Grim Nights

Grim Nights is a lovely little Managament, RTS, Tower Defense hybrid. It's not too expensive, it's not too long, and it has practically no replayability, but I enjoyed my time with it until I lost halfway through due to unforeseen enemy attack patterns.
The premise is that you have to survive 13 nights of increasingly difficult zombie (and other monster) onslaughts while also building up your town. The zombies approach from the right, your town builds up from the left - it's fairly straightforward. You got a few different resources, a few different buildings, some upgrades to those buildings... Each villager comes with their own speciality (if any), and can be assigned to a job.

There's not a lot to think about nor explore, sadly. Just assign all villagers to gather resources you need as fast as possible, everyone else to expand, while keeping enough troops to defend your base. There's a limit of about three melee warriors before they can't reach the enemy anymore since units don't stack. So basically everything should be poured into archers to mow the enemies down with a rain of arrows. (There are a few exceptions though, one of which managed to end my run, so maybe the balance isn't that off.)
At first the mine system seemed innovative, but it boiled down to just digging out rooms as fast as possible and strip mining all the resources within. Further, the ladder system was god awful due to the units lacking vertical pathfinding. I think perhaps the unit management and control was my largest gripe with the game, followed by the lack of meaningful choices.

Overall, I actually liked playing it. I considered giving it a spot on my list, but... Thinking back on it, it wasn't really that unique in any regard, lacked polish in some areas (though had plenty in others), didn't have content nor choice... How could I even recommend it, much less give it a spot? But still, a partial recommendation for Grim Nights, I guess. I think it's fun, even if not for long.

Masters of Anima

I can't fathom how I've queued up so many RTS games for myself, considering how I tend to dislike them. Feels like every 5th game is an RTS, in disguise or otherwise. Today's personal disappointment is Masters of Anima. Despite not giving it too long of a shot after I figured out it's an RTS, and not something magnificent enough to pique my interest, I can still give a more or less objective description of what it is, and what it maybe does well. The usual treatment then.

Masters of Anima tries to be many things. It's mostly an RTS, I would say, but it mixes in a good amount of ARPG, Story, and Puzzles. (And on a side note, ARPGs aside, I'm rather opposed to all of these in games. Woe is me.)
The meat of the game is summoning different units, sending them to attack different things, or do other things, such as interacting with the environment to shape it. A seasoned RTS player would be alienated and disgusted by the inefficiency of the control scheme of this game, but I don't find it so bad for the more casual type of game it is. The content of the game is nicely shaped to provide incentive to split your troops and have them perform different tasks, much like teaching you the basics of playing an RTS, especially from the viewpoint of a PC-centric player. For what it does, it seems well made at least, so I can't objectively criticize it there.
The ARPG elements come through a personal character you control via the usual WASD movement system, upgrades you can get yourself over the course of the game, and map exploration. Speaking of maps, they are rather large, but overall the game is still level-based.
The story is the usual boring unoriginal tra... I mean, not to my liking. I've a high standard for storytelling in games, and very few games (with actual gameplay) indeed have had stories I would consider passable, let alone good. So make of my opinion what you will. It's got full voice acting though.
And finally, the puzzles are the kind of casual stuff I've come to expect from "puzzle games" these days. They're a time wasting annoyance at worst, but if you consider enemy attack patterns and how to counter them a puzzle, then maybe there are redeeming puzzle aspects to this game after all.

So overall, Masters of Anima does two things wrong. More importantly, it's of a type of game I don't like. More seriously, it tries to be multiple games, the inefficiency of which I've explained many times. It's not a good RTS, it's not a good ARPG, it doesn't have a good story, and it doesn't have good puzzles. As a hybrid, I even dare say it does well, but I also dare say that most people don't care about hybrids. They want a solid experience in their selected genre, not a mediocre one in multiple ones. So that's an objective reason to not recommend it, but do keep in mind that I mainly just don't like these genres.

Dungreed

Entering Dungreed, I was told it's a worse version of Shovel Knight, which I remember playing at some point in the rather distant past. For whatever reason, it didn't stick with me, so I didn't have the highest hopes for Dungreed either, but in I went.

Dungreed is a sidescrolling room-based dungeon crawler. It features about six floors of content worth 20-30 minutes each, plus a bossfight for each floor, and then a little extra. Of course dying means going back to the beginning, so unless you're really good, the game will last longer than 3 hours until first completion. But 6 hours? 10 hours? That depends on you.
You begin each run with a basic sword. By exploring the dungeon, you can find other weapons, both melee and ranged, as well as some other equipment. And as is tradition, all of that is lost when you die. What you keep is experience, any money you didn't spend in the dungeon (up to a cap), and any equipment you unlocked or villagers you saved. The saved villagers can offer you upgrades, which break all of what I told you in small ways.

It's a solid formula, and it is evident the game has been polished and made with care. The upgrade options are varied, there's a healthy amount of RNG... The weapon variety is perhaps the strongest aspect of them all, providing a lot replayability as you experiment with different weapons.
The pixel art is solid and the soundtrack ranges from mediocre to pretty damn good on some tracks.
But it's also missing a lot. Mostly, it's just short on content and balance. The game's over fairly quickly, but even before it ends, you can probably see most of the room layouts multiple times, most enemies to the point of boredom, and a ton of useless equipment. On the balance side, overall the game is far too easy for my tastes, with no adjustable difficulty. Multiple pieces of equipment or certain strategies which I don't want to spoil allow you to just facetank or rush through everything. Despite the fun combat, it's not a challenge.

All in all, Dungreed offers a short but polished action roguelike experience, probably enjoyable by all fans of the genre, but more so by the more casual-inclined. I feel it had the potential to be something much greater had it introduced more content, more variety, and more options and challenge. As it stands now though, it was fun, I liked playing it to first completion, but I wouldn't play it again or try to 100% it. As such, a slot on my favorite games' list, albeit below the line.

Ghost of a Tale

Ghost of a Tale is a Stealth Adventure game (and very far from an Action RPG, as it sells itself for some reason) where you play as a mouse locked in a jail looking for your wife and a way out, or something. There's a lot of stuff to pick up and interact with, a lot of text to read if you care to look at items, talk to characters, and read papers you find, and a lot of running around looking for a way to progress. Except you have to be quiet so you're not detected and so you're more sneaking than running.

But what I found there wasn't a lot to do were meaningful things. I failed to find any sort of enjoyment in picking up items and running around doing whatever I needed to do. While I can't say that it was always easy and obvious what I had to do next, I never felt like I was solving a puzzle, but more like I was playing a guessing game. It wasn't challenging, it wasn't humorous, it wasn't fun. Neither was the story I read any captivating, but my lukewarm attitude towards story-based games is nothing new. What RPG elements remained in terms of equipment and stats were of no significant point either.

To conclude, a short review for a short attempt. I just couldn't bring myself to play it any longer, as there wasn't so much as a single aspect of the game I was enjoying. Combine that with the game being... not badly, but amateurishly made, and you might understand why it couldn't captivate me. I wouldn't recommend it, but maybe some people are bigger fans of mediocre stealth and story games.

Golem Gates

Sorry for being gone for a bit over two months. Feels like a whole year, to be honest. Between work and some other stuff, I haven't really found the time to be playing new games, but I did manage to squeeze in an RTS by the name of Golem Gates. It didn't take too long, because it wasn't very good.

Golem Gates tries to be original by combining deckbuilding with an RTS. Before a skirmish, you assemble your deck, which can consist of various squads of units, towers, spells, and utility cards. You draw your starting hand, optionally mulligan some, then draw another card at regular intervals as the game progresses. Cards can be played in locations you can see using energy, which recharges over time, and faster with more points controlled. The rest plays out like a typical RTS, where you move your units around and fight the enemy who is doing the same.

Now, a fair disclaimer that I still don't like RTS games (which of course brings into question why I played this in the first place), but regardless of that, I found Golem Gates to be pretty weak on the RTS side. It has basic RTS features, but lacks any kind of semi-intelligent unit AI, forcing you to micromanage all your units actions. (Or just attack move over the enemies. Wasn't any difficult as far as I got.) Now, with the maps as small and devoid of things to do as they are, the micromanagement isn't that big of a problem, but then again, the lack of things to do is. The deckbuilding aspect is weak as well, as it doesn't really tie into the gameplay, only the metagame.

Overall, Golem Gates does just the bare minimum to be called a "deckbuilding RTS", but doesn't really have any redeeming qualities, despite the graphics which are turned up to 150%. So, really, most any decent deckbuilder or RTS will beat this game fairly easily. And if you want a similar but better game, I remember EA had something with pretty much the same premise but much better execution. It was shut down, but is now a fan-run F2P game. Just, don't play Golem Gates - it's not a good game by any measure.

Aegis Defenders

I briefly tried Aegis Defenders. It describes itself as an action-platformer with tower defense combat, but in reality, it's just a side-view action tower defense game. Calling it a platformer would be doing any decent platformers a disservice.
Generally the game centers around defending a... thing from enemies that swarm you from the edges of the map. Standard tower defense stuff. The catch is that you actually control a group of characters, each of whom has their own towers or tower-like things. Run around, whack resources to gather them and then... build with them. Standard stuff, I said. Different characters also have different attacks and you can only control one at a time. Not controlling a character leaves them to do their default thing, such as repairing turrets, standing still where they were. Different characters (and their buildings) are also effective against different enemies, and there's some shop system between levels.

