being piled on. Life comes first, but I'll try to find time to continue with my games.
Have a report that has lost its former glory, being reduced to 3 lines.

• Games in backlog: 218 (+4)
• of which Early Access: 54
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

The blame this week goes to: Crusader Kings II, Tales of Berseria, Mabinogi, and the continuing start of my school semester.
At least the first of those got a review, so it wasn't an empty week. Surprisingly, no new additions to the backlog this week.

• Games in backlog: 214
• of which Early Access: 54
• Games reviewed last week: 1

Crusader Kings II

I'm a bit hesitant on how I feel about Crusader Kings II. I actually only decided to play it because I acquired it for free during one of their promotions and because of all the stories I've heard about the game. It's a bit legendary, you see, yet the Steam reviews don't really reflect that, and neither did my initial impression of it through looking at its gameplay and descriptions. And if you were to ask for my honest, in a way, opinion, I'd still have to agree with that. But after binging it for more than 12 hours on some days, how can I really walk away and say I didn't enjoy it and that it's not a good game?

Crusader Kings II is one of Paradox's Grand Strategy games. They're really a genre of their own. I would say they're most similar to Turn-Based Strategy games in that your main focus is on building up these cities (counties), keeping control of them, and using your armies to conquer more for yourself. Crusader Kings isn't really turn-based though - the simulation is always running, albeit slowly or even on pause whenever you want in singleplayer.
However, a big difference is that ultimately, this game is not about your counties and your armies, and how well they're doing. It's about you, as the ruler. And unlike other strategy games, you're just a human with all your human problems you need to take care of, and so are your subjects. Ruling too much land by yourself? You'll have trouble administrating it, meaning less taxes, and fewer armies. Divide your land up into pieces to give to your vassals? Better hope they're content with your rule, or they'll plot to rebel against you. Own a large kingdom but are about to succumb to disease or old age? Watch as your land gets divided amongst your children and your unhappy vassals use the opportunity to claim independence from you. And there's just so much more.

Ultimately, most of these differences from a regular TBS (or a 4X, to be more precise) are that things are more difficult. A large domain and a powerful army will never guarantee your success, and in the long run, nothing will. Rise and fall, and rise again, but so will your enemies. Some, myself included, would consider this lack of control and these restraints which seek to pull you from power ever stronger as you achieve more of it to be terrible. Why am I even playing and trying to grow larger if I can't truly win, or if I can ever only control a tiny speck of this land I own?
The latter was what frustrated me in Stellaris as well, which is considered to be like a halfway point between a Grand Strategy and a 4X game. You may recall I didn't ultimately like Stellaris, and although with different wording, I criticized this same uncertainty of it, where its gameplay can't quite decide where to fit. I approached CK2 with the same mindset, and I believe that's where I went wrong. CK2 is not a 4X game, and it shouldn't be played like one. It's not about the destination, it's about the journey there, and those same amazing little stories you can tell after your long playing sessions.

Overall, I can't deny I've enjoyed playing Crusader Kings after I got over the initial steep learning curve and past the 4X mindset of absolute control and conquest. Still, it's far from a great game in my opinion with lots of flaws, which would take too long to point out. The game's pretty massive with lots to do, and it's an experience you can't quite get anywhere else (aside from perhaps Paradox's other Grand Strategy games). And despite its flaws, I love this experience and would in fact recommend playing it if you have a ton of time to spend.

End-of-week Report

I wasn't expecting to have time for anything on the first week of school. The beginning and the end are always a little hectic.

Tales of Berseria might actually be starting to reach it's conclusion after the 48 hours I've already played it. I'm not sure how much more of it I can take. They've really stretched it out, and there's not much interesting to do. I hope it ends soon, or I might just quit that one too...

• Games in backlog: 214
• of which Early Access: 54
• Games reviewed last week: 0

Regarding tracking visual novels and VR games in the report:
See, I can't play VR games, even if I roll them.
As for VNs... Well, Steam isn't the best place to gauge how good they may be. Steam's good for regular games, also because there is no other place which actually has all this user review info on all these games. Visual novels however have VNDB, which provides much better results, because the ratings there are by people who are much more into VNs, and are better judges of them because of it. So while I do keep my Steam list of VNs, I actually scout new ones out on VNDB, making the number of VNs on my list mostly irrelevant.
So, this is why I'm excluding them from now on. Less information to keep track of this way, which makes for less interesting data, but it's probably for the best. Truth be told, should the games ever run out, I'm doing away with that report altogether. But we've still got a ways to go until that happens.

End-of-week Report

Busy week this one, actually.

For starters, I played Vermintide 2 over the free weekend it had. Basically, it's an all-around improved version of Left 4 Dead 2. It is so incredibly similar, I wonder how they got away with it. In that sense, there is nothing wrong with the game, but the negative reviews apparently come from broken promises on the devs' part, and because the players wanted more than what they got. Objectively speaking, Left 4 Dead 2 has great reviews, and this one is most definitely a better game, and would by that logic deserve better reviews, but sadly, it's not how the world works. I've never been a fan of the genre though, and this game was never on my list, hence the not-full-review. It was still fun for the 2 days and dozen-or-so hours I played it, but that's that.

Additionally, I read through Phenomeno one night. It was supposedly the best Visual Novel that was under 2 hours, which is why I picked it. (Not that I have any clue how they rate the times - it always takes me twice as long to finish them.) I'd say it was a good but not great horror story. Surprised and fooled me at times, and never used any dumb cliches like jump scares, instead properly developing the eerie atmosphere. Still, it had some moments in the story that just didn't add up, which hurt the whole in many aspects. On the upside, it's free. On the downside, it's fan-translated (a few small mistakes every paragraph, but it's still completely understandable at all times), and is only an adaption of the first of the six light novels it is based on, leaving the story unfinished. There is no English translation available for the LNs either, so I guess I won't ever get to read them.

Well, that was a bit long for just a "passing mention".
Anyways, my last year of school is beginning tomorrow. Not at all satisfied with my progress over the summer, but at least I can see where and why my time went. I don't think it's a lost cause ever getting this pile of games over with, I just have to do it at some point. As someone once told me: There's never time to do anything. Not today, not tomorrow, and not in a week or a month. That's why you just have to do that thing.
I guess it's a bit ambiguous, but what I gathered from it is that this lack of time is just an ever-present feeling. No matter how much or little you fit in your schedule, you'll always feel out of time, but if you just don't think about whether you have time do something and do it, you can get it done. Realistically speaking, of course you have a limited amount of time, but what I just said comes from that very few people are actually out of time. They still have time to do more, but if they start thinking about it, they won't find that time.
So I'm confident that if I really want, I can complete this pile of games. But it's still easier said than done. I mean just look at these numbers:

• Games in backlog: 283
• of which VR: 18
• of which Visual Novels: 53 (+2 - I'm really not even playing these from my list, maybe I should exclude them from the report along with VR, would make for more realistic numbers...)
• of which Early Access: 61 (+1)
• Games reviewed last week: 3-ish

PS. I also hammered together some CSS to make embedding images prettier, mostly on my side. The defaults really make we want to dive in there and just rip some of that stuff out, but I know that would take too long to be worth it.

Bytepath

Bytepath is basically a game of Asteroids on steroids. The premise is mostly the same in that various stuff flies in from the edges of the screen, and you got to shoot and/or dodge that stuff. What sets Bytepath apart though, is it's insane upgrade system. There's several different ships, a few dozen classes, and several hundred passive skill nodes in the form of a Path of Exile skill tree, which it most definitely did rip off, but that's not a bad thing.
These upgrade systems allow for many different paths, allowing you to come up with your own unique way of beating the game. It's quite satisfying to see the synergies between the upgrades play out, and the entire thing is like an incremental game.

Now, what is bad, is that the game kind of fails to do anything with this potential. In fact, just as I'm about to reach the point where I'm just getting these ridiculous(ly fun) synergies up, I also reach the point where I beat the game. You can start over with even more increased power, but there's no real point.
Basically, you need to get to level 40 to win, up to which point the difficulty ramps up at a balanced pace. After that, the game quickly throws everything else it has at you, and if your build is good enough to survive that, you might as well keep playing forever. (Picture related.) I found out I could get to the point where I basically get invincibility off of killing enemies, and that invincibility lasted longer than it took to get it. Couple it with an ever increasing attack speed buff from kills, and I was all set to play until I get bored of gaining points. (As you can see, the points left the screen, my combo counter is over 10000, giving me over 1000% extra attack speed. I'm also at level 100, which is far past the final level of 40.)

Overall, I had fun playing it, but it quickly exhausts itself due to the lack of things to do. In less than an hour, Bytepath becomes a game of just mindlessly holding down buttons, watching as everything before you dies. You stop caring for enemy types and pickups, and you don't really get to feel the potential of this bullet-spewing monstrosity you've created. I would've loved a bigger map, maybe some bosses, and it could have really shined if it actually added a game to the upgrade simulator. But as it stands, it won't make my list. A partial recommendation only - if you want something to do for an hour or two.

