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.

End-of-week Report

It's that time of the week again when I can look back at my accomplishments in the past week and wonder "What in the world was I doing the entire week?"
But it's actually not that much of a mystery to myself. Two days of board games, one day of personal math problems, a lot of half days on Mabinogi and Heroes of the Storm, which are the real culprits here, Cities: Skylines over two days, and a bit of Battle Chef Brigade too.
I'm actually really enjoying Mabinogi, which is nice since I really want to like MMOs, but all the themepark nonsense these days is sickening. So even if it's cutting into my overall play time of other games, I'm okay with that. Heroes of the Storm is another topic though, because instead of a peaceful and relaxing grind of progression, it's the same toxic brick wall as all MOBAs. I've already kind of faced the reality that I'm not going to hit Grand Master, and that's fine. I don't need to be the best, it's not my goal, and it's not realistic because there's a lot of people trying a lot harder than me. So there's no progression past Master - what am I even playing for? Add to that the amount of games ruined by teammates talking trash, being trash, or flat out going AFK, and I'm not having a whole lot of fun on average. Maybe it's time for another long break from that.

One thing's for sure though - I'm not going to reach my game goal. Not with school starting again tomorrow.

• Games in backlog: 214 (+8)
• of which VR: 16 (+2)
• of which Visual Novels: 40
• of which Early Access: 54 (+2)
• Games reviewed last week: 1
• Progress to 18.02 game goal: 8 of 30

Cities: Skylines

For some reason I thought I had already written about Cities: Skylines. It's a city builder. As in, you build a city. I guess it might be more like designing a city, since you're not actually the one hammering the buildings together, but generally its genre makes it pretty clear what the game is about. If you've ever played any SimCity, then it's basically that, except everyone agrees Skylines is better. It really is pretty much the undeniable leader among city building and management games, and with fairly regular updates and mod support, it's unlikely that will change soon.
I had actually played it near its release almost 3 years ago, but since it is having a free weekend right now, I figured I would give it another try, see if it's gotten better - and it has. If you know that city building is your thing, then you can just stop reading and go play it, maybe buy it at a nice discount right now, the rest isn't much relevant to you. Otherwise, I'll share some of my personal thoughts on it that I had 3 years ago, as well as today.

As mentioned, Cities: Skylines is the best of its kind there is. That is the case not because there are few of its kind or that all the others are bad, but because it has pretty much everything you could ask for in a city builder with very few flaws to point out.
Whether you're great or bad at these kinds of games, the difficulty is adjustable and will ensure that your experience is neither too hard nor mind-numbingly easy.
There's a wide variety of things to construct, from the usual residential, commercial, and industrial zones, to public service places like schools, hospitals, police stations, parks, to various kinds of transport, and some unique buildings just in case. Basically everything major you would find in a real city.
The entire thing is really well simulated that creates a feeling of depth down to the tiniest of details. All of your thousands of citizens, all the cars, even the water in the rivers and lakes is tracked. You can really observe any building, person, truck, or whatever to see its life.

What impressed me the most was how the traffic ties into all of this. The thing is that various buildings that require other buildings don't just work by some magic over the air or via some AoE. If your citizens want to get to work, they will have to walk, take their car, or some public transport to get there. Garbage actually needs to be collected by trucks. Firefighters and police patrols actually have the get to the scene to do something. If the roads coming into your city are congested, your factories won't get their raw material imports which propagates to stores having less stuff to sell, citizens being less happy, and so on. Nothing teleports, everything has to be delivered, and if your roads are filled with traffic jams, everything will suffer. It's amazing.

A decade ago I would have played this game to no end, but these days I have games like Dwarf Fortress and Factorio, as well as a ton of other building and management games that are not about cities. They scratch the same itch, and do it much better for me, personally, since they're more specialized. Skylines is too general, and while that's what gives it its wide appeal, it's also the reason why I don't like it. There were quite a few features I didn't use, as well as some that I used only because I had to. The fact that I'd rather play just the traffic management part of it, like I would play OpenTTD, speaks quite a bit. Parts of the game felt like a chore so I could continue experiencing the parts that appealed to me more. There was too much to do, and the only goal for I saw behind it all was something that I didn't really feel like striving towards.
I felt this 3 years ago, and I still feel it today, despite noticing that Skylines has indeed improved. But these improvements are best for people who already liked it - they won't change my mind.