While the characters and platforming were probably supposed to make it unique, I actually disliked the game more than a run-on-the-mill tower defense. This kind of switching characters, fighting on my own, gathering resources... it detracted from the main experience, which was supposed to be a tower defense. Another game falling for the common blunder of trying to do too many things without even getting one of them right. Even if it was just the tower defense bit, it still wasn't very inspired or interesting.
The only moderate saving grace might have been the split-screen co-op, but I didn't have anyone to play with at the moment. More players means less time managing characters, more playing, and of course the standard "everything's better with a friend", but even then I have my doubts it would have had enough of an impact on this game. It just wasn't that good.

In brief: A rather boring tower defense further hindered by other, even less interesting, aspects of gameplay. If you got a friend in the same room to play with, then maybe it's enjoyable for a few hours, but I wouldn't recommend it alone.

Ash of Gods: Redemption

I played a little bit of Ash of Gods despite its not-so-great reviews. A lot of people described it as a worse version of The Banner Saga, which I also played some time ago, but didn't quite find to my liking. They're both these grid-and-turn-based RPGs with a rather heavy focus on story.

So apparently the Reaper has come to kill everyone, and has the power to just make people drop dead in a 10 mile radius or something. However, he doesn't kill some people for some reason and instead lets lots of criminals live and mind-controls them to kill these people for him. Didn't make much sense to me. Might be the writing quality, which is... Well, let's just say the writing feels more like a river of cobblestones than water.

From the gameplay side, things aren't looking much brighter. I found the character upgrade and item system quite terrible.
Abilities are also often borderline bad. "Do you wish to deal 250% damage to your health and 100% damage to your energy in return for 250% damage to the enemy?" "Uh, no thanks, I'll just block until the enemy kills themselves with their abilities that cost more than they deal damage."
There are also cards (single use per combat spells), which are often weaker than a character's action, but still cost a turn. Oh, and speaking of turns, someone decided that if you're outnumbered, you can act more. You can't act again with a character until you've acted with everyone in your party. So while 5 weak vs 1 strong should intuitively feel kind of fair, you'll actually get slaughtered as your units scramble to get in range, while the strong guy hammers down your units one-by-one while they can't do anything cause they already acted. Throw in the fact that less units go through rounds faster, which gives you access to stronger spells and... I'm rambling, but you can see I'm not exactly a fan.

So there's not much to say. Only positive thing is that the premise of the story seemed interesting, and the art's not bad, but the story itself, and most importantly the gameplay, are just shit. Don't play it, I don't recommend it. Go find another grid-based RPG if you wish, there's surely better ones out there.

Iconoclasts

Back with another Metroidvania by the name of Iconoclasts. It's not a secret I've a bit of a soft spot for these kinds of games but regardless, I think it held up very well.

Iconoclasts is pretty standard. You run around the world, progress the story, do some platforming, do some combat, upgrade your abilities and weapons in smaller and larger ways...
Your main tool is a wrench, which is the central unique item in this game. It can be used to operate various doors, sliding and spinning platforms, but also as a movement tool, letting you swing on hanging nuts, or ride electric lines (don't try these at home). It also acts as a melee weapon alongside the three guns you unlock as you play.
There's a nice variety of enemies, but they're nothing fancy. It's usually more of a puzzle-thing, figuring out how to beat an enemy, than one of skill. This goes double for bosses, which are, in contrast, definitely very fancy and make up a sizable portion of the game. The puzzle theme is permeating, and environment/platforming puzzles make up another sizable portion. Overall, maybe Iconoclasts is even a bit more of a puzzle platformer than a Metroidvania. While there is backtracking, a lot of it is optional or devoid of much action, and the level structure is quite linear.
Upgrades are mostly the mandatory wrench and gun upgrades you need to progress, but also some mostly inconsequential "Tweaks" you can craft from resources you find. (Oh, but do get the one that lets you spin your wrench longer, you'll thank me later.)

The bosses and puzzles were of a nice difficulty. On one hand, nothing special, on the other, I rarely got any averse feelings towards them - they were well made, and progressed at a steady pace. One of the most enjoyable things about the gameplay was how, when you went back to content you had already completed, going through it was a breeze. I could really look back on my journey and feel how it was not just my character who had progressed, but I as well.
From other aspects - music was pleasant, pixel art was really good, and the story was genuinely interesting. The ending was a bit anticlimactic, maybe rushed? It definitely left many questions in the air, but didn't really hurt the overall story.

Overall, definitely recommended and it earned a high place on my list. Superb job for a mostly solo project. Play it for the puzzles and a feeling of mastery. Play it for the lovely atmosphere, characters, and story.

Status Report

Long time no write again. Figured I owed a quick insight into what's happening.
On a positive note, I started my first "real" job 3 weeks ago, which has been the main factor keeping me busy. The first week was rough, as with all new things, but by the end of the second week, I figured I had accustomed enough to start my routine activities, such as playing new games, up again, but I fell ill. Despite the free time one acquires when sick, it's really not any productive. Not much you can do with a headache discouraging any thorough thought. A week later, I'm feeling better now though, so hopefully I can continue where I left off.
I have a finished game sitting in memory, waiting to be written into a review, so expect that real soon.

As for the future, I'm planning to move closer to the city center as soon as I pick out a suitable apartment, which would be in the next couple of weeks to months. That will of course also cause at least a week's worth of disruption, but should free up a significant amount of time each week from not having to sit in commute to work or wherever for as long.

The usual note on how many games I have in my backlog? I don't even want to think about it. I've been picky lately, but with how slowly I'm playing through them, no amount added is too low to not increase the backlog size.

Divinity: Original Sin 2

Like its predecessor, Divinity: Original Sin 2 took over a year to finish due to playing it in co-op and the difficulty of coordinating sessions. Looking at the first post I made about it, it even took slightly over two years, which is a frightening amount of time. As I remarked some time after first starting it, it is much like the original.

I think the main difference is the amount of content and the quality of it. While both games are very lengthy, DOS2 should still span a longer time, offer more alternative story paths and sidequests, and some out-of-campaign activities like an arena mode or a GM mode to make your own multiplayer experiences or something using the existing assets? I don't fully know, I didn't try them out. But in addition, there is the quality, seen, for example, in better graphics, more voice acting (although I must say the narrator narrated far too much for my tastes - some characters filling that role would have been better at times), better balance, better AI, and some other smaller things. Somewhat surprisingly, there weren't any major modifications from the previous game. It was very much just more of the same. Then again, improving on something so well made is a difficult task, and I can't say it got repetitive.

I'm not sure I want to just copy what I said about DOS(1), because the description of the game really isn't any different. It's a really well-made RPG with turn-based combat that has free movement, 3D positioning, and lots of interactions between different spells. If you care about RPGs, you almost certainly already know about Divinity: Original Sin 2, but in case you don't, go play it. It's great, and that's coming from someone who usually doesn't like RPGs. Once again, top spot on my list of RPGs, absolutely amazing game.

Open Sorcery

I first played Open Sorcery almost 3 years ago. I can't believe how time flies. It was a fun little choice-laden text-adventure with many, many branching paths and options and outcomes. Kind of like Long Live the Queen. I liked to play both of those games with two of my friends, acting as a sort of council of three, making democratic decisions on what course of action to take. It was fun, it was also slow, and it has been increasingly infrequent, as people seem to be more busy. So it sat in my library for quite a while until I decided to finish it alone today.

Open Sorcery is basically a multiple choice text game. You are an elemental firewall in a sort of techno-magical world (The setting wasn't explored very much, but I loved what glimpses I got.), tasked with guarding some places of importance. Your decisions can increase your relationships with people, make you learn new things, and somewhat shape the world around you. A single playthrough may take at most an hour if you're reading through everything and don't lose early. Of course you don't limit yourself to one playthrough with these kinds of games - you explore all the different paths and options. Subsequent playthroughs might be closer to a couple dozen minutes each, or if running on speed mode (which skips most text and choices in favor of only the important ones), even just a few minutes each.

Overall, it's a short game which can be systematically explored in a few of hours, but might provide entertainment for closer to a dozen, if going slow. It's very bare-bones, having almost no artwork, no background music whatsoever, and only a handful of small sound effects. On the upside, usage of text is masterful. I'd say the story is decent, but it's really, very short, being more of some preparatory events followed by the main event you must then resolve with the preparation you've had.
In a sentence: Too short, too bare, but otherwise lovely. I'd recommend it but not very strongly. It will go on my list, below the line.

Heroes of Hammerwatch

I tried Hammerwatch quite a long while, possibly years, ago. Today I tried it's sequel, Heroes of Hammerwatch. I found the latter to have more content as well as being slightly better overall, but for the most part, it's more of the same so I'll speak of them together as just "Hammerwatch".

Hammerwatch is a randomly generated dungeon crawler / action rogue-like. It has a few different classes to choose from, which each come with their own abilities and playstyle. The game revolves around entering a dungeon, killing stuff in there, leveling up, finding items and gold and eventually dying to do it all over again, but this time with extra power from the levels you've gained and the power-ups you've bought with your gold. There's an end too, after which point you can do the whole thing over again at a harder difficulty. Maybe use a different class, whatever suits you.