PS. This actually opened up my eyes to why Path of Exile might be more fun then I've given it credit for. I haven't looked at it enough from the perspective of it being an upgrade simulator instead of an ARPG.

Music Racer

Sometimes I wonder if I should even post about the bad games I find. And I don't mean just game I didn't enjoy enough, because that's most all of the content here, I mean actually bad games.
Music Racer is someone's attempt at Audiosurf, except I don't think they ever quite hit the point of having at least all the same features in it, let alone any improvements. Curious why I even added this game to my list, since I'm not a big fan of listening to music of my own choice for the sole purpose of playing along to it. That's all this game is, see. The comparisons to Audiosurf are all well and accurate, and this is basically a downgrade on all accounts. I've nothing to say. No use even considering this.

End-of-week Report

Oh boy, Overwatch and Star Citizen free weekends.
I last tried Overwatch during its open beta, and I can say nothing noteworthy has changed. I can of course not deny that it is a well made game and deserves its popularity, but on a personal level, if I wanted to play a shooter, I'd play a regular one without all the twitch-based gameplay, and if I wanted to play a team-based ability spam game, I'd turn to a traditional MOBA. Hence, I've no motivation to play it. This is as close to a review as you're going to get from me.

As for Star Citizen, it is a game about the future, for the future. Even after 200 million dollars and several years of development time, it still seems a long ways off from being a coherent, playable thing. I must say that what they do have so far is very impressive, and if a game of this quality would release in full, it would be absolutely astonishing, but it hasn't yet, so it isn't yet.
It also still has numerous bugs, the user experience is often clunky, and most importantly of all, it's a game for the future, because computers of this age can not run it. With 16GB of RAM, the best last gen i5 CPU, a GTX 960, and a well-optimized computer, this thing is pulling around 20 fps with up to a second lag spikes every ten-or-so seconds. And that's on the absolute lowest settings. Barely playable. If I had to recommend specs? 32GB of RAM, newest generation i7 or better, along with at least a GTX 1070, and all 50-100GB of it installed on an SSD.
But I am most definitely looking forward to playing it in 5 years or so. What they're doing is really impressive. They just have to hope nothing comes along and makes a similar thing faster and releases before them.

Well, that was a fun double mini-review. Onto the regular report.

• Games in backlog: 283 (+4)
• of which VR: 18
• of which Visual Novels: 51 (+1)
• of which Early Access: 60 (-1)
• Games reviewed last week: 2-ish

Age of Wonders III

Age of Wonders III, like most 4X games, isn't really the kind you can complete entirely, since you're supposed to just keep starting over until you don't feel like playing anymore. Of course, if you like the game, who knows how long into it that will happen. I would never get around to telling you my thoughts on it at that rate. So instead, I played a little bit of the campaign, won a couple scenarios, and am now ready to impart my gained knowledge.

Hoping you'd know what a 4X game is, I'd jump straight to comparing Age of Wonders with some others of the genre.

• Inevitably, I can not leave out Civilization V, it being the most well-known of them. And as usual, the main difference I would point out is that Age of Wonders focuses a lot more heavily on combat. Not any more heavily than most strategy games of the turn-based nature, mind you, but rather it's Civ that's the odd one out.
• The other large difference, and this time from all others that I know, is that Age of Wonders plays a lot quicker. There's approximately just as much action going on in a single turn, but 40-turn games are entirely feasible, while even the longest ones probably wouldn't pass 200 turns. That is of course assuming all the players are not prolongening it on purpose. I find this a really nice aspect of the game, as it actually allows for games to be completed in a single sitting, or just a few, instead of dragging on for weeks or months. Not that I don't like long games, it's just that it's great to have a shorter option available.
• As a moderate difference, Age of Wonders has fairly complicated units and battle interactions. The battles are played out on a hex grid, and instead of the usual attack, defense, and whether the unit is ranged, each unit instead has it's own set of abilities, and a "character sheet" consisting of potentially dozens of different traits that further shape it.
• There is a rather extensive magic system, which allows for major influence over the world through its use. Terraforming, summons, offensive and defensive spells, and more.
• As for downsides, I find town customization options are heavily limited and boring. There's very few buildings, and their effects are very simplistic.
• Additionally, there is no tech tree in the game, which I believe is a contributor to the fast pacing. Town upgrades and spells dictate how powerful your units can be, and both can get to end-game levels fairly quickly, while skipping lots of lower level stuff.
• And finally, though this would need more playtime from me to confirm, I have a feeling like the balance is slightly off.

Overall, a simpler and faster 4X TBS game than most, but it definitely has a spot on my list for still being pretty good, as well as filling a sort of gap in the genre. Would recommend.

End-of-week Report

Slow progress, and I feel like there's a bunch of games that are nearing completion, but just aren't getting there for one reason or another. When talking multiplayer, I completely blame my friends' apparent reluctance to finish anything. Play it until just before the end, then quit. Baffling.
Have the latest report...

• Games in backlog: 279 (-1)
• of which VR: 18
• of which Visual Novels: 50
• of which Early Access: 61 (+1)
• Games reviewed last week: 2

Delver

Delver is like Minecraft. Except it doesn't have mining. Or crafting. I guess it only has the blocky, pixely world with the same kind of first person camera and is, coincidentally, made in Java. (Which, by no coincidence this time, also creates technical problems for the game.) Anyways, it's not a very good comparison, but I'm just feeling tired this time around.

See, Delver's a roguelike instead, and this time rather close to the formula. True permadeath, lots of mystery surrounding the world the first time around, and other stuff, I'm sure. I don't know, I don't have much to say. It's not very fun. It's short, poorly utilizes the height dimension to the point where the bugs (like bad hitboxes) caused by it outweigh any benefits it may bring. That is, except for the nice graphics. I think it does the blocky art style pretty well, especially once you consider the particles and lighting. But the controls were no good, there wasn't much content, and whatever mystery it held for the first 15-30 minutes quickly wore off.
I'll be honest, maybe I should actually be feeling like playing a new game when I do, but I think I wouldn't have thought much better of it anyways. So that's that - it's no good.

The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile

Would you look at that, it's The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile - a game from the makers of Salt and Sanctuary. The former was published on Steam a year later (along with Charlie Murder), probably due to the resounding success of Salt and Sanctuary, but it's actually a game from 2011. Overall, not that old, but still worth noting that it came out quite a few years before their big success.

I am immediately reminded of the hyper-violence games I used to play on Kongregate and Newgrounds. Back then, I had no clue what I was doing, mostly just mashing buttons, following a rather linear path to wherever the game guided me. I might have thought that this was just due to being a kid, and not being all that bright at the time, but looking at this game, there really isn't much of an indicator as to what the grander goal is. The camera is zoomed in real close, I'm given no feedback on how much damage I might be doing, how much I might need to do, or what might be triggering the various things that are happening. Luckily if I button mash with just a little bit of sense, I can get through it all while still feeling pretty good about myself due to the visual effects the game gives me.

Sadly, I can't say it's very fun to mash buttons and effortlessly kill stuff. This game does just feel a bit gratuitous, and I'm not a big fan of that. It doesn't feel like it does anything more than the free games I got to play 10 years ago, though, yes, I would be comparing it to the best ones of that time, and further, I can't even say I didn't have fun.

Difficult verdict to place here, but I'm afraid it just isn't good enough for my list. However, if you have a few hours to kill and feel like playing something violent, this isn't at all a bad pick. Play it, maybe have some fun, but don't expect too much.

End-of-week Report

Ludum Dare is this weekend, so I have been doing that and will continue tomorrow. Honestly, I understand less and less each year why I'm still taking part in it. It was a really helpful experience the first couple times, but each next time I'm just even more dissatisfied with both the journey and the destination. Maybe solo it would work, but there's just no such thing as an unified vision as a team. If the person whose idea is being made is not a strong leader, everyone else will either suffer or make others suffer due to misaligned goals.
But enough bitter rambling, have a report. Last 3 weeks to go before school begins again. Got to make the most of it.

• Games in backlog: 280
• of which VR: 18
• of which Visual Novels: 50
• of which Early Access: 60 (-1)
• Games reviewed last week: 2

Superflight

Superflight is almost in Steam's top 100 in terms of user reviews at the time of writing, so I expected it to be a fun game. It's a game about gliding in a wingsuit or some such through randomly generated short, blocky, and colorful levels. Gain points for flying close to walls or through loops, stay alive for as long as you can, and get a high score.

Honestly, the gliding thing wasn't half-bad... for the first 10 minutes, but after that, I'm not really sure what to look for in this game. I guess you could practice and get good at flying through lots of tiny holes and near all sorts of walls, but that's such a simplistic thing to get good at - there really are no other features in the game. What's more, if you're going for a high score, just don't take any risks. Fly for hours, days even, taking no risks, and you'll get the top score. Except you obviously don't want to play that long.

