The End Is Nigh

My thoughts on The End Is Nigh are quite similar to my thoughts on Celeste, as well as Super Meat Boy, which this seems to be a kind of worse version of. Let me elaborate on that.

The End Is Nigh is a game by Edmund McMillen, famous for The Binding of Isaac, and more relevantly, Super Meat Boy. I was somewhat surprised at the existance of this game, considering he already has a major platformer under his belt, and that this one... doesn't really add much. While I initally thought there was some story here, it really isn't in any focus worth mentioning. It's all just platforming, like Super Meat Boy, except you're less slippery, somewhat slower, can't walljump, but can grab onto ledges and little spikes.
There seems to be less stuff / variety in the world overall, as well as fewer levels and less bonus content to explore. So it's not so much that I'm surprised that he made another platformer - by all means, you should stick to what you're good at - but that this one is significantly more bare-bones than something that came out 7 years ago.

Despite a relative lack of content, the platforming is as tight as ever, the difficulty is quite right for just completing the game, and reasonably more difficult if you're getting collectables. A seemingly not-so-good decision was to make those collectibles lives later on, meaning the difficult spikes at the end if you've tried to go for a more casual playthrough. This seems unnecessarily unwelcoming.
What else... Soundtrack's great, as usual. The atmosphere and feel of the game are in line with Edmund's dark style, with much death everywhere, and you're literally collecting cancer. The gloom makes the game mostly monochrome, which, while appropriate, is sadly visually unappealing.

Overall, an all around lesser experience than Super Meat Boy (play it first if you haven't), but a very solid platformer nontheless. As I'm personally not a big fan of "vanilla platformers", and Super Meat Boy just barely made it on my list, this will not. But if you liked Super Meat Boy or like platformers, by all means play it. Despite my criticism, you must consider Meat Boy is still one of the best platformers out there, so despite not being as good, The End Is Nigh is still a great platformer. So I'd recommend it if you fit the target demographic, even though I do not.

Pit People

I just can't find a good game lately, I swear. I tried Pit People, which is supposedly a big game by a famous developer that has a lot of very positive ratings. To spoil the review, it frontloads all of its quirkyness and fun in the first 30 minutes, and then sharply falls off to absolute tedium, or maybe a silly checkbox ticker at best.

The Behemoth, developers of Pit People, are quite well known for the humor and weirdness their games extrude. I've played most, but not all, of their past games, and they're all about in the same vein. The art style is very colorful and, quite often literally, bouncy. There's a narrator telling jokes, who quickly runs out of lines as you complete the opening bit of the game, and keep in mind that the rest of the content has been passed through a 300% silly filter, examples being a number plate as a shield, a blade of grass as a sword, and paper airplanes as arrows. It's a lovely atmosphere, but sadly does nothing for the gameplay.

Pit People, specifically, is a turn-based strategy game where you control a group of fighters and can run around a medium-sized map picking fights, completing quests, levelling your characters, and earning loot. It sort of plays like other TBS games, except majorly dumbed down, where the only command you can give each fighter is where to move. They handle all the attacking and abilities on their own.
The town allows you to customize your characters, fitting each with whatever equipment you want, suddenly negating a lot of differences between characters. You do have the possibility to capture enemies as your fighters, and while there are different character types which can equip different kind of attacks and equipment, there still isn't much actual use to it. You quickly unlock all possible weapon types, and while, again, they have some variety and counterplay mechanics to them, you'd be no worse off for any practical reason if you just outfit your 6 characters identically. The strategic depth just isn't there.

There's the combat, which manages to be the worst part of the game, as you're just forced to watch your characters slowly make their animations. The enemy AI also visibly queues their character actions one-by-one for you to see before executing the move and then there's more animations to watch. It doesn't help that every single thing is a massive damage sponge and there might just be a healer in the party too. The amount of time these battles take is an insult to the player, considering there is no depth to them at all.
What's left is a staggering amount of "checkboxes to tick", as I put it. Collect all the items, collect all the characters, level stuff up, do the quests, etc. etc. But it's meaningless. These things are supposed to complement the game, not to be the game, considering how tedious they are to achieve.