It didn't suit me much though. The beginning was slow and combat didn't feel particularly impactful. I tried out a couple ranged classes and as such, my gameplay was limited to running backwards and shooting whatever I had available at the monsters who were generally beelining at me. Some also had ranged attacks or charges I had to dodge.
Most progression (levels and items) was just upping numbers so I could kill monsters faster and survive stronger hits against me while the enemies did the same. In essence, not much changed. Okay, in truth, the item system was pretty cool in that they all stacked and had some set bonuses, making it all a bit like an incremental game, the elements of which I always enjoy in my other games. I had no choice in which items I got though, so any strategic element was lost there.

Overall, I feel Hammerwatch is another of those games which prioritizes quantity of content over quality of content. Many people have over 50, some even over 200 hours of playtime, but as they admit, it's mostly just a grind. Because I have no shortage of games to play, it's not important to me that I could pour so much time into this game - I'd rather enjoy myself more over a shorter time. If anything, I feel it's kind of like a worse-but-longer-lasting version of Risk of Rain or just a not-so-good version of Realm of the Mad God. Maybe if the multiplayer was working properly I could have at least had more fun playing with my friends, but as it is, the gameplay is just too dull for me to recommend.

A Hat in Time

A Hat in Time is, as of the time of writing and according to my formula, the 13th best game on Steam. Considering that, I'd imagine most people who would want to play it have already played it and my opinion on it isn't all too relevant. And in a way, I'm glad that this is the case, as I must now tell you how I dislike one of the most liked games on Steam. In foresight, maybe this is not so much the fault of the game as it's just the fact that all people don't like all kinds of games. But maybe my opinion at least matters for people like myself. You decide.

Fair warning: I didn't make it to the end, so I might be slightly off in some things, but I'm not making any of it up.
A Hat in Time is a very cutesy 3D platformer with a focus on collecting stuff. It has maybe 20 hours worth of content, which could be seen as not overly much, but the content itself is, as far as I know, very compact, i.e. avoiding repetition. You got 40 levels to complete and some hats and other platforming tools to help you.

In my somewhat brief experience, I found all the platforming and running around collecting stuff an absolute snoozefest. I felt no incentive or joy whatsoever doing it. That's all the excuse I need, but then again, I've never liked platformers I guess.
My best subjective-objective comments about it would be that they've put a ton of work in so very many little details and that the cute and happy art style and atmosphere could be appealing to some people. The game is on the short side and caters more towards the casual (or "relaxed", if you prefer) audience, having easy and/or forgiving gameplay.

As I said in the beginning - if you like this game, you've probably already played it, or at least know about it. If not, and if platformers seem like really your thing, don't let my opinion keep you from it. I'm sure there's a reason it's the 13th highest rated game on Steam. On the other hand, if you feel your taste in games maybe aligns more with mine, then there's really nothing about this game I can recommend. It was dead boring.

Evergarden

I tried a little puzzle game by the name of Evergarden today. If you're familiar with the briefly insanely popular mobile game 2048, then it's basically that but on a hex grid. If you're not familiar with that, then Evergarden is a game about combining plants. Two adjacent plants of the same size can be combined into a larger plant, or any plant can be used to spawn a new plant next to it instead. Once all plants have been used once, you take the next turn and repeat the process until you run out of turns.
There's a scoring mechanic and some story thrown in there as well.

This is another one of these games, where I'm not sure what prompted me to add it to my backlog. Yet there it was, and I played it. As you might expect from a game that is essentially 2048, it's super basic. There's really not much to do. I sometimes wonder if these games are even worth writing about, or if I should just silently remove them. But I did spend my time playing it, might as well spend some time writing about it, gives me a reason to post. But in case it wasn't obvious yet, I wouldn't recommend you play the game.

Death's Gambit

To think I almost didn't give this game a chance. To think Death's Gambit was one of the lowest rated games in my backlog.
I loved this game. But I can understand some people's frustrations.

Death's Gambit is another game cementing the idea that a "souls-like" is a valid game genre. It's again so similar that you could call it a rip-off, but I don't personally feel like the (sub)genre is saturated enough to not allow for more good games, even if they play so much alike. Being 2D, it reminded me more of Salt and Sanctuary than Dark Souls, but the ideas are not so dependent on the dimensions of the game, I believe.

If you've played Dark Souls or a souls-like, you already know the gist of what the game is like. I won't explain it all again, so go look at the first two paragraphs of my Salt and Sanctuary post. It's basically more of the same, but there's less platforming.
There's actually less of a lot of things, which is where the game starts to suffer. Death's Gambit is only 10-15 hours long for the first playthrough. There's NG+, and some secrets/easter eggs, and an optional increased difficulty boss fight for every boss, but aside from NG+, they don't add too much extra time to the game. With less content, of course the map is smaller, there are fewer enemies, etc...
Most noticeably, however, there were just not enough items. With the exception of ranged weapons, there was one of each weapon type. Only a handful of various armors (of which only shields had any meaningful variety). They had an ability system, but that was underused - 2-3 abilities for each weapon, none really found in the world, just bought at the start from a vendor.
And finally, what a lot of people complain about - less polish. Animations not working, falling through platforms, the occasional bug that actually made you have to redo a significant part of previous content, and a lot more things that were just very rough around the edges, if not outright broken.

On the shorter but cheerier side, what the game did well in was immersion. Pretty much full voice acting, lovely attention to details and a plethora of non-gameplay events that made the world feel more alive. And when the game decided it was time to throw some insanity at you as a result of your death and undeath, it was downright unsettling at moments. It's all this that sold the game to me. I feel like the people who made it had everything they needed for not just a good game, but a great or an exceptional one, just... not enough time, willpower, resources, or I don't know what, to make more content and to polish it to really shine. Were they to make a sequel some day, I would without a doubt play it.

Despite it's relative shortcomings in playtime, build variety, and the overall production quality, I feel the core of Death's Gambit was outstanding. If you like souls-likes, I believe you'll like this one as well, and I would definitely recommend it. It has also earned a place on my more permanent favorite games list. If you play it, try to look past the rough edges and instead into the gleaming soul of it.

The Disappearing of Gensokyo

The second of the fan-made Touhou games I gave a try to was The Disappearing of Gensokyo. It was somewhat similar to the last one I played in that it's kind of like an action-RPG combined with a bullet hell game, except that here you're also shooting at the enemy instead of mostly using short-range attacks. So it's actually just like a regular bullet hell game, except it's not top-down, and you move around the levels on your own instead of just having it all scroll past.

To jump straight to my opinion - I don't think it was a conceptually bad game. There wasn't any single huge problem that drove me away but rather it was the combination of lots and lots of smaller problems and a general lack of polish. I'd highlight some of these issues and explore some of what the game offered in the progress.

To start off with something minor, I noticed the translation wasn't exactly stellar. Some mismatching pickup descriptions aside, it didn't bother me. A more annoying aspect relating to text was that half the story was given as dialogue right in the middle of the action. I missed that half because I couldn't look away from the game to read the dialogue. No one could. Some voice acting would've worked here, but alas, there was none.
Continuing on the topic of bad text or the lack of it - there were a bunch of different characters with 2 attacks, a bomb, and a dash each. These were varied and enjoyable (some characters were maybe definitely better than others, but with the ammo system forcing you to swap, that was mostly okay), but there was no description of what their abilities did or how strong they were. Sure, through trial and error I noticed some attacks had stuns or slowing effects, and some maybe had more damage in exchange for their poor range, or that some dashes were longer but slower, but it was all guesswork.
The upgrade UI was terrible, giving almost no feedback or hint as to what upgrades were selected, bought, or how to even buy them. (Double click to buy, BTW.)

From the gameplay side, the first thing I noticed was that there weren't enough checkpoints. The easy parts of the game that I didn't feel like playing over and over took most of my time as I failed some difficult part later on. Could've just turned down the difficulty, but I enjoyed overcoming a difficult fight. Some games justify this repetition by forcing you to ration better, saving your consumables, health, or whatever for the difficult parts - do better in the easy parts and the hard parts will be easier. Not this game. You have one recharging health bar and enough ammo and bombs, so you're always topped up between encounters. There's almost no reason to put the checkpoints so far from each other.
What else... There was an escort mission with an escortee who liked to run in and die. That was a good design choice, for sure. Also leaving the main character with no long-range attacks in a game were getting close could mean an instadeath. None of the characters really had a sufficient attack range like the enemies did. Maybe if dashing made you invulnerable and was available more often it could be considered some high-skill element, but it wasn't. Oh, and half the bosses I fought glitched out after death causing me to re-do the level from the beginning. Also not fun.
Saving the worst for last: The camera angle. Instead of top-down, it was tilted about 30 degrees, and ho-boy was that a burden. Couldn't see to the south of me - any ranged or dashing attacks, while properly telegraphed, were just outside my field of view, yet could reach me. That's bad. Nothing you can't see should be able to hit you faster than you can react. Further, any projectiles coming from the sides were inconsistently placed in the air. I couldn't tell where exactly my hitbox was and where I should stand for the projectiles not to hit me. Some seemed to hit my head, some my legs... Only when the enemy was to my north was the game like a proper bullet hell.

Phew, quite a long post this one, but I believe I was thorough. So yeah, as I said, it was mostly the combination of all these little design problems that caused the game to ultimately be unlikable. Better UI and a top-down view would have made this a much, much better game, but as it stands, I can't recommend it.