Finally, to answer the question I always do, because I always do... Would I recommend playing Cities: Skylines? Absolutely. But I won't be.

End-of-week Report

Woah, wait, what happened to last week? How is it Sunday already without me getting almost any games in? Have I really been spending so much time on my beloved infinite games?
I have gotten some other game time in though. I'm currently playing Battle Chef Brigade, which seems quite fun, and I tried to give The Coma: Recut a try. Alas, the latter had almost nonexistent keyboard and mouse support. It wasn't just bad, but I literally couldn't manage to start the game, so I didn't. It was a horror game anyways, so I don't feel like I lost much. I'll count this into the progress tab in a desperate attempt to fill it up in the next two weeks.

This should have actually been in or around last week's report, really, but I participated in the Global Game Jam. Finally got to make the type of game I liked, but this time the team was rather inexperienced. One of the three programmers had never used Unity, so he basically didn't get anything done, and our 3D artist decided to tell us after he'd been registered to our team, that he's never actually done any 3D. I know that these kind of events are for everyone, even beginners who just want to learn, but not being able to fill your role as the only representative of that role in the team means that someone else has to do it. All the 3D art was made by me and the other programmer, who knew what they were doing, but this meant we could spend less time doing what we wanted and were good at.
Further, I feel like these kind of game jams promote making bad games. For one it's obviously the short time limit, which teaches you habits of working fast, not well. Secondly, the short time limit on both making and playing the game incentivizes making very shallow games - games that are only fun for a short while. While I continue participation, maybe I should just try to game the system and try to get the most points instead of trying to make the best game. Would be nice training for making cash grabs if I ever run low on money, heh.
But here's the game, if you want to try it out.

Anyways, onto the numerical report:

• Games in backlog: 206 (+1)
• of which VR: 14
• of which Visual Novels: 40
• of which Early Access: 52
• Games reviewed last week: 1
• Progress to 18.02 game goal: 7 of 30

End-of-week Report

You know, one issue with saving all the information for the end of the week is that I might get an idea of something to write about during the week, but then I forget it by the time the weekend comes. I think I had one of these situations this week. I'm note sure, but it might have been that I decided to switch over to having paragraphs have some space between them. Should make my posts less like walls of text, which might have been a bit intimidating to read. Hopefully it is less so now.

As for games, I got a fair amount played this week. First actually free week too, so it makes sense. Two more, and then it's back to school. Not among the game listed is Total War: Warhammer II, which I tried to play. Sadly, despite my computer meeting the recommended specs, it wasn't able to manage acceptable framerates on even the lowest graphics. As such, I won't be playing it. Maybe the next Total War game.

You might also notice a drop in the number of games this week despite not getting as many reviews. This is from games I removed but didn't play. Maybe because I already had played them but had forgotten to remove them, maybe because the ongoing development had shown them to be below my expectations, maybe something else. I'll count that Total War as "played" though, since I technically did try.

• Games in backlog: 205 (-6)
• of which VR: 14
• of which Visual Novels: 40
• of which Early Access: 52
• Games reviewed last week: 4
• Progress to 18.02 game goal: 6 of 30

PS. I had been watching Code Geass over some longer period of time, and recently finished it. It was good. With certainty my favorite anime I've ever watched, actually. You should be happy when you've experienced something great, but it kind of makes me sad when I get a new favorite. Just makes me think that it's going to be even more difficult than before to find something that's even better, and most everything else you're going to experience won't be nearly as good.

Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection

Heyyy, it's another RPG right after me saying I don't like RPGs. No, no, it's toootally different this time around. Y'see, this one is a JRPG, the kind I have a love-hate relationship with on top of my usual feelings for RPGs. I keep telling myself after each JRPG that I'm just attracted to them because I love the art style, and the cute, cheerful, and colorful world and characters, but that the gameplay always ends up being shit. Well, clearly I'm not learning from my past mistakes.

I put a good few hours into Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection this evening. (Also known by its original name, Zwei II.) It came out on PC late in 2017, but was actually made about nine years ago, so it's nothing fresh, keep that in mind. It feels very much like a JRPG alright, but perhaps a bit less obnoxious than the average one I've had the misfortune of stumbling upon. Onto the details, shall we?