I'm really just disappointed in such a highly rated game, but I guess the tranquility factor in this game was appealing to a lot of people. Personally, I don't see it at all, and would confidently suggest staying away.

Space Between Worlds

I happened upon this little free game recently, and something about it captured my attention that I wanted to play right away. I'm glad I did. It's a 10 minute long emotional experience, with basically no graphics nor much gameplay, but it really reminds me of the good times I had playing free Flash games back in the day. It's just the same style.
I'd recommend taking 10 minutes out of your day and playing it, there's really not much to lose.

End-of-week Report

Chugging along, doing things, writing this way too late in the evening...
Can't really think of anything to say, so just have the progress report.

Oh yeah, I missed the goal I set for myself by like 30 games. As we can see from the past 30 days, I'm clearly not going to reach an average of 1 game more played than added per day by the end of this month either. But I have to get through these games somehow. What to do, what to do...

• Games in backlog: 280 (-2)
• of which VR: 18
• of which Visual Novels: 50 (+1)
• of which Early Access: 61 (-1)
• Games reviewed last week: 2

PS. Finished watching Trigun. It was okay I guess. Couldn't quite relate.

Shift Quantum

Small world out there. I found Shift Quantum on the Steam store the other day, and I can only assume it's the same folks who made the various Shift games in Flash back in the day. Fun little games, pretty good for being free and what was available at the time. They also made Epistory as it turns out, which I rather liked. Always good to see developers whose games I played all those years ago still there, still making games.

Shift is a puzzle game where you have to traverse a level via platforming. The twist? You can press shift to Shift, which turns everything inside out. What's up is now down, and what's solid is now not. This creates a whole bunch of new possibilities when combined with the other mechanics, such as pushing blocks, collecting stuff to open/move doors/platforms, and even changing the direction of gravity. It's not a very complicated mechanic, but it creates ways to think outside the box, like Portal, except not quite such a stroke of gold.

Quantum doesn't really deliver much anything new except for nicer graphics and sounds, and a bit more gameplay. Overall though, it's still too short for my liking and nothing that great as a game. Good for a free Flash game, not good enough for a paid game. But if you've never played Shift before and like non-standard puzzlers, it might be worth trying out, even if just the Flash versions while they're still available.

Siralim 2

Siralim 2 is a dungeon-crawler based on randomness and quantity. Basically, what has been done is that hundreds of monsters, items, spells, and other such bits have been created, most have been given some forms of random enhancements and allow for combinations between them to create a near-infinite amount of combinations. Throw these things into dungeons, allow the player the capture and find them, then create challenges that the player has to try to overcome by assembling a proper team.
And this sounds real fine on paper for me. I'm a huge fan of generated content, combinations and synergies, and the emergent gameplay that could and should arise from that. However, I found my time with it to be incredibly tedious.

I'd like to start off with criticizing the control scheme and looks of the game. Rather uncharacteristic of me, as I absolutely love, for example, Dwarf Fortress, which is rather guilty of both of these things.
An easy problem to see is that the game is played with just 6 keys - WASD, select, and back. While it means there's no difficulty in learning the controls, it's quite hindering to get around the menus. And this game requires a metric ton of navigating menus. Mouse selection or keyboard shortcuts instead of clicking S 10 times followed by W 10 times soon afterwards would be really, really nice. if you're going for a keyboard-only control scheme, make it very well optimized. This one is not.
As for the graphics, they're simply charring. While that doesn't really hurt the gameplay, I just dislike looking at them most of the time. I wouldn't complain about graphics that aren't good and don't try to be, but I do complain if they're trying to be more than the author was capable of. Also there's recurring problems with the pixels getting very un-square if any of the viewport settings are just slightly off the default. It's hard to explain, but it looks really bad.

As for the gameplay, I find it to be too much of a grindfest. The huge amount of randomization is good for keeping things somewhat fresh for however long you want to play, or for collection enthusiasts, so if you've got 1000 hours to burn, and just want to do something, it can be a nice time waster. However, if you're like me and desire quality over quantity, then all this nigh-infinite content doesn't matter, since it's not enjoyable enough.
You're allowed to advance at your own pace for the most part, but you can't just rush through everything since you're not strong enough. Grind away at lower floors for as long as you want and you should eventually win one way or the other. I personally would prefer the perfectionist approach, where I take my time to explore everything and look through all the possibilities, but the game throws so much stuff at me all the time, that looking through all my spells, all my equipment, all my monsters is infeasible.
And these describe the two alternative paths through which you should be able to play the game, as well as the problems with them. Either grind or think of the right combinations to get really strong. But grinding is boring button mashing, and thinking takes too long, not because it's difficult but because there's too many things.

Overall, this game may very well be enjoyable to those to whom these things do not sound so bad. It's not very popular, but it is quite highly rated on Steam, meaning the few people who play it, like it. But unless you can go look at what the game is and think to yourself that "yes, this is exactly what I've been looking for", it's not going to be enjoyable. For the record, there's also a third game out in Early Access right now. Much like with the first game, it's mostly just more of the same, but with a few differences, as far as I understand. No major revamps to any game systems or graphics.

End-of-week Report

Still busy with Tales of Berseria, and I also started with Age of Wonders III. The latter has been sitting in my library for forever, and it's surprisingly good. I regret not playing it earlier.
There's always a small problem with posting a review for non-ending games that I don't quit. That's because I always post a review when I either finish or quit, but if I do neither, I should post it at some optimal point between when I've played the most, yet the game hasn't become overly familiar yet.
I'm 20 hours in so far, but I feel like I'd want to play different races, maybe something that isn't the campaign... Explore as many different possibilities as I can.

Anyway, onto the report. The number of games is miraculously still going up. I think this is a sign that I need to just cull a whole bunch without playing them. Maybe if when I reach 300, how about that?

• Games in backlog: 282 (+3)
• of which VR: 18
• of which Visual Novels: 49 (+1)
• of which Early Access: 62 (+1)
• Games reviewed last week: 2
• Games to end-of-month goal: 32 (10.7/day)

Unexplored

Unexplored is a game I added long enough ago that it was when I still wrote about each new game I added to my list. As mentioned, I skipped over it at first glance, but later opted to give it a chance, seeing how various places praised it, mainly for it's unique dungeon generation and content amount. I took my time to play it, quit, then tried again, and quit again. Overall I can't quite say I agree with what I've heard about the game.

Unexplored is an action roguelike. While it might seem like sort of a new idea in its execution at first, I would rather say it's very much a copy of some of the earlier roguelikes I've played, offering nothing new in itself. (Admittedly, I haven't played many old games, but some, still.) Of course, it's moderately impressive how the game quite faithfully manages to translate this experience into a non-tile-, non-turn-based system.
While I've nothing bad to say about the dungeon generation, I really saw nothing special in it. Maybe it's because it actually allows for cyclical routes and has a bunch of interactions between objects in different areas? Sure, the average dungeon generation algorithm I've seen just about anywhere is rubbish, so this one is more impressive in comparison, but it's still nothing special.
As for the content, I'm again not sure what it was being compared to. Compared to the average rubbish roguelike (or action roguelike, often in the form of some sort of shooter), sure I'd say there was a reasonable amount of content. Compared to something like Dungeons of Dredmor or Binding of Isaac? Not a chance. The various weapons got repetitive fairly fast and classes had basically no variety (because they were mostly equipment-based, there is no skill system in this game).
Finally, I find the melee system to be somewhat poor, although this could just be personal preference. Games with good (action) melee combat are pretty hard to come by because of how difficult it is to handle collision, swing speed, "cooldowns", etc.

Ultimately, while Unexplored doesn't seem like a bad game, it's pretty mediocre. Sure it's somewhat unique in being action-based, but otherwise I saw no new concepts being introduced in this game, nor any mechanics being executed particularly well. I can't quite say if you should or shouldn't spend your time trying it, considering most people seem to rather like it, but I rather did not like it.

Catmaze

So, Catmaze is a metroidvania. It looks nice enough from the pictures and the short gameplay videos on the store page, but once you start playing it... It's terrible.

It really feels like someone was just given a basic list of things that they had to implement gameplay- and art-wise, they did that, and then left it at that. To say that there is no polish is an understatement. It just really feels terrible to play this game. All the movement, the enemies, animations, attacks, (action) feedback, it's all so badly made. To give some examples:
I feel like I'm jumping on the moon. When I run towards a ledge to make a jump, I just fall down 9 times out of 10, and I dare say I know how to time my jumps in a "normal" game. Stomping down on a barrel, not only does it feel like I'm falling softer than a feather, the barrel doesn't crash and break, it's more like it awkwardly dissolves. The bouncy yet clunky animations feel like the character is both drunk and doing half-squats all the time. It would be more faithful to the gameplay if they just replaced all sprites with half-filled balloons.