Soul Searching

Two in a row - another old game from the depths of my backlog - it's Soul Searching.
Soul Searching is part survival game, part the-thing-it's-called game. I remember initially wanting to skip it, but was convinced to give it a try due to the positive reviews it had gotten. I see now that these reviews were mostly by people to whom the second (and maybe the first, who knows) part of the game appealed - to people with whom it resonated. And there's nothing wrong with that. But it didn't resonate with me, and so I can only tell you about the objective qualities of this game, as well as my own opinion on it.

Soul Searching is a very "light" survival game indeed. You're on a boat, searching for souls that teach you magic (but also for yourself, I guess?) You have to manage your hunger, thirst, sleep, and deal with the occasional random encounter such as a thunderstorm or some birds. It's all very basic, and unless you're struck by bad luck, all very easy as well. The sea is also loitered with coins and magic nodes, but each individual one is not worth very much, causing you to spend a lot of time getting off your slow boat and swimming to the coin/node by your even slower self if you want to eventually afford to buy something. (Although buying/upgrading anything is not strictly required.)
As for the story... Like I said, it didn't resonate with me. I couldn't care about the supposed sadness and troubles of these pixelated figures, vague and unrelatable as they were.

Overall, from a game perspective, Soul Searching doesn't have much anything going for it. A lot of work has been put into the atmosphere and beauty of the world, and that's the part I respected most. But the gameplay is not just dull, but incredibly slow if you don't want to skip it. (At which point, why play at all?) While the story is supposed to be the highlight here, the bits of it were few and far between and left me cold. So unless you want to try if you can relate to it like some others say they have, I wouldn't recommend playing it.

Desync

Desync was probably one of the older games in my backlog, and I finally got around to playing it. It's a fast-paced, level-based action FPS that focuses on twitchy movement and aim, and rewards you for executing "cool" combos called Sequences such as dashing up close to an enemy to shoot them in the face and kill them, killing multiple enemies in quick succession, shooting an enemy into a trap that kills them, killing an enemy from above, and many others. Sequences are an essential part in performing well, as they reward you with points and various drops from enemies, such as health and ammo packs. Consequently, the game encourages you to not just win, but to win fast and in the more elaborate way possible. The visuals reflect this as well, being incredibly colorful, and there's an upgrade system between levels that I honestly didn't get to explore too much.

Now, aside from maybe not being all that deep or challenging (running for a highscore aside) gameplay wise, I have bigger problems with the game.
The first thing I noticed were the... obnoxious colors and post-processing effects. I don't usually complain about game visuals, as I tend not to care, but the glowing neon lights made it difficult to tell things apart at times. Further, some screen "glitch" effects made text nigh-unreadable for multiple seconds in a row and, of course, made it even more difficult to get a good idea what was going on around you at a glimpse. There was also no way to turn these effects off.
Secondly, and most aggravatingly, the game was clearly not designed for a KB/M. Sure, aiming worked and even the scroll wheel was in use, but my left hand would need 6-7 fingers so that I wouldn't have to stop moving left or right to fire my secondary weapon.

In a game all about skill and speed, the lack of proper game interaction support and the focus on visuals over gameplay, to the point they are harmful to the gameplay, are just not acceptable to me. As such, my experience with Desync was brief, and even without these problems, I can't imagine I am missing out on all that much. I wouldn't recommend it.

Happy New Year?

Happy new year and decade, everyone!

I've been absent for multiple months after finishing school and getting my degree, and then taking a couple of months to rest. Reason being, I was looking for a job. As that proved unexpectedly difficult, I put some rules into place for myself to better help focus my efforts. Among those rules: "No new games until I find a job." So I spent a lot of time applying to places and doing other relevant work necessary for finding a job.
Recently though, I felt it was just out of my hands for a large part and putting in more work wasn't going to produce any better results - I just had to wait. That also freed up some time I could use for some programming projects I've had and I finally decided that I might as well get back to playing some games as I wait. I don't want to jinx it, but I feel like I've made good progress with one job application and could land that job early January. So I've been a bit more lax in my search lately and have quite a few reviews scheduled over the next days.

On another topic I've been thinking about for quite a while now... I think 2020 is the year I'm going to finally make my own website. I've wanted one to showcase some smaller and larger projects I've made as well as anything I'll make in the future that's worth showing. I would of course also migrate my blog there, and perhaps add some nice features Blogger doesn't quite allow for (or at least they aren't easy to make/use here). I've completed enough on my list of programming projects that my own site is starting to surface as something I would want to do soon. It would be a large undertaking, as I like making things from (mostly) scratch, and that requires me to learn quite a few new technologies, but I believe the end result will be worth it.
What projects I might have before that are to learn Rust, fiddle with Tensorflow some, and maybe develop my image viewer/editor some more, but I doubt those would last me even close to the whole year.

So, in brief: I am back for now and hope to have enough time to continue after I get a job. I'm also going to start working on my own website, and will port the blog over there once it's finished. For the next week or few you can enjoy a game review I've queued up for every day. Maybe you'll find something you'll like. I know I already did.

End-of-week Report

Same as last week, really. However, I am starting to get maxed out in Warframe, the current league in Path of Exile is ending in a week, and I promised myself I would get a job in September. In other words, time consuming stuff is running out, and new, not game related time consuming stuff is taking its place.
Next week shall be my last peacefully mundane one in probably quite a while. I think I'll miss it.

I did reach 300 games, sadly, but I can still enjoy it while it's a round number. Not going to delusion myself into believing it's not going to increase beyond this, however.

• Games in backlog: 300 (+2)
• of which Early Access: 58
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

Well, got to be honest with you, and myself. I've been playing some multiplayer games the past week which I've found to be more enjoyable than going through my list. Some ARAM in League, some Warframe, some Path of Exile... And those can take all of the time in a day, so I don't have any left.
But screw it, I'm enjoying myself. I'll run out of content eventually, and be forced to play something else, but until then - let the backlog grow. It sucks to never reach my goals, but at the same time, until I do reach them, I'll always have something to do.

Two games until the dreaded three hundred. Next weekend? The one after that? Or will I miraculously pull my act together?

• Games in backlog: 298 (+3)
• of which Early Access: 58
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

How damn hard is it to not miss a week and then some days on writing something which is basically just whatever semi-coherent thoughts come into your head plus a bunch of numbers you can just fetch from a place.
Nah, but really, I've felt a tad less motivated to look through games lately. Maybe even with my helping scripts the influx is just too great. I finally caught up, so that's why the "end-of-week" report is on a Tuesday.

• Games in backlog: 295 (+5)
• of which Early Access: 58
• Games reviewed last (two) week(s): 2

Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity

I've known about Touhou, and it's crazily large fan-following for quite a few years now, but I've yet to really consider playing any of the games until late 2017, when the first official Touhou game came to Steam to a fantastic reaction, placing it in the top 25 games on Steam (according to my algorithms) despite lacking an English language option. Shortly after that came flowing the fan-games, of which there are far more than the official ones, ranging from supposedly great quality games to, honestly, crap. I've added a few of those to my backlog, and I just now got around to playing the first one.

Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity is a (mostly) top-down hack-and-slash bullet hell. There's about a dozen stages, each ending with a boss fight, also about a dozen different abilities, of which 3 can be slotted at a time, a not-particularly-meaningful level system, and some amount of different equipment, which just boosts your stats. Overall the entire thing takes maybe 4-5 hours, there's an optional end-game dungeon I did not play very far, and you can play the same game from a slightly different point of view with another character, swapping out your attacks and abilities (but all the enemies and levels stay the same).

Going into it, the first thing that struck me were the... inconsistent graphics. Particularly, the models, animations, and especially the UI seemed kind of amateurish or simple, while the visual effects and post-processing were really effective. These discrepancies often indicate a poor quality game, so my hopes fell low right at the start. However, to my surprise, the combat felt really good, and definitely outclassed even many bigger action games with how well it flowed. Sadly, after the initial roller coaster of a down and an up, the rest was a slow descent.
For one, the game was way too easy. There was a "bullet hell" mode with a warning sign in the options, which I turned on after the first 10 minutes, fearing I might have made it too difficult. However, with the exception of boss fights, which were of just the right difficulty, everything else was a dead-easy grind. It didn't help that I didn't get many more options or ways to play this. However good the combat felt, it got monotonous as I just mashed attack and one or two abilities against all enemies. For better or worse, it was over before it really started to bore me, making for a rather short experience.

Good combat, short runtime, little content, kind of repetitive, too easy, but really, good combat.
So my verdict on this is unsure. Is it a good game? I'd incline towards "no". Did I enjoy the brief time I spent on it? "Mostly." So would I recommend it? "I guess if you're particularly a fan of hack-and-slash and/or bullet hell and/or Touhou games."

Return of the Obra Dinn

Return of the Obra Dinn is possibly the purest detective game I have ever played. It's made by Lucas Pope, probably known for Papers, Please, and somehow manages to pull off an even more simplistic art style that's not only pixelated, but also 1-bit - just black and white, and yet fully 3D. I'll get back to that later.