As in any JRPG, story takes the front in this game, where the amount of dialogue and cutscenes is far greater than I can patiently sit through. I almost quit before getting to the meat of the game. In some scenes, voice acting is present, and it's actually remarkably good. The music's pretty nice as well, but I hear that these are the things this developer does well. It's from the same people whomade Ys and The Legend of Heroes series, see. Sadly, neither is something I give overly many points for in my head.

The story is basically that you're a treasure hunter / courier-for-hire (an odd combination for sure), and on your most recent package delivery you're shot down from your airplane and killed by two girls flying dragons, who had previously taken over some vampire chick's castle. The latter then revives you in exchange for help in reclaiming her lost home.

To go about that, you run dungeons searching for this vampire's lost magic. The level traversal and combat is action-based, but is pretty much exclusively based around either spamming the melee button or holding down the ranged button until stuff dies. The latter is safer, but slower, which is an annoying combination, because I'd rather not lose, but hell, things take long to die. Another really annoying bit is that the camera can't be rotated manually, so you often find yourself at a really unfortunate angle where you can't see what you're fighting or if an enemy is preparing a ranged attack at you. Other than these two (rather major) issues, the combat feels fine, fluid, and surprisingly difficult enough for a JRPG.

As far as new equipment and new powers goes, there's fairly little progress and stuff stays (at least conceptually) the same throughout the game. There's an interesting bit though where instead of getting exp from killing monsters, you get exp from eating, which also restores life. However, saving up food allows you to combine it for more efficient exp once outside the dungeon. So if you're more skilled and the game's easy enough for you, you can make it even more easier by also getting ahead in levels? Ain't that a fine idea./s

In conclusion, I don't think this would've been a fun run for me from any angle, but the grindiness, monotone combat, as well as an excessive amount of dialogue for my taste were turn-offs enough that I quit mid-way. Still, as much as I've played JRPGs, it was definitely in the top half, so if you're a fan of the genre, why not give it a try. Otherwise, probably not worth it. Reminded me of Recettear, which I'd consider better, maybe you'd like that instead.

Dragon Age: Origins

A considerable amount of people I know have told me to play BioWare games, mainly Mass Effect and Dragon Age. I figured since I'm more of a fan of fantasy, I'd go with Dragon Age, see if I liked it, and if I did, move on to Mass Effect. So with that in mind, I started Dragon Age: Origins today, and it went about as well as I expected.

Dragon Age seems to be a pretty standard RPG in terms of overall build. You get a selection of a few races, a few classes, and a few starting stories to shape your overall character. Assign stat points, select skills, talents, and whatnot... But what surprised me, and not in a good way, was that Dragon Age wasn't an action RPG, but more like a pause-based RTS. Like Pillars of Eternity or Tyranny, which I had played before. Of course, that comparison is backward, since Dragon age came out about 5 years earlier.

Further, I didn't feel like any of the game's systems was particularly well made. Micromanaging everyone was tiresome due to various reasons such as: Equipment management was for one character at a time - no quick way to switch between them or get an overview of who has or needs what. Activating skills took some odd amount of time and had poor indicators, meaning I couldn't understand what in the world my party was doing. AI sometimes felt the need to assert its own decisions over mine. More so, it was rather poor at that, failing to path around units, failing to understand it needed to attack something, or that maybe it was trying to shoot arrows through a wall. As for other systems, none of the skills and abilities seemed interesting either. Very plain, basic, and boring. While normally I would say for RPGs that they're just not my thing, I'd actually say this one is rather poorly made. If I wanted to play something just like this but better, one of Obsidian's RPGs would be fitting.

As mentioned in previous reviews though, I don't wish to play something like this. I'm not a fan of most RPGs for the simple reason I'll repeat yet again. I play games for their gameplay. RPGs tend to have a lot of segments that don't have gameplay - the story and dialogue bits. While I can appreciate a good story, books or other dedicated story-based entertainment does a better job most always. I'd reckon the reason behind that might be that they're focused on that bit. RPGs also have to worry about gameplay, and thus they suffer two-fold - a bad story due to effort on gameplay, and bad gameplay due to effort on story. That's not a rule, but it is very common. Not that I think games should forsake any story components altogether, not at all. A little bit of story, or rather, lore, can give much-needed meaning to gameplay and immerse the player more. All of this is just my preference though, as I know a lot of people love RPGs, as well as other games with a split between story and gameplay.

From my experiences with this game, I wouldn't recommend it even if you do like RPGs. Myself, I won't be checking if either of sequels is better, since Origins was disappointing, and the whole I-don't-really-like-RPGs thing.