Not a very formal approach this time, but honestly, I don't feel like this game deserves better. One of the worse games that's made me believe I might want to try it, and I don't suggest you do. Stay away.

End-of-week Report

Absolutely not going to reach that goal. I'm barely moving forward. Oh woe, how will I ever finish my queue if even months of free time barely make a dent. I figured a helpful tactic is that I play multiple games at the same time whenever I'm going through any longer games. This way I don't have to choose between burning myself out on playing something for more than a few hours a day every day or "wasting" my time playing stuff not on the list. Considering the amount of hours in a day and how often I'd want to play something, I'd reckon 5 or so games at a time wouldn't be too many.

It's always fun to think of an excuse every week why I got so little done. Y'see, I was learning about image resizing this week, and I thought it'd be an easy thing, but suddenly it was connected to signal processing and that rabbit hole was deeper than I could have imagined. So that ate a few days.

• Games in backlog: 279
• of which VR: 18 (-1)
• of which Visual Novels: 48
• of which Early Access: 61
• Games reviewed last week: 1
• Games to end-of-month goal: 29 (2.9/day)

2.9 games per day? Nice joke.

Just Shapes & Beats

Just Shapes & Beats is just that - shapes and beats. You are a specific square. Your goal is to get a specific triangle. Avoid other shapes to the beat of the beats in a bullet hell fashion for a while to reach your beloved tri-angled friend. It's a simple concept, and a simple game.

Not much to say, but I suppose I could make a few disjoint statements about this game.

• It seems to be designed as a party game. It basically lists every single form of possible multiplayer option on Steam, and it has a literal party mode, where you can leave it running as background music, and people can go play to the tune of the currently running track, if they wish to. There is no actual gameplay difference to multiplayer though, at least as far as I understood. Couldn't really test.
• The beats are pretty good.
• I feel the attacks/hazards aren't telegraphed well enough. On one hand, this lengthens the game by making you have to somewhat memorize a level, and both forcing and allowing you to spend more time listening to each of the tracks. On the other hand, it feels kind of shit to get hit by something you couldn't see coming at all. All the time.
• It is kind of just a downgrade from regular bullet hell games, because it lacks attacking back, most forms of score measurement, any sort of upgrades, and possibly more. Your movement isn't really tied to the rhythm either, only the enemies' attacks, so the advantage of the music aspect is mostly, but not entirely, lost as well. A-and, well, further... Regular bullet hell games often have pretty good soundtracks anyways, so...

Overall verdict - not recommended. The music is good, but the gameplay is very basic and uninteresting. Might be a bit more fun with friends, but I'd recommend some other bullet hell game instead of this.

End-of-week Report

Slightly slower week this time. I had a few things that took time, and I also found a game I've actually been playing for a few days now - Tales of Berseria. Almost quit because of the absolutely atrocious KB&M support, but heck, ain't no way I'm going to let a game be playable with a controller, but not without one. It's definitely better than it's predecessor, but at least I decided I'm not going back to play that.

Did I really estimate 29 games in 17 days? That's... going to be tough.

• Games in backlog: 279 (-1)
• of which VR: 19
• of which Visual Novels: 48
• of which Early Access: 61
• Games reviewed last week: 1
• Games to end-of-month goal: 29 (1.71/day)

Space Pirates and Zombies 2

I think it's been about 6 years since I played the original Space Pirates and Zombies. I played it over the span of a few months, starting multiple games, getting bored before I finished any, but then coming back to play some more a while after. It definitely wasn't one of my favorite games at the time, nor now of course, but I still played it a considerable amount.
So I was a little bit sad seeing its sequel, Space Pirates and Zombies 2 in Early Access with bad reviews, but I decided to hold off on playing it until it got out of Early Access. I don't know how long ago that was now, but it doesn't matter. The game has come out, it's reviews have considerably improved, and I had just rolled it from my list to give it a try.

As much as I'd love to just get to the comparison between the two games, I feel a brief description of what the game is is in order. I do know that all those years back I was thrown off by the name of the game, as neither pirates nor zombies were (and still aren't) really up my alley. Luckily, the title mislead me. SPAZ is basically just a half sandbox, half spaceship fighting game. You start off with a pathetic piece of space garbage, and you fly around mining, trading, fighting, and pillaging to keep getting stronger. The game has an open environment (or "world"), a randomly generated map, enemies, stations, and parts, making it reasonably much a space sandbox.

When I entered SPAZ 2, I expected at the very least the same enjoyment I'd get from starting up the original after all this time. So when it had been a couple of hours, and I wasn't really feeling it, I stopped to think why. Clearly my first thought was that this sequel is just worse. However, maybe it was just my mind making the past better than it was. So I took another look at the first game, and tried to see where along the lines they might have messed up to ensure I wasn't just biased.

The first difference anyone would notice, is that SPAZ 2 is in 3D. This might have made a world of difference, if the gameplay were not so sadly still locked onto a 2D plane. I would assume this was intended as a visual improvement, and while I can't say it failed, I can surely say that not only was the effort not worth it, it was overall a negative, since the gameplay suffered due to it. The third person camera made navigation and recognition difficult, and on top of that, I had no idea if my shots were going to reach the target, or if I could/should move further/closer.
The shooting problem was "fixed" by an automatic fire mode that just shot at anything in range, prioritizing your attack target. This fire mode was so efficient I would be severely gimping myself if I decided to switch to manual instead. The downside? That is literally half of the fun of the combat portion of the game, ruined. I had been demoted to just being a pilot.
Further, it would seem like there is just less content overall. Less items, ships, possibilities... More time spent in the less fun map view. Some awkward ship-building system, that, while giving me more options, also made progress feel a bit more hollow. It's just not an improvement over the original, and if you ask me, it really should be.

If anything I wrote sounds like fun, go try SPAZ instead of it's sequel. While I can't say the original was super exciting, captivating and all that, especially now due to its age, the sequel is just a downgrade, and not worth your time.

End-of-week Report

Feels good to be back to playing other games. I've got a big backlog to wither down, and I'm no doubt going to hit another gap of not playing sometime, but hopefully not before summer ends.

So good to see numbers going down. In fact, how about I try to get that big total down to 250 by the end of the month, and down to 200 before school resumes? More than a game per day? Well, better to aim a little high than a little low, but technically the goals seem achievable.

• Games in backlog: 280 (-2)
• of which VR: 19
• of which Visual Novels: 48 (+1)
• of which Early Access: 61
• Games reviewed last week: 4

Attack of the Earthlings

The unfavorable (spoilers, sorry) reviews continue with yet another game as a victim - Attack of the Earthlings.

Attack of the Earthlings is a turn-based strategy game that is, in a single phrase, a reversed XCOM. As the name implies, Earthlings (or humans, as we know them) have come to invade your planet, and you, as the matriarch of the Swarmers, whose planet was invaded, take it upon yourself to destroy the invasion from within the drill with which they came. Kill weak soldiers and civilians, eat them, birth new Swarmers, evolve them, kill stronger soldiers, and repeat the process until the level is clear. Then you, for whatever reason, have to leave your amassed army to climb up to the next floor alone and start over. But at least you get some sweet upgrades between that.

My main problem with the game is its relative lack of content. I have like 4 different units, employ the same strategies over and over, the upgrade paths are completely linear and only have a grand total of 3 upgrades, all the levels are pre-made, and there's just seven of them... It was interesting while they were still introducing new game mechanics, but as soon as that stopped, it got tedious and repetitive.

It's a bit of a twist on XCOM (as much as I know about it - I haven't played it very much. XCOM, that is) since there's a good amount of stealth involved. The Earthlings have a lot more units, which are generally stronger, so, ironically, you, as the dumb brute you are, have to outsmart them. Obviously it's because it's just difficult to make an AI that's better than you, so the player will always be the one playing at a disadvantage against an AI, but it's just not quite fitting with the story right now. Oh, additionally, the game has a bunch of humor. Looks like they invested heavily in it, and while it wasn't exactly of the quality that would actually have me laughing out loud, I must admit it was funny enough to be enjoyable.

But really, the entire thing feels like a few steps back from XCOM that probably inspired it. I would assume the team and budget sizes aren't comparable either of course, but sadly the games out there will and have to be compared to each other no matter how much money and people may be behind one or another. While Attack of the Earthlings does play slightly differently, I don't see the differences as something that would make a worthwhile substitute for the quality that is not present. So, while I didn't exactly dislike it, I wouldn't recommend it, as I see nothing particularly new or interesting here.

Tangledeep

I played a fair helping of Tangledeep today, and I feel like I've had my fill. I don't have much to say about this game, so I'll make it short.