I can't say too much about the game, as most any details about the story would spoil some part of it, but you play as an investigator for an insurance company, investigating the fate of the titular ship Obra Dinn when it is found empty after being lost at sea for a long time. You're armed with a notebook for cataloguing your findings, and a pocket watch, which can send you back in time to experience the last few moments of someone's death, given you find their corpse.
So the game is mostly just you, traveling through the 3D still frames surrounding each crew member's death, possibly accompanied by a few lines of dialogue from just before. Using every little clue you can find, you're supposed to piece together the identity, cause of death, and killer of every last person. And, honestly, the game is crafted brilliantly in this regard. You're thrown a few bones (easy cases), but many of the deaths really require you to look at all the details of what these people were doing, what they look like, what they sound like, at the time of their death, and in any memories before. I can't stress enough that it really does feel like detective work in the purest form I've experienced.

Now, I do of course have to point out some negatives. Coming back to the graphics of it... It looks very uniquely stylized, I can appreciate the feel of it, and it's amazing that a graphical game, let alone a 3D game, can work with just 2 colors. But being unique or technically remarkable doesn't make it good. I would have much preferred some style that doesn't require significant effort at times to figure out what is happening. At best it was just a little sore to watch, at worst it was impeding gameplay.
Secondly, and I can't quite pinpoint why this is, but despite liking mystery/detective stories and finding the game incredibly well executed, I still felt something off a bit. I felt like it needed something more, maybe some other mechanics, maybe a bit more content, I don't quite know. All I know is that I didn't enjoy it as much as I feel I should have. But it's vague enough to chalk it off to "just me".

All in all, Return of the Obra Dinn is a masterfully crafted detective game that I would very much recommend. It's quite unique among the games I've played, and the minor grievances I had regarding the graphics, length, or possibilities, don't outweigh just how well-made the core of it is. It surely also earns a spot in my list of the best.

End-of-week Report

Steam's Ignore functionality broke down Saturday morning, and hasn't recovered yet. As such, I don't have last 2 days' games in the list. Ah well, it's not like I have a shortage, and I'm sure the issue will be fixed soon, what with how many people it's affecting.
In other news, progress again this week. I'm hoping to get Return of the Obra Dinn over with soon, and I started Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity, which seems to have caught my attention for more than a couple of hours.

• Games in backlog: 290 (-2)
• of which Early Access: 58 (+1)
• Games reviewed last week: 2

Lovecraft's Untold Stories

The quality of games I find in my list sometimes baffles me, and not in a good way of course. Lovecraft's Untold Stories is my latest disappointment. I'll just get straight into it.
The game starts with nary a tutorial nor much of an introduction, plopping me into some confusingly navigable map. Roll over some branches I should be able to step over, fire my shotgun at nothing, check the minimap which is missing all the walls and limited paths I'm forced to take, being entirely unhelpful, and finally fail to open a chest that requires some sort of key. So far so good. Then I melee a crate which explodes, killing me instantly and I lose the game.

So, y'know, I wanted to call it quits there, but "Cmon Torn, it's been like 5 minutes, give it another shot." a voice said in my head. And so I did, ignoring the oddly explosive box this time around.
From the way the levels were built, I thought I might be playing a bad Binding of Isaac clone. However, then some illogical bits of "story" started to surface, and, really, comparing that combat to any proper twin-stick shooter would be dishonorable. Some enemies just walked up to you and you shot them once and they died. Some enemies blasted you with unrelenting machine gun fire beyond your range. Still, most of my health was lost to traps that were basically placed under my feet after entering the room. 10/10 level design.

So, yeah, the voice in my head had no more arguments this time, and so I closed the game after my next death. Needless to say, I wouldn't recommend it. Don't even go near it.

Northgard

I can't believe I keep finding RTS games in my backlog. When am I going to learn that I am inclined against RTS games. Still, I'll try to give Northgard a fair opinion, as an RTS.

The first thing to note is that it's not an entirely typical RTS. I suppose it could be considered a sort of casual or at least a slow-paced RTS. Mainly due to the fact that you can't just outright recruit units - they spawn one at a time with about a ~1 minute timer, circumstances permitting, and then you can choose who they're gonna be. Another big aspect is that the focus isn't very much on combat. In a traditional RTS, you put a few units on production, and the rest goes into defenses and your army. In Northgard, it's sort of the opposite - most of your units will have to hold your economy up, make sure you have enough food and firewood to survive (especially through the winter), and keep your people happy enough.
I can't objectively think of any reason why the high economy focus would be a good or a bad thing. I guess it's just a different kind of game and you shouldn't go in expecting Starcraft. It's more like if you start moving from Starcraft towards Age of Empires, and then keep moving past that for a while longer, you'll reach what Northgard is.

However, that's all well executed and while I don't personally enjoy the distraction from combat that much, I do enjoy the slower pace it enforces, so it's kind of neutral. However, what doesn't sit with me is the relative lack of things to do. There's not a lot of different troops or military buildings, and the economy ones aren't really some sort of puzzle. It's mostly the same each game, where you just build what you need, not what you want, and you almost always need the same stuff. Wood for building -> food for survival -> military for fighting, sprinkle in some happiness and coin for when those start to run low, and that's that. So while the premise and execution of the game was fine, I found the content lacking. That and I just generally don't enjoy RTSes.

Overall, it wasn't that bad. I would still incline towards not recommending it, but I also couldn't recommend a similar game like it. Age of Empires is the closest well-made game that comes to mind, but if you feel like playing something even more economy focused... maybe you'll like Northgard? I will admit, it's not the easiest to judge a game you're biased against, but I do feel Northgard has its non-minor flaws.

End-of-week Report

I'm back. And despite the one week absence, I actually made progress compared to two weeks ago. That's great.

• Games in backlog: 292 (-1)
• of which Early Access: 57
• Games reviewed last week: 3

House of the Dying Sun

House of the Dying Sun has been in my backlog since I was still writing about everything I added there. It's a mission-based 6DOF shooter, and as I found out, its main selling point is most probably VR support, especially ~3 years ago when it came out and VR was much more hyped.

The game's simple. You control a ship and fly through an asteroid field, killing other ships. There's different missions, difficulties, some upgrades and different weapons, and an optional "flagship" boss fight at the end of every mission. Clearly, most of the focus has been placed on visuals, and there is a preference on realism (as far as sci-fi space shooters go) rather than ease or fun of play. The ships are a bit floaty and difficult to control, and enemies are difficult to see unless they're straight in your face. It's all quite realistic, and probably very aesthetically pleasing in VR, but as a game, falls short on the fun.
Adding to this, there isn't a lot of variety, and the whole ordeal is only a few hours, unless you're going for 100% completion, in which case it might take longer, but would also be repetitive.

Not enough content, not enough fun. Pretty, and possibly attempting to cash in on the VR aspect, but I couldn't really tell you about how it feels there. As much as I know, I can't recommend it.

Simmiland

Simmiland is a god game mixed with a card game. There's the usual island, autonomous humans running around and doing their best (which isn't very good, mind you) to survive, and you blasting the ground with various things like plants, rocks, wildlife, weather, or even some natural disasters. There's a little mixture of exploration through trying out different combinations. For example, sunshine increases temperature, causing grasslands to turn to deserts, but also swamps to tropics. A plant in a desert is a cactus, but in water, a coral. Wildlife on grasslands is a harmless chicken, but wildlife in a tundra is a polar bear that will maul a lot of your people. The tacked on card deck system limits what god powers you can use at a given time.

To mention some of the better parts first, I liked the cheery atmosphere it had. Can't say the music and graphics were much, but they fit well, so that can only be a positive. Trying out the combinations of what does what, how everything interacts, and trying to understand what goes through the minds of my little creatures running around was also pretty nice, but sadly lost its luster quickly, as content dried out. That can be said for the whole game, where I had seen 50% in the first 20 minutes, 75% in an hour, and 90% in about two hours. The rest was going to be repetitive, as nothing was going to go significantly differently in the next playthrough.

I think the worst part (aside from the lack of content) was that you had to guess too much. Sure, exploration was fun at first, but since advancement through the game was almost exclusively through your godly deeds, it got very difficult to guess the right combinations for those last items, mostly devolving into spamming your cards, hoping something would happen. And speaking of spamming, the game was fairly frantic for a "card game". Never mind that the whole card aspect could have been left out without making anything worse, but the most effective way of getting through the first half of the game was to just use all your cards as fast as you could to make all the suitable environments and items for your people. They themselves did relatively little that influenced you back, so really, the interaction with the game was just poor.

I've never been a fan of god games, instead preferring the management types of games. Cutting the AI allows you to make much larger and complex things inside the game, and means the player doesn't have to rely on the AI not acting like an idiot. Even though most management games only allow you to say what needs to be done, and not order your people around directly, it still creates a better interaction with the game, instead of the one-sidedness of god games.
All in all, I enjoyed it for the first hour or so, while it was new, shiny, and showering me with unexpected things. Then it ran out of things to shower me with, and I realized it wasn't all that great. Not recommendable.

A House of Many Doors

I gave A House of Many Doors a good attempt. It's supposedly very similar to Sunless Sea, although I couldn't verify that as I've not played the latter. I can, however, compare it to Faster Than Light. In case you're not familiar with either of those games, the essence (of at least FTL and A House of Many Doors) is that you're leading a ship with some grand goal. To get to that goal, you have to navigate around the world, manage your crew and supplies, make decisions, and quite often have a battle. The battles are very similar as well, with you commanding the crew around the ship, trying to destroy the opposing ship while the enemy does the same. The main difference is that A House of Many Doors focuses a lot more on the story.