WaveLand

Randomed a more obscure one from my list this time. WaveLand isn't particularly popular, nor do I believe it to be particularly good.

WaveLand is an action platformer, with movement mechanics built around some dashing mechanic from a specific fighter game I've never played. The game is split into short levels, each pitting you against a time limit and scoring you based on your completion speed. Essentially, it's a game for speedrunning. The pixel art style it has evoked some feeling of nostalgia in me, but was otherwise unmentionable.

First of all, I'm no fan of speedrunning, so I guess I'm not really the target audience, and the game's not very enjoyable for me. Secondly, I've also not played that other game whose players the developer apparently tailored the movement to. If you fit into both of those categories, then maybe it's worth trying this game. Otherwise, not so much.

Even accounting for the fact that neither the goal nor gameplay is aimed at me, this game feels like it's lacking substance. The levels feel empty, plain. The story is something obscure, and more of a thing in the background, so it's hard to care about that either. All that's left is traversing these levels and chasing numbers, which, even if it wasn't about speed, and if the movement was more generally appealing, doesn't seem to be enough for a good game.

So I wouldn't really recommend WaveLand. Maybe unless you really are the very narrow target audience for this game and are otherwise bored.

End-of-week Report

Not much to report this week. Exams are over, finished with another semester of all A-s, so I get to enjoy my well-deserved break until mid-February. I've been playing a bit of Mabinogi in the pockets of free time I've had. I could just keep spending my time on these infinite games I know I like, but then I'll never discover anything new and great. So I just have to get over the initial grudge of starting a new game.

• Games in backlog: 211 (+4)
• of which VR: 14
• of which Visual Novels: 40 (+2)
• of which Early Access: 52
• Games reviewed last week: 0
• Progress to 18.02 game goal: 2 of 30

End-of-week Report

That 30 game promise is starting to look more and more unreasonable. I'll have to really go on a spree at some point if I want to finish that. Two games per day, or something like that.

In other news, Windows decided it was time for another major update, which screwed over a lot of things regarding how my computer works. That includes a lot of the automation I do, which is consequently the reason why this report is a day late. While yesterday was lost to fixing these things, I should be mostly done with that now. So on to the report, which now includes the change from last week:

• Games in backlog: 207 (+1)
• of which VR: 14
• of which Visual Novels: 38
• of which Early Access: 52
• Games reviewed last week: 1
• Progress to 18.02 game goal: 2 of 30

Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy

Getting Over It with Bennet Foddy is some sort of sick game for masochists, I swear. Not the most elegant thing to say about a game, but it's quite true. It's a game about climbing a mountain of things with a big hammer, very strong arms, and mostly realistic physics otherwise. This is, as you might imagine, quite difficult.

Normally, I would just label this game as "not worth looking at", since it features basically no gameplay, no variety, no fun - only a static environment and frustration. It even says so as the only sentence of its short description: "A game for a certain kind of person. To hurt them." But, as circumstances would have it, Getting Over It has amassed a pretty large amount of players. This could probably be attributed to it being fun to watch others suffer as they fall down over and over, so it's a natural fit for YouTube and Twitch, which are a huge popularity boost.

But regardless of this popularity, regardless of the hidden message that if you don't want to play this game, it's because it's too difficult for you, and you're just giving up... It's still a bad game. I could go on at length, probing that from different angles, but there isn't really any need. If someone tells you to play it, just tell them that it's frustrating without being any fun, and you see no reason to subject yourself to something like that, even for some petty feeling of accomplishment.

So I wouldn't recommend you play Getting Over It. Unless you hate yourself or something. In which case, go right on ahead.

End-of-week Report

January is exam month. This means the entire first week was spent on finishing up all the school projects and homework that had been left undone. The one I did for a Computer Graphics course is even worth mentioning here, so take a look if you want. This project page includes screenshots, some info about what I and my team did, as well as a download link. Next week I have three exams, which means little time for games, lots of time for studying.

• Games in backlog: 206
• of which VR: 14
• of which Visual Novels: 38
• of which Early Access: 52
• Games reviewed last week: 0

PS. All posts now include a little date at the bottom. This is a replacement to the dates I've been writing as the post titles until now. It also took way too much time to properly implement, but at least I'm now a bit more familiar with editing Blogger's template.