Tangledeep is a dungeon crawler which perhaps deviates from the "usual" dungeon crawler by the following:
1. There are classes, but basically no class restrictions - you can wield any weapons, wear any armor, and, without too much effort, rank any skills. You can then mix and match to your liking.
2. You can collect and breed the monsters as pets, then take them with you.
3. There is no passive HP, Stamina, nor Energy (MP) regeneration. Instead the game focuses very heavily on consumables which are dropped in large quantities and can be combined via a cooking system.
Additionally, throw in a bunch of randomness in terms of what monsters you get (although this is not too uncommon in dungeon crawlers), and what you end up is a tangle of stuff alright.

What it feels like is that there has been a heavy focus on quantity over quality, akin to many JRPGs I've played. At first, there's a rather overwhelming amount of stuff to do and making sense of it all takes time, but eventually you kind of learn that some stuff just isn't useful and you end up using only a small portion of the possibilities. It really feels like the focus was on just adding more things without stepping back to look at what's already in the game, if it plays well together, and if it's any fun. In my opinion, it just isn't, and this whole array of "content" is worthless, as I don't want to experience it.

So, as already mentioned, Tangledeep is a mess of things thrown together that doesn't really synergize, and you're left with a whole lot of hollow gameplay. Would not recommend.

Frostpunk

I spent a few hours of the past three days playing Frostpunk. It's a city management game, but with the thematic twist that everything is suddenly freezing over, and people are very distressed by this, so more emphasis is on keeping people alive and away from despair instead of earning money and just building bigger. It's from the same people who made This War of Mine. If you're familiar with that, it might give some insight into the theme of this game. Otherwise, Frostpunk is just a city management game - collect resources, unlock new buildings, try to match your rate of progress with the progressively worsening climate conditions and morale of your people.

What first caught my attention was how beautiful the game looked. I think it really captured the feeling it was going for, as I could feel the cold and hopelessness just from looking at the entire thing. The music also contributed nicely. By the end of my first day of playing, which was about 5 hours, I really liked it, and I was itching to get back and play. Over the next two days my excitement slowly fell, but I remained pretty invested. That is, until I reached the point where I realized they were wrapping things up, the game was going to end, and... that was it. I didn't really feel like starting again, since I had seen pretty much everything, and it would just be more of the same. So, rather abruptly, disappointment hit. But allow me to explain in more detail.

While most city management games have what we'd know as a free-play mode as their main mode, and then maybe some scenarios to show off interesting aspects of their game that might not happen naturally as part of the free-play mode, Frostpunk only has scenarios. And at the time of writing, only a couple, though with more promised to come. But that last bit is irrelevant. There's a problem with scenarios in a game like this. Sure, they may give a very well-tailored experience where all the events have been carefully balanced to keep you on edge, yet not overwhelm you (though it might still be too hard or easy, depending on how well you're doing), but once you're done, you're done. There's no reason to go back, because there are basically no random variables. All the resources, locations, the weather, all the events are pre-scripted. A fair amount of time has been spent on developing these interconnecting mechanics which allow for simulation-like gameplay, and then it's completely hindered by fixing all the things that drive your decisions in place, effectively removing most of the emergent gameplay possibilities. And in this example specifically, if you deviate from that path to play in a different way "this time", you will have a hard time winning.

Overall, for the first playthrough, Frostpunk is a really well made game, and I absolutely loved playing it. The uncertainty of what's to come, if you'll survive, and how, keeps things very interesting. There's constant surprises to knock you off balance just as you feel you're about to regain your metaphorical footing, and the ending is lovely as well. Sadly, the playthrough is short - 12 hours at best, and there is nigh zero replay value after that. You can decide for yourself if the cost is an issue for that much game time, but if it's not, I would in fact recommend playing it. Due to the lack of replayability though, it will not earn a spot in the Hall.

Skelly Selest

It's been a long while since I last randomed a game from my list. Feels nice to be back, I hope my writing is not rusty.

Skelly Selest is an action-rogue-like where you run around, whack enemies with your axe, shoot them with your pistol, and try not to get hit. The usual stuff. There's some dungeons, some items, some enemies... Some, but not a lot. I saw nothing special in the gameplay possibilities this game offered. Same stuff as most of these dungeon-crawly-shooty-slashy games, except both less variety and content than what I feel would be a good standard. So nothing interesting, nothing good here.

The art style was nice in an aesthetic sense, but sadly a hindrance. I found it difficult to look at, difficult to read the writing, and difficult to track enemies and projectiles. Functionality should always come first. And speaking of writing, using "thee" and "thy" at literally every possible opportunity is not pleasant to read either.

Skelly Selest has oddly high ratings (although not too many of them), but I see no reason for this. It has nothing unique, and just a subset of features of some better games of the same genre. I wouldn't recommend playing it - there's nothing to be seen here.

End-of-week Report

Somewhere in the middle of copying over the games from my personal list to the Hall of Games I realized a few things.
For one, it strikes me as barbaric to keep a copy of a single thing in two places, where both of those places have to be manually updated. I considered if automatic updating was a possibility, but no sane solution struck me.
Secondly, formatting this stuff with HTML and CSS in the equivalent of a Notepad text editor is torture. The process of adding a single game, or, heavens forbid, a whole new category, is way too much overhead, not to mention the previous point of having to do this in two places separately.
As such, I've decided to remove the half-finished Hall of Games and All Games pages from this blog and instead remove any personal information from my personal lists which I update anyways and link to those. They're not as pretty, but it also has some other tabs you may or may not care about, such as most of my backlog.
This is definitely not an equivalent alternative, but rather a compromise. However, due to the two points listed above, I decided it's really not worth my time to keep a duplicate which is also a pain to update. Still, this should no doubt be a better alternative to not having any list at all.
I am now just missing short descriptions from all the games on the list, but I guess I can add them at a later point in time, when I feel like writing a bunch. But I've reached this milestone, so I feel comfortable playing something new at long last. It's July, and it's about damn time for that.

In any case, speaking of my backlog:

• Games in backlog: 282 (+2)
• of which VR: 19
• of which Visual Novels: 47
• of which Early Access: 61
• Games reviewed last week: 0

PS. I finished watching Neon Genesis Evangelion some time ago. I must say it was quite different from any other anime I've experienced. That's not to say it was good, but I must give it points for being so bold with a lot of its choices. Overall it was definitely worth watching.

End-of-week Report

What's this? June's almost over, and there's still no news of starting any games? Well, I've been playing Terraria for like a week straight now, which might explain the lack of everything else. That's going to end some day though, and by that time I'll probably have finished the Hall of Games I've been working on.

In fact, if you take a look at the sidebar right now, you can see a new page titled "All Games". As previously mentioned, that's where I will keep a record of all the games I've played, in alphabetical order. As also explained on that page, it's probably missing a few games, since I couldn't gather literally everything, and it will lag behind the actual list by a bit. Currently, it's over 400 games strong, and I hope to get that number up in the near future.

Onto the report:

• Games in backlog: 280 (+1)
• of which VR: 19
• of which Visual Novels: 47 (+1)
• of which Early Access: 61
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

A report at a bit of an unusual time, and after missing the last week's. See, I wasn't home last weekend, having to deal with matters pertaining to attending mandatory military service. In an unrelated case, I also won't be home this weekend, since I'm moving away for a few months. (To clarify, I will be available after moving, it's just one weekend.)

I've been making more progress on the Hall of Games, also opting to make a very basic list of all the games I've ever played (as far as I can gather). The end is somewhat in sight now, and then I just have to get into the habit of playing new games again. The habit's broken right now, so I'm reluctant to start anything new, but I know for sure that once I get back into it, and since I have time now, I will be blazing through games real fast. Just have to make that initial push away from the comfort of old games I've been playing.

• Games in backlog: 279 (+6)
• of which VR: 19 (+1)
• of which Visual Novels: 46
• of which Early Access: 61
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

Classes have ended, and just two exams left to go. Just a week, and then I'm free for months. Still, looking at my list and looking at the time I have been given, it would amount to roughly 3 games every single day to get through them all. I guess, as usual, the goals should be more manageable, and I should simply aim at getting my backlog to acceptable levels.

• Games in backlog: 273 (+7)
• of which VR: 18
• of which Visual Novels: 46 (+2)
• of which Early Access: 61 (+2)
• Games reviewed last week: 1

Dauntless

It's a rare occasion I check something out as soon as it comes out, but this was the case with Dauntless. See, my friends and I were looking for some co-op games to play, so I had to mention this new one that just went into open beta. They ended up liking it, and so it happened I got a fair bit of game time in alongside them. Quite the optimal situation for the game, since most games are better when played with people you know, instead of alone or with random ones. Despite this, and despite the positivity they received it with, I was not as amused.