... The main difference in essence, that is. Realistically the main difference is that A House of Many Doors is pretty poorly made. Were the idea well executed, I might even like it - I mean FTL was decent. However, A House of Many Doors has a lot of issues. To name some: Visual bugs where sprites slide off into infinity, layer issues blocking important game information, an overall inconsistent and arguably poor art style, a lack of explanation of what most stuff does or how to do various things... despite the otherwise overabundance of text. I understand it's a game with a lot of lore and story, but I felt like I was reading a book, not playing a game - some visual novels have more visual action than this game. The writing wasn't bad, and was actually somewhat interesting, but it felt disjoint as the game had barely started and I was already chasing like 3 different plot lines with tens of items in my inventory that maybe had some grander use.

Overall, a jumble of individually nicely written text walls with a terribly executed game on top. I feel like the author might have had more success writing a book or an interactive novel, not a game. Might have helped make the story and lore less spread out and more sensible. But as a game, not only is it not worth playing, it diminishes the quality of the underlying story. I wouldn't recommend it.
I noticed I did not have Sunless Sea nor Skies in my backlog, despite them seemingly being very similar games, just with higher production quality? In any case, because or despite of this game, I will not be trying either of those either. However from all I've read, I feel confident in recommending both of them (and FTL) over this. If you felt this game idea to be up your alley, try the Sunless games first, then come back to this if you want more.

PS. I misspelled the name of the game as "A House of Many Doots" far too many times. I found this humorous, and hoped you might as well, as a change from my undesirably dry writing.

End-of-week Report

I am not completing as many games as I had hoped. I've no clue as to what excuses to give anymore, even. Time just vanishes somewhere.
I started with Return of the Obra Dinn a few days ago, and I'm quite enjoying it. It will probably take some 10-20 hours to complete, but it's rather exhausting to play in single sessions, so I might start some other games alongside it.

If anyone remembers, I talked about a scoring formula I made some time ago. I discovered a bit of redundancy in it not too long after, and I finally got around to crunching the algebra to simplify it. The weighing constants no longer looked as pretty, but as they were arbitrary anyways, I changed them around a bit, which in turn slightly changed the ordering of the games. These changes are represented in my backlog Sheet, but will also eventually make their way into the Steam Leaderboards site.

Finally, I am going on a vacation for almost a full week next week, so there will be no progress on anything then. Next week's report will be skipped, but expect a return the week after.

• Games in backlog: 293 (+3)
• of which Early Access: 57 (+1)
• Games reviewed last week: 1

Devil Engine

Devil Engine is a pretty standard bullet hell shooter. I don't have a lot to say about it, and I'll mention upfront that it was nothing noteworthy.

To start with the positive sides, the art and soundtrack are good enough to mention on their own. The opening sequence of the game really hyped me up, but sadly that hype died down in mere minutes as I discovered I don't have mouse controls, and was instead given a one-way speed cycling button, as if that would make the arrow keys even close to a substitute for a controller, let alone a mouse. So, okay, sure, after my first game over I was quickly given a "very easy mode", which did indeed make things a bit easier, but no less frustrating that I didn't have as fine a control over my ship as I knew I could have.
I suppose it's not too big of a bother, considering I didn't encounter any outstanding elements in the game. The main gimmick it used to differ from the rest was a bullet absorption field around your ship for a fraction of a second that spent your combo multiplier. I think this was to be the remedy to its otherwise overwhelming (or poorly designed, who can tell, really) bullet patterns, instead of something that could be properly dodged. I don't know, I didn't like this change, but then again, I didn't get much use out of it due to my terrible keyboard skills.

Overall, most of my experience was ruined due to the lack of mouse support. As far as I could tell, even if it had mouse support, it wouldn't have been a particularly good game from its gameplay standpoint. I wouldn't recommend it.

End-of-week Report

Another week has passed. How time flies.
I can't really expect to not get new games to my backlog. It's usually 1-2 new ones per week, so if I want to get the counts down a meager 3 reviews per week just won't do. Still, it's better than none I suppose, and the numbers have gone down, even if only just a bit.

• Games in backlog: 290 (-1)
• of which Early Access: 56 (-2)
• Games reviewed last week: 3

Teamfight Tactics

Me covering a recent and popular game here? What is this? Still, I played quite many Teamfight Tactics games over the past few days, and I figured there's no excuse as to why it wouldn't qualify.

Teamfight Tactics (or TFT for short) is a separate game in the League of Legends universe and client, probably created due to the huge popularity of the Dota 2 Auto Chess mod. (Which, as I hear, isn't original either, but based off of some already existing but not so well known game.)
It's not a very complicated game. It's an 8-player FFA that happens in 1v1 rounds until the last person is alive. Between each round you get some money and a selection of 5 champions with increasing prices as the rounds go on. You buy some of those champions, deploy them on the battlefield, try to gather 3-of-a-kind duplicates to combine and power them up, and try to get various numbers of role duplicates that also give bonuses. Refresh your pool of 5 for a small sum if you don't get what you like, or spend to level up yourself to deploy more champions. There also exist combinable items from minion rounds and some champion draft rounds. Otherwise, each round you're pit against another player, and your champions battle it out to the death without any further input from you.

Honestly, it's simple but fun and fast enough. I have just two main problems with it.
For one, it just doesn't have enough depth. You don't have a lot of choices to make, and you're eventually going to settle into some technique(s), even if the choice of technique is influenced by what champions you're given and, if you manage to track that, what your opponents are building. Very fine details aside, it stops being a game of skill, but rather just repeating the same few sets and combinations of motions.
Secondly, and everyone complains about this, the RNG is too much. Sure, some is necessary to keep the game fun through unpredictability and forcing to adapt, and if you're given overall hundreds of champions as choices each game, it somewhat balances out that you're lucky on some rolls, unlucky on others. However, the minion rounds that are the main income of items, which play a huge role in your performance, also drop a random amount of items. While, sure, it's fair in that everyone has the same odds, it's completely possible that you will get either double or half the amount someone else does, which either spells out very good odds of winning, or your near-certain loss. If you're playing to win, you might as well quit if the first minion rounds do not bless you with enough items, to save time. Much like playing with a missing teammate, your odds are grim, and while the game might still last a while, it's hardly fun.

Still, the game is supposedly in beta, probably rushed out to get a slice of the hot pie, and hopefully more improvements are incoming in the following weeks and months. For now, I'm already tired of it, for the two reasons mentioned above. However, it's free and fun while you don't know it very well yet, so I'd give it a "why not" recommendation. Play it for a few hours and see what all the fuss is about so you could talk along the next time someone inevitably brings up one of these kinds of games.

The Vagrant

It must have yet again been the boatloads of positive reviews that caused me to try a 4€ game where all female characters have breasts the size of their heads. It wasn't as bad as it could have been though. The Vagrant was in fact not some sort of weird pseudo-porn game, but a reasonably good RPG... for its price point, that is.

The entire thing lasts for <10 hours, and I feel like whoever made this set out to make a game, fill some checkboxes, and call it a day. Like, sure, we have varying equipment, upgrading, decent combat, a skill tree, some cooking + potion buff system, an interconnected map, a story, etc., but it all feels pretty "meh" at best, rather bad at worst. I couldn't really highlight anything good about the game, and I find it lacks polish. To name some examples:

• Everything drops coins or other pickups, but they often fly past you before you can pick them up, meaning you have to run back for each thing you kill/destroy. This is annoying.
• You can knock monsters down. They are then invulnerable to damage until they get themselves up, forcing you to just sit there and wait. This is annoying.
• The map and story connections are just all over the place. I know I have a bad sense of direction, but I have no idea what links where or how, and they both have me completely lost with their spontaneous transitions.
• Some systems like cooking are rather useless, and you can just not use them without impacting the game.
• Possibly a design choice, but the art and animations feel way too much like paper cutouts with hinges. I know that's a sizeable half of what 2D animation is, but you're supposed to try to hide that.

So, yeah, there's definitely loads of better RPGs (and metroidvanias, if you think it looks more like one) out there. I could only maybe suggest it if your time isn't worth much and the price calls to you. Me, I care about my time, less so for my money, and it's not worth the former.
No recommendation.

Dead in Vinland

I have mixed feelings about Dead In Vinland. It's a management survival game about a family who ends up on an island, forced to start living from scratch, all while dealing with a tyrant to whom they have to pay tribute. It's supposedly an improvement over their previous "Dead In" game of a similar nature, but neither have glowing reviews overall. Personally, I think it does a lot of things right, but just fails to hit a sweet spot to really make it enjoyable.

I think Dead In Vinland nails the survival aspect well. Survival isn't just something you do on the side, but concretely the main focus. Every day is a struggle to keep everyone fed and alive while also putting a little effort on the side to progressing to earn back the initial supplies and keeping up with the ever-increasing tribute. It's definitely not too easy, and while I wouldn't say it's too difficult either, the constant promise of loss looming above you doesn't really make you feel good about the experience. Maybe you're not supposed to. Maybe you're supposed to feel the same despair your characters do, and the game accomplishes that well, but I don't find it enjoyable.
I think the main aspect contributing to my displeasure was the positive feedback loop (not so positive at all, despite the name), where if my characters got tired, injured, hungry, etc., then they lost performance and/or had to take some time off to recover, which in turn gave less resources, and less progress, furthering the doom that perhaps caused this in the first place. I will praise the balance, that this feedback loop did not spiral into actually losing nor the game becoming a walk in the park, but despite constantly improving, getting new people, and supposedly becoming better, I never felt like things started looking up. Progression wasn't satisfying.
The other aspect was the micromanagement being a bit too extensive. Too much time spent looking at statuses and numbers, telling characters what to do, and too little gameplay in the sense of stuff happening.