25-31.12.17

I'm not only on time for once, but even ahead of it. The year ends nicely on a Sunday, meaning my weekly post syncs up neatly. This is the last post I'll be doing in quite such a format, as I've mentioned previously. So... I'll start off with my thoughts on a game I just finished, then move on to talk a little bit about the past year and the coming one.

The mentioned game is Doki Doki Literature Club - something I've been itching to play since it first came out on Steam. "Oh, but Torn, this is a visual novel! You don't write at length about visual novels here." Well, yes, but I'm going to make a slight exception for this one, seeing as it's most definitely not your everyday visual novel, and is ranked ~#10 on Steam right now.

Still, Doki Doki Literature Club is a visual novel in structure through and through. If you're looking for a game, i.e. an interactive experience or gameplay, you won't find it here. In theory, you could pretty mindlessly click through all the dialogue (don't do that, it deserves better) and that would be the end of it. But where it heavily differs from being a visual novel is the content it presents. I don't wish to go into any spoilers, as I would really encourage you to play through the game yourself, but what is clearly stated is that DDLC is a horror game, and a psychological horror game at that, meaning no jump scares, but instead horror through unsettlement - the best kind of horror. By the end of it, I would hope you're left with some new things to think about, or at the very least a deep impression. (Oh, and since some people have difficulty identifying the end, it's when the credits roll. The true end is when you see a written letter from the game's creator.)

But what can I say without spoiling anything? Well, for one, I think the polish on most everything is great. The art and music are not only good, but fit very well with the rest of the game. The writing is thought through, and the timings between various events are quite right. Overall, the execution is excellent. Perhaps my only minor annoyance is how long it takes for the "action" to start in the first place. Sure, the game benefits from the first few hours where it really is just a dating sim because it helps build a connection to these characters. So when everything takes a turn for the not-okay, it triggers more of an emotional response. Still, the pacing could have been faster at various parts in the game, as I felt myself getting a bit impatient. This is a minor grievance though, and I stick by that, overall, the execution of everything is excellent.

So, my verdict on Doki Doki Literature Club? It's great! Go play it! I, myself, was a bit overhyped, and I can't really say if it deserves this incredibly high ranking it has right now, but nevertheless it was a great experience.

So, with that out of the way, onto my thoughts about the past and future.

Like mostly every year, I'm a bit disappointed in my overall progress/accomplishments over the past year. But this isn't necessarily a bad thing. You can aim low, and be happy with yourself by managing more, or you can aim high and be dissatisfied with yourself by managing less. But at the end of the day, maybe aiming high made you try harder, so despite your dissatisfaction, you accomplished more than you would have otherwise?

The vague plan I've had in my head is that I want to get through my to-do list (a big portion of which is my backlog of games), before I start to invest more time into very time-consuming things such as game development. Reason being that I know how much time a big project takes, and I would hate to sacrifice everything else to free up time for it. I'm halfway through university right now, and I feel like I've learned so much already. I feel like there's so much I can do, so much I want to do... but oh so little time.

As for the future, I'll just have to push myself harder to waste less of this time. It's all really a very delicate balance. If things you need or want to do accumulate even just slightly faster than you get them done, you just keep falling behind more and more, never catching up. If it's the other way around, you'll always have everything done and finished, and even a little bit of time left over. Sure, the real world isn't quite that simple, but a little increase in efficiency can have tremendous results. In just about two years, I'll have to really start making a living, and I want to have my ducks in as neat a row as possible by then.

As for this blog specifically, I mentioned switching to a slightly different format. When I first started out, I wanted to write a post every day to make sure that I was indeed doing something noteworthy every single day. Reality is that life doesn't move that fast, and forcing myself to write so often only took more time out of my schedule than needed. I still ended up writing only once every few days, often filling the last days out with some meaningless sentences. This end-of-week post I have now is not super comfortable either, and was a bit of a band-aid.

So my solution is this: Each game gets its own post when I finish with it. Games added to my queue don't get a post. Anything else that feels like a big enough topic to talk about also gets its own post. So I'm basically switching from regularly scheduled posts to event-based posts. There will still, however, be an end-of-week post every Sunday - something of a progress report. I will automatically be reminded of that now, so hopefully I won't miss it anymore. I predict the progress reports will be rather on the short side, and I'll try to shape them to have some sort of recurring structure. That is, if you want to compare my progress on something week after week, it should be easy to do that.