Dauntless is a game about running around on an island, and beating up giant monsters with giant weapons. Find them, kill them, collect their parts, upgrade your equipment, rinse, and repeat. And really, it is mainly because of this lack of things to do that the game feels boring.
The islands are quite similar in appearance and functionality. The monsters, or behemoths, are reasonably varied, actually, but they are recycled - the same ones can appear with a different name, some elemental effects, and just a few tweaks in abilities, but no difference in overall feel. So there's just a handful actually distinct ones. And then there's five weapons, which, while also different, don't actually have all that varied strategies associated with them. It's always just running up to the behemoth, whacking it for a while, and dodging any attacks it may do. And that really starts to get old pretty fast.

For what content is in the game, it's not bad at all. The fighting is satisfying, learning a behemoths attack patterns has a nice boss fight feel to it. Toss in co-op play, a non-pay-to-win free-to-play model, and it's pretty good. Until you've gone through most all unique content in a day, and then through literally all content in a week, at most. That is, if you play for a few hours every day.

But I simply can not leave out the horrid state it launched in, with login queues ranging from 3 to 12 hours, disconnects and waiting delays for 5-30 minutes after each mission, and the party system being broken half the time. Heavens forbid your game crashed, for then you had to sit through the queue again. I'm sure there were more problems, and while the queue and other delays have been greatly reduced or eliminated, the state it was in was still pretty unacceptable.

Overall, while the core gameplay was decent, the lack of content and unignorable technical problems keep me from recommending it. "But Torn, Dauntless is in open beta, you can't have your final verdict yet." Well, I don't particularly buy into that kind of stuff. For one, it's kind of like an MMO (the crappy themepark kind always made these days), and an open beta is basically launch for those. Secondly, I don't really have much faith they'll improve on this lack of content. Simply adding more weapons and behemoths won't fix the issue, they would need something more. So no recommendation it is.

End-of-week Report

It's been a rough month, but the coming week is the last week of school for me this semester. Then supposedly begins the exam period, but I've only one exam scheduled for the first week of that, so it's comparatively nothing. So, a week, and then I can get back to games at long last. And what a list I've accumulated...

• Games in backlog: 266 (+7)
• of which VR: 18
• of which Visual Novels: 45 (+1)
• of which Early Access: 59
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

Pulled one with that last minute review, aye? Well, that's all I can do, as I'm basically being pressed for 80 hour work weeks at the end of this semester right now. For some reason, every course I'm taking decided they want to get stuff over with quickly, so I have exams while other big tests, lectures, and whatnot are still happening, meaning I both have to finish up all projects I have, as well as study for exams, and then it's all suddenly over in June when the exam period is supposed to start. Fuck me, I'm gonna lose my hair at this rate.
Anyways, that's not why you're here...

• Games in backlog: 259
• of which VR: 18
• of which Visual Novels: 44 (+1)
• of which Early Access: 59 (-1)
• Games reviewed last week: 1

Dungeon on the Endless

Hey, surprise, it's a game. Dungeon of the Endless.

I played through this with my friend over the course of a few days, and it was just barely entertaining enough to keep us from quitting midway. But was it good? No, I'm fairly sure I would not say that.

To start off with the things the Endless series has always been pretty good at - art, music, lore - those were all well present here too. Well, maybe not the lore so much. In fact, I would point out that I did feel like it was trying to push too hard on some sort of comedic value. From item and skill descriptions, names, characters, to the lore bits... Always making puns and jokes, but they weren't really good, and did take away from the precious space where something actually useful could have been. An undescriptive (but maybe slightly humorous) one-word ability name in small text, but a whole paragraph telling some flighty joke about the item that maybe bears a relevancy to what it does? Sure, it's not like I need to know what any of them do anyways. This and everything similar led to a lot of trial and error, instead of the ability to make educated decisions.

Going forward to the actual gameplay, there wasn't much. While I'm by no means against automating parts of gameplay, I find that since combat is completely automated, there isn't anything left for the players to do. Sure, positioning, building, deciding which rooms to power, but when the action is happening, you're just sitting there watching things unfold with no possibility for meaningful input.
Further, the balance was off. The vast majority of buildings - useless. Spoiler alert, but just stack food production. Get some tanky low mobility guys with tons of firepower and health regen into a room through which all enemies must path, and have one speedy guy do the final crystal carry each level. It's still by no means easy (despite the misleading difficulty levels), but it's the best strategy we found, and is fairly risk-free.

Overall, Dungeon of the Endless is a nice-ish game, which just focuses on the wrong parts of what makes a game fun. After some initial discovery, the gameplay becomes a rather monotonous rut, and I at least lost interest before too long. Maybe find some nice tower defense or rogue-like game, whichever you see in this, but I wouldn't recommend Dungeon of the Endless.

End-of-week Report

• Games in backlog: 259 (+3)
• of which VR: 18 (+1)
• of which Visual Novels: 43
• of which Early Access: 60
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

Fuck it, I give up. New games in the summer, anything else is too much of a promise. I'll just continue these weekly reports and feel terrified by how much is left undone in the meanwhile. But hey, on the bright side, it's been 9 weeks without new games, only 4 more until school ends for the year, and I'll have all the free time in the world.

• Games in backlog: 256 (+6)
• of which VR: 17
• of which Visual Novels: 43
• of which Early Access: 60 (+2)
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

Next week is the week when I get my shit back together. With the start of May, I have Monday off, in addition to my usual free days of Friday and Tuesday (homework notwithstanding). This leaves me with 5 nice consecutive days of not having to go to school. This means time. And time is just what I asked for. In relation to this blog, the first priority is finishing up the Hall of Games page, then I can play some new ones.

Another weekly report, still continuing its record consecutive growth, reaching a quarter thousand games. I fear.

• Games in backlog: 250 (+1)
• of which VR: 17
• of which Visual Novels: 43
• of which Early Access: 58 (-1)
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

I'm so tired my skin is deforming or something. I don't know what's happening anymore. What happens when you have no free time in a week, and then you add in a 48 hour game jam? Well, I'm feeling it right now, and I wouldn't recommend it. So this is a hastily written post, because I really can't be bothered to do anything more. It was LD41 this weekend, and the local competition didn't even last 3 days unlike the global jam, but just 2 days, because they couldn't get rooms. Game's here if you want to play it. Not super proud of it or anything, and the only reason I participated this time around, is because I need the points for my university "participation in hackathons" course. I'm quite possibly sitting out the next one in summer, or maybe doing the compo instead.

But here's the weekly report, which is running for a record time without any new games. I'm mentally basically dead because I have no free time anymore, and I don't know how to escape this hell. Send help before I hurt myself from overworking.

• Games in backlog: 249 (+9)
• of which VR: 17
• of which Visual Novels: 43 (+1)
• of which Early Access: 59 (+1)
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

Have I told you my theory on procrastination yet? I think I have, actually, but let me go over it quickly once more.
I think procrastination stacks. Once you start, things start piling up. As they do, you feel less and less inclined to complete them. If you give in bit by bit then first it leads to stress as you get everything done at the last minute, then it furthers to not getting some things done at all. And all the while you never feel like you have time because there's so much to do.
A lot of people start to resist before it gets to the point of some things being left undone, so they linger forever in this stressful state of not having any time, and always having so much to do. I, too, feel like I'm slowly reaching that point due to a few days of procrastination, and now it's harder to push back. The opposite of this state also exists though, when everything is done, and you have all the time you could want. New chores get completed in one of those many pockets of free time, and cause no inconvenience at all, leaving you in this perpetual state until you get really, really lazy for some period of time. I should make an effort one of these days to get back to that state - it's nice there.

Anyways, onto the report. I missed last week due to my birthday celebrations, and I completely forgot about it after the weekend. Same old though, so it's hopefully no loss. Should really be setting up another "play X games" goal sometime, but getting my real life in order might be a better idea first.

• Games in backlog: 240 (+8)
• of which VR: 17
• of which Visual Novels: 42
• of which Early Access: 58 (+1)
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

I've been pouring more time than I expected (and more time than it may seem) into copying games over from my private list. Can't believe it's been a whole month and then a week since I decided that I'll be doing this, and I'm still not done with it.
It's a kind of dangerously tedious type of work, since I know I tend to blow quitting out of proportion. I've been having real difficulty in deciding the new categorization of games, what makes it in, what doesn't, and all that, often taking like an hour to decide on something really simple. I hate that perfectionist side of me, but I can't just half-ass it because "why do it in the first place then?" But yeah, it's "dangerous" because I'm afraid that if I can't figure this stuff out I'll give up so hard I might abandon the whole game reviewing side of my hobby. After all, playing's the fun part. If this turns from time-consuming to frustrating, it might not be worth it anymore. Here's to hoping that won't happen and I'll instead sort this stuff out in my head, and we'll all be happier in the end.