Overall, opposite to the story the game seemingly followed, I started Dead In Vinland with a good amount of hope in the first hours. There was a promise of building a great village, finding new people, and overthrowing the tyrant of the island. However, as I got closer to that goal in the game, my hope in reality disappeared. Seeing my efforts not make a difference to my well-being made me lose hope until I eventually gave up. Which was a shame, because I was looking forward to seeing how the story would unfold.
I can't really recommend this, as I didn't have the fortitude to see it through to the end. However, it's not a bad game, and I had a solid 8+ hours of fun with it. Perhaps you'll like it if the survival aspect is really up your alley, and you don't think the frustration of the constant impending doom will get to you, but I have my doubts.

End-of-week Report

Moving took a lot of my time and caused me to fall behind in progress a bit again.
I started playing Dead in Vinland. It's a game, not quite sure what I think about it yet - not super good nor bad.

• Games in backlog: 291 (+2)
• of which Early Access: 58 (+1)
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

Continuing the fight against the dreaded third hundred of the backlog. Most of the week went on Path of Exile, some on board games with friends which I don't write about. Net positive progress though, so all's good.

• Games in backlog: 289 (-2)
• of which Early Access: 57
• Games reviewed last week: 2

Armed with Wings: Rearmed

Armed with Wings seems to be a rather old Flash game series. I have not played any of those games before and I didn't really look into it much, but this Rearmed version is apparently a sort of remake, not a sequel. It's a level-based hack-and-slash game with some platforming involved.

I didn't think much of the platforming part. Considering the game doesn't really have jumping, the platforming puzzles were somewhat limited or specific in nature. It's not too important, however, as most of the game's focus was on combat. Now, the combat looks neat, and seems to have a good amount of depth, but I have no idea how it works. The attack patterns of my character, and in which cases I manage to get a hit in, in which cases the enemy just blocks it, seem rather arbitrary. I mean, I'm sure there's a logical system in there, but it's not explained whatsoever. And, honestly, I can't play like that. The game isn't easy enough to button mash through it, which is in itself a good thing, but if I am not given the knowledge on how not button mashing is better, it's not very useful. Sure, I could figure out the system eventually, but it's rather painful until then, and considering the depth of it, would probably take a while.
More minor grievances include the combat feeling a bit stiff for a game with such a heavy focus on it, your lovely bird not having any use in combat, and that I'm just not a fan of the level-based system. Perhaps I'm spoiled on metroidvanias with a nice world to run through.

Overall, I got rather quickly frustrated at not understanding the combat and why stuff worked sometimes but failed in a seemingly identical situation some other time. I also didn't see any elements of it which particularly captivated me, so unless you think you can figure out that combat and hope to discover a better game beyond that point, I wouldn't recommend it.

Tooth and Tail

Well well, how did an RTS manage to slip into my backlog? Said slippery RTS is Tooth and Tail, and I honestly didn't give it too long of a try before tossing it aside.

I really didn't see much anything in Tooth and Tail. On one hand, it's a pretty generic RTS with building troops with rather common abilities, and not too many of them at that. On the other, it's heavily dumbed down in the name of accessibility or something - mainly that you can't really micromanage your units, which is kind of the whole point of RTS games. See, the way movement works here is that your "cursor" is a rather slow moving unit with health that has to lead the charge, and upon arriving at a place, can summon other units to that place. It just seems like making your very cursor vulnerable to attack and death is a pretty bad idea. Worse still, fighting on two fronts isn't really a thing.
But are there any redeeming qualities to this game? Honestly, no, none that I saw. There's just flat out better RTS games out there, and if you want to play with basically just one unit, go play another game genre. I can't recommend this game.

End-of-week Report

Well, I've finished my studies. I successfully defended my bachelor's thesis last week. All that's left is the graduation ceremony, but for all practical purposes, I've finished university.

As far as other stuff goes, the summer heat is getting to me somewhat. I'm feeling quite lethargic from the near-30 degree weather in an apartment without any air conditioning (or ventilation) - it reduces my appetite and my motivation to do anything. Feels a bit like a certain state of mind I'd rather avoid.
But that's just excuses not to play more games. And who wants to make excuses for something wonderful like that. I'm going to be trying Path of Exile again after multiple years next week. Overall, the old log increased again last week, but that's how it goes if I don't complete anything.

• Games in backlog: 291 (+3)
• of which Early Access: 57
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

I got something done after all. At this seemingly temporary pace, only 2-3 more years to go.
I'll get my last summer vacation starting middle of next week, save for any time I decide to be unemployed for an extended period of time in the future. I really can't tell if I'll have more or less free time after I get a job, but I'm sure life will at least be a bit different.

Ah, but who am I rambling to? Have a look at numbers going down.

• Games in backlog: 288 (-3)
• of which Early Access: 57 (-1)
• Games reviewed last week: 2

Indecision.

I played a thing. It might have been a game. It's called Indecision. and it left an impression on me in the 40 minutes it took for me to finish it.
I would tell you more about this game, but I can't. For one, because that would spoil it. But also because there isn't much to say about this game. It's more of a collection of ideas, more of an experience than a proper game. It doesn't cost much anything, time- nor money-wise, maybe 2-3 hours to see everything there is.
It's really quite brilliant, and I simply had to give it a spot on my list. I wasn't really sure what to file it under, but it seems my "Story Puzzle" category is currently occupied by these "experience" types of games. As the creator also mentions, this game is not for everyone, but it was an experience I needed, and I would recommend you experience it too.

PS. I think there's potential in some of these ideas to be developed further, into something bigger. Indecision. gave me some weird, somewhat unfounded hope that we will not be running out of games that push the boundaries of what can be done in games, even if this game alone is not that remarkable.

Celeste

Celeste is a platformer. It has been described as having a great soundtrack and story. It is also comfortably among the 100 highest rated games on Steam at this point. So, naturally, I had high expectations going into it. Sadly, I was gravely disappointed. Partially my own fault, as I was swayed by what good I had heard about the game, but I must say I am very surprised about its popularity.

I think my biggest surprise was that Celeste really was just a platformer. It didn't promise much more, but I thus fail to see the appeal. I feel like repeating my thoughts from my I wanna be The Cat review, but Celeste perhaps deserves a bit better. It is also a very difficult platformer with relatively simple controls - moving, jumping, climbing on walls, and a mid-air dash replenished upon hitting the ground. Throw in some level-specific stuff like moving platforms, spring boards, dash refreshers, some others, and of course environmental spike and pit hazards, and that's pretty much the whole game.

The levels aren't that difficult at first, and again, I wouldn't really hold the difficulty against the game too much, especially with an existing easy mode. My main problem is that I fail to find the fun in this game. Maybe plain platformers just aren't my cup of tea, but I will echo my thoughts from before. It's not about figuring out what to do - the path and actions to the goal are generally clear after a short look at the level. Instead, the gameplay comes down to your platforming skill - your capability to press the right buttons in the right order, with timings often accurate to a tenth of a second. If you fail that, you do the same thing again, until you succeed. That is not my idea of fun, it's repetitive and tedious, and it is why I am astonished that there are so many people who want exactly this.
Regarding the other aspects... As you may have guessed, I didn't get very far, but I hear there's a bit more story later on. Don't expect to find any at the beginning though. The soundtrack? I didn't see it as anything special. Perhaps only the art and the environment somewhat caught my eye. To me, the game is quite unremarkable.

Maybe I'll think harder before deciding to try out a pure platformer the next time. Still, as just a platformer and nothing more, I can't fault it for much. The levels and mechanics were well-made, if a little bare in features for my taste. Considering how much others praise it, I can't in good faith tell you that you shouldn't play it if you like platformers. Still, as I personally fail to see the appeal, I can't personally recommend it either.

End-of-week Report

Well well, what's this? Progress? It's only temporary, I assure you. Next week is exam week, and the week after that I got to defend my thesis. Still, I'm glad I got to laze for a little while.

• Games in backlog: 291 (-1)
• of which Early Access: 58
• Games reviewed last week: 4

Rez Infinite

With the limited time I have, I sometimes just add games to my list because they are positively received. Surely hundreds of people saying something is good means it's not completely terrible, and there's at least some chance of me liking it, right? Well, sometimes I have no idea what people are thinking, and Rez Infinite is a fine example.

It's a game where you fly "on-rails" through some digital-glitchy-wireframe-looking world and the only thing you have to (and can) do, is drag your mouse over pretty much everything that moves to destroy it. That's it. That's the game. It's got all the excitement of a generic clicker game, for only a tiny fraction of the content and dopamine release. There isn't even much to bash here, since it's barely a game. How it has over 500 reviews for a >90% positive score, I'll never know. Don't... don't touch it yourself.

911 Operator

911 Operator is a game that mimics the job of a dispatcher who answers various emergency calls. I could not tell you about how accurately the game portrays this, but it does at least have a serious tone about it and creates a somewhat believable atmosphere. Whether this supposed authenticity means something to you is yours to decide, but thematically, this is not a game that speaks to me. Form, however, is not something I would much grade a game for, so how's the gameplay?