Finally, about the game reviews that I've really not wanted to call game reviews. I don't think I'm a good writer. I can see from my stats page that barely anyone reads what I write here. So this is just something I'm doing 90% for myself right now. But I still want to do this "right". I feel myself striving toward some sort of format in my write-ups, not just a "liked it" / "didn't like it", accompanied by whatever thoughts I can gather at that time. Of course it's not that easy, and not a change I can make overnight. I would have to learn about proper ways to write stuff in addition to the constant practice I'm getting from writing. But the practice has made me a better writer, or so I believe. I can't see this improvement myself, as it's incredibly slow, but I've started to get more compliments from people that I write quite well. So I want to keep improving, and it's not just an impulse I got from the recent literature themed game I finished, heh.

Of course, I shouldn't get too ambitious. If I wanted to be like a "real game critic" or something, then that would be a full-time job I don't have time for. My reviews would need to be on-time as the games come out, I'd need a nice-looking site which generally includes a bunch of bells and whistles which take time to make and maintain, as well as a lot of something I'm very much lacking right now - pictures. Pictures are a difficult subject for me for some reason, but they seem like the easiest improvement to make my content more enjoyable.

I'll be working hard to accomplish as many of my goals as I can, and I hope you are too. Happy new year, everyone!

18-24.12.17

Okay, okay, only a slight reason to be alarmed. I promised 30 games in two months, did I? Phew...

Well, I started with the first one, being Divinity: Original Sin 2. It is going to take a long while, but I found a (hopefully) better co-op partner this time around, so it'll take less than a year. The infrequent playing schedule also allows me to play other stuff in the meanwhile, so I'll try to make steady progress toward that 30 game goal.

The new Divinity looks a lot more... expensive. Definitely shows that a lot more work went into it, and everything looks and sounds just fantastic. The gameplay mechanics are a bit different, changing % damage reduction from armor to flat "armor HP" that has to be destroyed first, reducing overall AP, most status effects can only be applied once the enemy's armor is depleted, and other changes that kind of require you to re-evaluate your strategies from the previous game. Still, it feels familiar enough, and perhaps even a bit more accessible than the last one. So far, the differing mechanics are just that - different, not better or worse.

With Christmas this weekend, I'll have a few days cut off from my other activities. And then there's some final schoolwork I have to finish before the exams start, which might eat a total of another few days. So don't expect all too much next week either, but the more I get done now, the less I'll have to do later.

11-17.12.17

This is basically the last week of school before the winter break and exam session after that. While exams do make me a bit nervous, they don't take up a lot of time. So this means that I will have almost two months of free time for various things... that are only partially school projects...

But I will set a goal for myself! A number made up on the spot, I shall play at least 30 new games in the following two months.

I'm also going to slightly switch how (or rather, when) I do these posts starting next year. But I'll have a post with the details then.

4-10.12.17

While this doesn't actually concern games directly, I'm making positive progress in my overall to-do list. That means playing new games might surface up as an activity soon-ish. I've actually been enjoying some of the games that I hadn't played for a while before such as Mabinogi and Planetside 2.

27.11-3.12.17

I used to at least post new games I've found, but I'm not doing it for the time being for various reasons. For one, I don't feel it's a good use of my time. For another, I've been thinking about somewhat revamping the way I go about finding new games, since the list is growing out of control while I'm not playing. I think I got it to below 100 during the summer, and it's almost over 200 again right now.

Maybe I'll get around to some of this stuff during my winter break. Maybe it'll be just another thing in my general to-do list that is keeping me from getting to my games.

But hey, I do have some news. Ludum Dare was this weekend, and I participated with a team. I was very happy with everyone's commitment and competence, despite the choice of the specific game idea yet again not being to my liking. But such are the consequences of having a team where everyone's opinion matters.

Our lead (technical) artist did a great job, as did my friend, who was writing shaders. I think it might be one of the most visually impressive games I've seen in Ludum Dare overall. Sadly the gameplay never quite "made" it, so it's mostly just a half-functioning pretty sandbox.

We got 2nd place out of the 8 teams in the local competition, and maybe I'll play and vote on various LD games to get ratings for our game in return. You know, to actually place somewhere in the global competition as well. But I can say if and how that goes at a later date.

Oh, right, and a link to the game, of course.

20-26.11.17

There's no point in writing these three weeks late. I can't remember what I did during this time, nor how it was already so long ago. But for the purposes of this blog, I did nothing all week.