I've actually also learned quite a lot of how Blogger works in the process. Custom overall CSS is already in, meaning I have less (mostly none, now) style info to write into each post. This also synergizes really well with the Web Application course I'm taking right now. I've noticed how terrible and kind of antiquated this Blogger theme I'm using is, but I've also learned how to fix that. Basically, I feel like I could write an entire theme from scratch, making it look like whatever I wanted. The state of things is not bad enough yet, and it would of course be a huge time sink, so I'm not doing that, but I'm glad I have the opportunity. Maybe when I'm bored in the summer.

So, after a terribly long ramble written in the middle of the week since I needed to let off steam at the time, here is the week-end report.

• Games in backlog: 232 (+2)
• of which VR: 17
• of which Visual Novels: 42
• of which Early Access: 57
• Games reviewed last week: 0

PS. Happy April Fools, or however you celebrate. =D It's coincidentally also basically my birthday, and the 300th post I write on this blog.

End-of-week Report

I think the worst of the semester is behind me now, the exam period aside. It's likely I'll have time for some new games in the next week, or at the very least the one after that, to finally end the month-long drought.

• Games in backlog: 230 (+3)
• of which VR: 17
• of which Visual Novels: 42
• of which Early Access: 57 (+2)
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

You like working 12-hour weekends? Me neither, and I'm not even getting paid for it. School's seriously frustrating right now, and I just want to take a break and play some games, but I can't because I have deadlines all the time.
Here's a project I'm working on though, which very much fits this blog. I hope to be keeping up the site even after the corresponding school course has ended, so I could have a place to check for games. There will be a lot of features added to the site in the future, like multiple pages, game filtering, maybe even score history. But right now, developing it is being the death of me.

For once, no change in the numbers.

• Games in backlog: 227
• of which VR: 17
• of which Visual Novels: 42
• of which Early Access: 55
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

Work, work, work. It's a little bit stressful already, and I want it to stop.
With a new season of Heroes of the Storm starting, I'm actually trying to play it less now. Maybe just when a new patch comes out, if there's a fun brawl, and probably just to get a rank during the season. Hopefully this will overall leave me with more time and less frustration.
Other than that, I got nothing to say.

• Games in backlog: 227 (+4)
• of which VR: 17
• of which Visual Novels: 42 (+1)
• of which Early Access: 55 (+1)
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

Not much going on this week either. School's keeping me very busy, and probably so for perhaps the next month, as I attempt to rush through a big course, leaving me with more time near the end of the semester. Hopefully there will be lots of games after that though.

• Games in backlog: 223 (+3)
• of which VR: 17
• of which Visual Novels: 41 (+1)
• of which Early Access: 54
• Games reviewed last week: 2

Particle Fleet: Emergence

I played through the campaign of Particle Fleet: Emergence, and I must say that it isn't Knuckle Cracker's finest game.

Particle fleet is a game from the maker of the various Creeper World games, which were highly praised among free flash games, but the newest edition of that series, Creeper World III, holds up even to today's paid game standards, despite being a tad niche. This post isn't directly about Creeper World though, but since I hadn't written about it before, I figured I should. That is especially the case because Particle Fleet shares a lot of similarities, to the point of almost just being in a slightly different setting.
In both games you fight this single hivemind entity that pumps out an endless stream of fluid/particles. Your goal is to warp in to a relatively safe area, quickly establish your supply network, and set up defenses before the enemy reaches you. It's this tug-of-war kind of RTS, but the physics-based enemy is what makes it oddly more enjoyable.

I really liked the various Creeper World games despite the usual problem that plagues most strategy games based on bonuses from map control (snowballing). However, Particle Fleet feels like a step backwards. For one, the particle-based nature of the enemy slightly robs the game of it's uniqueness. Now you're fighting discrete groups of enemies, much like you would in a regular RTS. Secondly, the supply network system has been heavily dumbed down, with resources mostly just teleporting to where they are needed, as long as you are in range. Thirdly, your strategies and your capabilities are basically set in stone, because everything you can build has been predetermined, and you kind of have to use them to their fullest to win effectively. I really liked how Creeper World had a lot of different approaches you could take, even as far as not using some buildings if you didn't want to. There was fun in setting up custom rules for oneself if the missions ever got too easy. Not much of this luxury here, I'm afraid.

But what has Particle Fleet improved on? Nothing, as far as I'm concerned. It's mostly the same game, but with many systems just turned down to be less fun. I'd really rather just go back to playing Creeper World III, and not bother with this one at all. Perhaps things will improve in the next installment.

Kingsway

Kingsway - The roguelike where you can fight enemies, save the world, and fend off spam email, all at the same time. I've been having fun with it for the past day or so, have two completions of the game so far, but I'm still missing some potential endings or unique areas, I think. Regardless, here's what I think about the game.

Probably the first thing you would notice about Kingsway is its unique presentation - you're dealing with an operating system. You got your desktop icons, a start menu, a little clock in the bottom right, and of course all your windows for the various applications you'll run. All of the things present on your Kingsway OS are actually usable, and none are purely cosmetic, which is nice, but I wouldn't stop on the UI for too long, since, aside from the difficulty of clicking buttons in moving windows, it has next to no implications on the gameplay - peel it away, and you're left with a more-or-less regular roguelike.
Overall, while I would give points for the way the game is presented, I would also remove some for the difficulty of use that brings. Once the novelty wears off, some aspects just become tedious.

But let's not judge the game by what it looks like then, but by what it plays like. I found a whole lot of similarities with One Way Heroics, but I couldn't really say if Kingsway managed to out-do its predecessor in my eyes. The most glaring similarity is that both games have some nigh unstoppable force approaching from the west, forcing you to advance to the east while gaining power and searching for a way to stop the march of destruction. A lot of the other aspects are generally just characteristic of roguelikes, but they're still tuned to be similar to OWH, be that intentional or not.
During your adventure you level up, distribute your stat points, choose skills that are unique per character class, allowing for different play styles across multiple playthroughs, find or buy equipment that also plays a big role in defining your character... Pretty standard stuff. Throw in towns, dungeons, quests, random events, some secrets, a few different endings, and you got yourself the core of what this game is.

I don't actually have many gripes with this game, and definitely nothing major that bugged me. I'm not a big fan of action elements in otherwise non-realtime games, so the combat wasn't ideal, but since this is the main thing that actually synergizes with the unique UI, it also opened up some fun possibilities, and I can't really blame the choice.
I would say that, as always, a roguelike is very reliant on the amount of content it has, in addition to it having to be fun to play. I think The Binding of Isaac is a fine example of this, since the amount of content will keep people playing for hundreds of hours, instead of maybe 10 or 20. Kingsway is a bit weak in this regard. I like the gameplay, but quite quickly I've seen most of what the game has to offer.

So... I loved this game. I think I'll be playing it a bit more to 100% it, and I would definitely recommend trying it.
Edit: Here's a spoilery link to what I consider "beating the game". Note the character's shield slot and the ring on the left.

End-of-week Report

It's mostly been an uneventful week, not much to report.
School's being a burden, but I seem to have some time left over to play games too.
Heroes of the Storm finally got voice chat out of the blue, so that feels pretty refreshing, and people definitely seem to flame less over voice (but they still do flame).
I've been playing some Kingsway, so a review of that is probably coming soon.

As a follow-up to that "general thoughts" section of my Rumu review, I figured, "what the hell, why not..." I currently have an internal "top 10+50", so to say, leaderboard of various games that I've enjoyed. New good games push old ones out, and there's a hard limit on how many I can fit there. But when I asked myself for justification for this format over a similar format that wouldn't make me have to discard worse games, I couldn't find any. I'd still have to do the same stuff with ranking, but worse games would be pushed down, instead of out. I'd retain the option to not add games I didn't like there, or remove some games further down the line, but I wouldn't have to.
Once I'm done making this change on my own lists, I might make a copy of this leaderboard onto a subpage of this blog as well. I've actually been wanting to share those leaderboards for a while, but I didn't really find them fitting in their current semi-sorry state.

• Games in backlog: 220 (+1)
• of which VR: 17
• of which Visual Novels: 40
• of which Early Access: 54 (-1)
• Games reviewed last week: 2

I wanna be The Cat

I took a very brief look at I wanna be The Cat today. It's a really, really difficult platformer game with sadly not much variety or fun in it.

The game boasts both randomly generated levels as well as "2000+ levels made by the community", and while I don't know which is correct, it doesn't seem like it matters from a gameplay perspective, since unless you're going to be playing this game for countless hours, 2000 levels is plenty to not repeat nigh any. The levels are quite short, generally simple, but just very difficult. If they really are randomly generated, then it would seem pretty impressive for me that the generator is able to make levels that are so difficult, yet not impossible.

While the extreme difficulty is part of the problem, it is not my main grief with the game. The problem is that I wanna be The Cat is just too plain. Move, jump, and occasionally shoot forward, and that's all you can do. The items and powerups advertised are not "crazy", and are mostly insignificant or a source of frustration if you use them up, fail anyways, and then have to complete a level you couldn't even complete with the powerup. Levels come down to your platforming skill - your capability to press the right buttons in the right order, with timings that are accurate to a tenth of a second. And for me, that just seems like a whole lot of work for not much fun, much like a rhythm game with no music, and where the track resets if your score dips below 99% the maximum possible. It's just repetitive and tedious.