Well, in the game you control a number of various police, medical, and firefighting vehicles on a city map. All around the map, emergencies can pop up, and it's up to you to quickly dispatch suitable vehicles to deal with them, depending on the nature of the emergency. Occasionally, instead of getting a direct request to send a police and an ambulance, for example, you get a call, and have to, through a fully voiced dialogue with different response options, figure out the location and nature of the emergency and perhaps offer initial help while sending the vehicles you believe to be right. After the day, you get your profits from that day and can use them to buy new vehicles, new staff, new equipment, and arrange anything you already have. Not really the job of the dispatcher in reality, but whatever makes the game more interesting, I suppose.

Now, the problem is that there isn't much to do in the game past the initial couple of hours. Starting from the last things I mentioned, the "squad" management aspect of the game is pretty useless. There's a lot of detail in the personal skills of the workers, speed and capacity of vehicles, and somewhat in their equipment, but it doesn't matter. More vehicles and people, if you can afford them, is better, so buy them. You don't have the time or need to consider the specialties of your vehicles and people, except for how many patients / criminals they can fit, just send whoever is the closest suitable one. So, really, that part could be tossed out in favor of improving the rest of the game.
The calls are quite interesting at first, and can actually somewhat teach you about actual first aid in emergencies. I particularly liked one where a man had just lost a leg to an accident with a machine and you not only had to give first aid help, but also provide psychological assistance like ensuring he doesn't just give up while the medics got there. These were the best part of the game, but sadly started repeating quite frequently after just 2 hours. The rest of the game is just a game of clicking the right colored vehicles to go to the right colored locations. Helps if you take a quick glance at how many people might need to be transported away, or if a heavier police team might be necessary, but it wasn't very stimulating nonetheless.

If you particularly care for the thematic of this game, then it might be a more interesting experience, but otherwise, prepare to run out of excitement a couple of hours in. You quickly familiarize yourself with all the concepts of the game, then soon all the dialogue, and then it just becomes a game of clicking through the right choices - not very exciting. I actually liked it for the first hour or two, and I feel like it could be improved by making the map and dispatch system somewhat more complicated. There should be some challenge in performing your duties, but right now, I just can't recommend playing this.

Unworthy

Oh hey, it's another game that basically blatantly rips off the core elements of Dark Souls but sticks to an overall simpler and smaller game and a 2D world. It is Unworthy, and it quite reminds me of Salt and Sanctuary, except it's shorter and simpler still. As I've said before, there's nothing inherently bad about copying the design of another game, but by doing so, you put your game at a direct comparison with what you copied. In the case of Dark Souls, there's some pretty big shoes to fill, and if you don't plan to do a better job, then there better be something quite unique about your game.

Sadly, Unworthy stays too close to the formula with not much new and exciting to offer. There's less enemy types, less equipment, less customization, worse lore, the maps are on the bland side... I'd say the biggest flaw however is the lack of choice in general. Too often did I find myself being locked to a path because there was some prerequisite I had to fill, often in the form of defeating a boss, or simply because the world was too linear. Or for example after acquiring a new weapon, a hammer, everything suddenly wanted me to use it to solve some platforming puzzle or break down a wall instead of offering me multiple ways to approach the problem. It may seem like nitpicking, as a lot of games have linearity and singular solutions, but I feel like it's worth highlighting this lack of choice as it's definitely not as good as the alternative that I've come to expect from these kinds of games.
Another big problem I had was with spending my Sin, which acts as a sort of currency for improving my character. As a direct copy of Souls, it was dropped on death, and lost if not picked up before dying again. And, you know, that's fine, but there was an alarming lack of places to spend it. The occasional places that would accept these as payment were so few and far between it was very difficult to not lose the majority of what you had gathered. Worse still, the ones I encountered did not allow using them again, leaving no reason to come back. Considering the lack of teleportation at save points, I feel the journey back to use them would have been a fine price to pay.

Overall, Unworthy is not a bad game. It's just not new nor original, and isn't good enough to not be eclipsed by the games that came before it. As such, I can't recommend it. If you want an experience like this, play Salt and Sanctuary, or even one of the Souls games. Unworthy just... isn't worthy.

Tales of Berseria

I believe it took me approximately nine months overall to finish Tales of Berseria. As such, what I remember of it is kind of smeared across a very long time, but I'll do my best to recollect it.

Tales of Berseria is the latest in the series of Tales games that has spanned 16 games since 1995. As most have not been available on PC (until the rather recent ports) I have only played the previous installment, Tales of Zestiria, and thus lack a good comparison point. Still, I can offer my thoughts on the game as something separate, and perhaps that's a useful viewpoint as well.
Tales of Berseria is a JRPG, and I've had a bad history with such games. They tend to have a massive focus on story, often spending more time on dialogue and cutscenes than gameplay. There is of course the story versus gameplay perspective to consider, where if one is better, you dislike having to do the other. And the final frequent issue of JRPGs is the needlessly complicated game mechanics, which devolve to some small subset of mechanics that turn out to be an optimal solution, leaving you with both a steep learning curve and a lot of unused portions of gameplay. To my dismay, Tales of Berseria is not an exception, not really at least.

To get the comparison out of the way, the previous game, Zestiria definitely had it worse. While it's fundamentally the same, with the gameplay consisting of running around a somewhat open world, entering battles, attacking the enemies until their HP finally drops to zero, leveling up, upgrading your gear, and being interrupted with neverending dialogue and cutscenes at every possible moment, Berseria did it better in pretty much all regards. A better skill system, a simplified (but no less useful) gear progression system, better characters, and a better story, to name a few.
The story was definitely the better half of this game, and what kept me playing. While the gameplay wasn't bad initially, it simply grew stale over time, as I figured out the optimal patterns by which to fight, and combat just became an obstacle. However, allow me to praise the combat for how effective and dynamic it looked. While it could have definitely been better mechanically, it was quite the eye candy.

The reason this game took nine months for me (aside from having a lot to do IRL) is that it took a grand total of 85 hours to beat. While I'm generally all for having longer games and more playtime, the problem here was that what made up the majority of that time were not the good parts of the game. I feel there was only enough story and "combat enjoyment" for maybe 40 hours, and that would have been enough and made for a better game. Condense the story, condense the fights, leave the player with a higher enjoyment per hour, which is what often really matters these days. Past about 50 hours, I was so tired of slogging through the game I considered quitting. The only thing that stopped me was that the game was enjoyable in all aspects at first, and by the time I had gotten to the point I didn't want to play anymore, I kept going just because I was invested in the story.

In conclusion - a good story with mediocre gameplay that drags on for far too long. If JRPGs in general are your cup of tea, then this might be quite enjoyable. All things considered, I would have to say I recommend it, but do be warned that it will take an eternity to complete. Tales of Berseria also earns a spot on the list of the best RPGs I've played, but rather barely. I guess you could say it's on the side of "good", rather than "the best", and might fall out someday. Still, I will await the next installment, and if it's as much of an improvement as Berseria was over Zestiria, I hope I'll be glad to play it.

End-of-week Report

There. Done. 85+ hours, but it's finished. The review will be up tomorrow, and the report of how all the accumulated games have completely filled my backlog in the meanwhile is down below. I got one more week of moderate relaxation, and then up to two more weeks of the hell of finishing uni.

Surprisingly, the amount of Early Access games still continues to go down, even as the overall amount increases. Perhaps putting your game in Early Access is no longer trending and people are back to publishing finished games?

• Games in backlog: 292 (+7)
• of which Early Access: 58 (-1)
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week

Last week was an utterly draining experience of finishing my thesis. It is done now though, and I've had a bit of time to rest, so I want to complete some games at long last. Tales of Berseria will be finished in the next few days, end of the week at worst, and then I get to go on to others.

No report last week, and none this week, as I haven't caught up in looking through Steam's games. I could probably update in the next few days, but I don't see the hurry. The report shall resume next week.

End-of-week Report

Has this blog been more about vague hints regarding my personal life and studies than games for the past months? Probably so. Do I have the time to do anything about it, short of stopping posting altogether? Probably not. I noted 5 weeks ago, how there's still a bunch more coming after my thesis deadline, but this still feels like the big immediately hurdle looming over the horizon right now, so I'm still hoping for the "it'll be over in 2 weeks" scenario.
Have a report:

• Games in backlog: 285 (+2)
• of which Early Access: 59 (-1)
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

3 weeks until my thesis deadline, and I am now, for sure, on the last stretch of Berseria. Mostly unrelated events, but I wonder which will come around first.
Life's been a bit rough this last week, but that just makes it more likely that it won't get even worse. Got to keep my eyes on the prizes, not the potential doom and and gloom.
Have a report:

• Games in backlog: 283
• of which Early Access: 60 (-1)
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

I got another session of Tales of Berseria in. According to my current low standards, that's a successful week.
Honestly, I hate this, but I have 4 weeks left to go. I'm making steady progress IRL, at least.
Have a report:

• Games in backlog: 283 (+2)
• of which Early Access: 61
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

5 more weeks until my suffering ends. Last week was hell, next will probably be too - don't expect anything. Have a report.

• Games in backlog: 281 (+2)
• of which Early Access: 61 (+2)
• Games reviewed last week: 0