A short review for a short attempt. Unless you've been looking for a featureless ultra-difficult platformer, I wouldn't recommend it. There's a also a multiplayer mode available if you want to get your mates together and race to the finish line, but I also feel like there's better platformers for that kind of stuff.

Rumu

I played through the short adventure game about a sentient vacuum cleaner, Rumu, just this morning, and I felt like I wanted to preface my thoughts on the game with some general thoughts regarding story-based games.

Story in games is different from gameplay in the sense that it sort of supports more variety. What I mean by that is that for games based on good and engaging gameplay, if you find two games that both try to cater to the same audience, that both are of the same genre, it's possible for one to "eclipse" the other. Sure, there's the fact that two games aren't exactly the same, and there's some freedom in personal preference, but at least for a single individual, it's simple to find one game to be better than another as far as not even wanting to play the other game at all. This would make it easy to choose like 20, 30, 40, or some other manageable number of games, and say: "Play these games, and you've experienced the best the industry has to offer on gameplay on all sides of the spectrum. Sure there's other good games out there, but you won't experience anything new or better in them."
However, I can't really say the same about stories. Different stories of similar genre or idea don't conflict, at least not in my mind. I could read 10 different fantasy books, or experience 10 different sci-fi stories, and I couldn't really say that one or two would be sufficient reading that would also cover the stories in the other 8 books. That's not to say I couldn't decide that some stories are better. A good story is hard to write, and a great one is all that much harder, but while I can choose my favorites, they don't make the worse-but-still-good stories seem insignificant.

I could ramble on about that for a while longer, but I'd also like to talk about Rumu. See, it's not that Rumu was some really great story that created all these thoughts in me. Quite the opposite actually. I found Rumu to be enjoyable enough to play through, but ultimately it was too short, and didn't evoke too strong of an emotional response from me. See, I keep a list of the best games I've played from various broad genres. I wouldn't want to just forget Rumu by leaving it off that list, but then again, it doesn't feel like it's worth including there. I'm conflicted, because the experience wasn't super good, but it's also not replaceable.

As a short story game, there's relatively little to be said upfront about it. You play as a sentient love-based vacuum cleaner named Rumu, cleaning up messes in a house and exploring the mystery surrounding your creators David and Cecily. You can navigate some rooms, interact with the environment through which you gain clues about the story, as well as solve small and simple puzzles. The entire thing takes maybe 3-4 hours to complete, if you're thorough.

I've already explained at length how I feel about the story, and obviously I'm not going to spoiler anything that's going to happen. I absolutely think it's worth your time to play through it, but don't expect it to blow your mind at any point.


But hey, at least I'll always have Steam reviews and my custom automatic leaderboards to track the best and not-best games of all genres and types. Individuals' opinions may be terrible, but as a grand collective, humans are pretty good at filtering out what's good and what's not.

End-of-week Report

Even though I frantically scrambled to complete two games just yesterday, I still fell miserably short of my goal at only 33% completion. Well, nothing lost in reality, but I should maybe consider cutting back on some other games. I already covered this subject last week though.
Another contributing factor is that school is in full swing now, and it's promising to be an irregularly busy semester with high workloads on some weeks and low ones on others as various project deadlines are set or close. What might be of relevancy regarding this blog are two of the projects I'm doing. In my Web Application Development course, I opted to make a site with Steam game leaderboards based on user reviews. Sounds familiar? Maybe. Anyways, I'm also taking a Computer Graphics Project course, and I thought about experimenting with shaders there. I've no clue what I can do in that field, but I'm hoping I can achieve some cool-looking visuals alongside much desired knowledge in that subject.

The backlog is still growing with speeds incomparable to those I wither it down with. If it gets really big, I could always go over it and purge some weaker candidates, but I'd hate for it to come to that.

• Games in backlog: 219 (+5)
• of which VR: 17 (+1)
• of which Visual Novels: 40
• of which Early Access: 55 (+1)
• Games reviewed last week: 2
• Progress to 18.02 game goal: 10 of 30 - Failure =(

I Am Overburdened

I Am Overburdened is a game that's addictive in its simplicity, but sadly a playthrough takes but an hour, and there is no progress and not much reason to replay the game once it's completed.

I Am Overburdened is a dungeon crawling rougelike reduced to the barest of bones. All creatures have four stats - damage, defense, health, and speed. The one with higher speed attacks first, deals (damage - defense) damage, then the other retaliates. Repeat until either side runs out of health. The world has about 30 floors, each being semi-randomly generated and containing 10 or so monsters, with a pick 1 of 3 store after every 3 levels. The monsters get stronger as the floors progress, but so do you by acquiring stat-ups and equipment. Spruce it all up with a few extra effects, and you have basically a perfect description of the game based on which you could make one such game yourself. That's how bare this game is.

I completed the game on the first try, with little difficulty. It was fun for an hour. But then the "Nightmare" mode unlocked, and just like a true nightmare, is was terrible. As far as I understood, you just started with lower stats, but as this is a game with heavy snowballing, that made all the difference. I'm not sure if the developer themselves managed to complete this gamemode, but I did maybe 50 tries, usually not getting even past the first three floors - it felt impossible.
The entire game is actually RNG-based, with some focus on choosing the proper order to kill and gather stuff. The player also has a luck stat, which influences everything from dealing and avoiding damage to finding better loot. It's the one nerfed the heaviest in Nightmare mode, to a grand -5, meaning things like not getting anything from a chest can happen. Through all the tries, luck didn't smile on me enough to snowball enough to get past half the levels, but it kept me trying.

While I Am Overburdened was really fun, I simply can't recommend it because of its lack of content. Were it a free flash game (which are a dying thing these days, being replaced by things that both cost, and are of worse quality), it'd be a nice way to spend half an evening, but among paid games, this simply doesn't meet my quality requirements.

Battle Chef Brigade

I'm not really sure what kind of game I was expecting from Battle Chef Brigade based on its Steam page. In hindsight, I guess it's pretty much what was advertised. I find it kind of hard to approach this review for some reason, but I suppose I'll just start describing it.

Battle Chef Brigade's gameplay is rather neatly split into two separate parts. The first is a side-scrolling brawler where you beat up monsters and gather their body parts. The second is a match-3 game where you cook said body parts into dishes. From that short description, you might already notice a little problem. The game is split and doesn't focus on a single aspect of itself, which usually means that instead of achieving one good game, you'd end up with two mediocre ones.
That is, of course, only in theory. In practice... it sadly holds true for this game as well, and the apparently small team Battle Chef Brigade was made with didn't have a positive impact on this aspect either. The combat feels fairly dull and mostly comes down to button mashing save for some larger enemies that actually require you to execute a repetitive combo while withering their health down. As for the match-3 part, the strict time limit which you're always on eliminates any possibility to carefully plan your dishes. And maybe this is just me, but a match-3 is the most unimaginative puzzle you could decide on. Personally, I quite dislike it.

While playing, I never felt like I had enough time, yet I didn't feel like the game was expecting me to be particularly skillful either. Much like running a race, it felt exhausting, yet very mundane with no tricks to somehow get an edge. That wasn't the only part that was rushing me along though, as new game mechanics were being introduced faster than I could really test them out and get comfortable with them. For better or for worse, I ended up being mostly okay with just ignoring nearly every new thing presented to me, and completing all the challenges regardless.

It seems like I'm criticizing the gameplay a tad too much. I haven't said a single positive thing about it, and yet my dozen-or-so hours of playing it weren't pure suffering. For one, it's because there wasn't anything particularly jarring that would make me want to quit outright. So it did a good job of keeping my hopes up, although never quite meeting them. Oh, and despite the individual pieces being rather bad, they're tied together well. It's sad that the gameplay, the most important part of a game, was the weakest part of this one.
So the good parts? Surely one of the first things you notice about this game are its hand-drawn visuals. They're not of superb quality, but they also fill all the practical requirements I would want from them while helping the game stand out. What really surprised me thoguh was the food system. Not the match-3 process of making the food, but the imagery and naming of it. Genuinely makes you hungry, and there's a seemingly infinite number of distinct dishes. A shame that all of that had no impact on the game at all.
The story though? Eh, I didn't feel invested, but it wasn't terrible, and wasn't forcing itself down your throat, so I'd label it a net positive for the game.

Overall, I would say it's a shame that the game's called Battle Chef Brigade, for I feel it could have achieved more if it had instead poured all its effort on those elaborate cooking mechanisms that I really couldn't experience enough. Still, I got a good amount of hours out of this game, out of which none felt wasted, but none also felt genuinely enjoyable. For my final verdict, I would have to refrain from recommending it.