Pit People tries to lure you in with an hour or two of promising a vibrant game with oh-so-many features and things to do. But just a bit beyond that time, you come to the realization that the game is shallow, repetitive, and boring. I'd recommend this to your child who is in elementary school or kindergarten, but to no fans of strategy games, RPGs, or other respectful game genres.

Legends of Runeterra (and some other card games)

I hit Master rank in Legends of Runeterra today, signalling me being in roughly the top 1000 players in the Europe region. It never crossed my mind to write about it since I don't usually do that for games with no clear end, but I'm not sure why. Anyways, as I feel reaching Master rank is sort of the "end" of my journey, being the highest rank one can achieve, I figured I might as well give my thoughts on the game, now that I'm "qualified" to do so.
This post will be a little longer, as I also wish to explore some other card games I've played.

Card games are something I played more as a child. They tend to be pretty exclusively PvP-based, and as I've gotten older, all PvP games have become inherently competitive for me. Sometimes I wish I could enjoy the games without caring about the outcome, but the mindset of improving has been ingrained too deep in me to not try to learn from losses and get better. This sadly involves a degree of beating myself up over losing as a form of discipline, increasing the frustration these games supply me with.
I started off playing Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh as those card games first came out and my brother bought the cards. He needed people to play against, I needed something to do with my life back before I had unlimited computer access. So he would always make the decks, hand me one, and we'd play, me losing like... 80% of the time, I guess, but it didn't bother me back then. I had no competitive drive, I just had fun.

I think a lot of my attitude from that point onwards towards card games can be derived from that last paragraph.
Making the decks has never been the fun part of card games for me. There's an incredible amount of cards in most card games. Even just reading them all (and you do have to read them all, lest you don't know what you're not putting in your deck) can be a daunting task, let alone thinking of all the combinations they could be used together in. Normally, I would praise that kind of complexity and depth, but there's a huge problem here. The problem is known as netdecking, and unless you're willing to spend an ungodly amount of time considering all the options available to you and have the skills to actually make the right conclusions from considering those options, you're just not going to make a better deck than somebody else has. You can play for fun and maybe feel like you've "earned" the victories by making your own decks, but that's no proof to others. Besides, where do you draw the line? Can you ask for advice? Can you look at what other people are playing and try to guess what decks they're running to imitate them? At some point, you'll gravitate towards playing what other people are playing, whether it's blatantly copying a deck online 1:1, or indirectly doing so by copying ideas and cards from the decks you play against (many of whom blatantly copied a deck online). There's nothing wrong with copying though. It's adapting, and not adapting is begging to lose, so you might as well not lie to yourself and take one of the good decks straight away. Of note are game modes like Arena (I think it was called that) in Hearthstone, or Expedition in Legends of Runeterra, where you can't just copy a deck, because you have highly limited choices what you can use. These bring back the skill of constructing a deck, but sadly have another caveat, which is the focus of the next paragraph.
That problem is luck. Games are so much based on the luck of the draw, in Expeditions the luck of the draft, and even the luck of the matchup, as the odds are heavily tilted right at the start, depending on what deck archetypes are facing up against each other. I think luck is both one of card games' greatest strengths and weaknesses. I could experience it back in the day when I was playing against my brother. I can be sure he was a far better player than I was. He also knew the decks we were both playing, since he put them together. And on top of that, I would wager he more often than not gave me the worse deck. But I still won a significant amount of games - something impossible in 1-on-1 games based on skill. I was so far behind, I should have lost every time, like I did in chess. But unlike chess, I didn't refuse to keep playing against him, probably because I had a chance to win. And I think that's the strength of card games, that luck can offset everything else and give you the perfect cards to win an otherwise doomed match. Sadly, it can also do the opposite, causing frustration at your inability to do anything.

Now, combining those two elements, what's left for you, the player? Making your deck is (mostly) not up to you. What cards you draw are not up to you. All you can do is play them. While I will admit that it's exactly this skill that differentiates great players from good ones, namely knowing the cards and thus the possible futures, how likely they are to occur, and accordingly, when you should play which cards, it's still not a large portion of what decides the outcome. I don't really feel like I've ever outplayed my opponent. Best I can feel about myself is relieved that I made the right decision in hoping they couldn't react to something I did, or that my stalling allowed me to counter their actions, instead of the other way around. But it still is mostly luck, not skills like aiming a gun in a shooter, nor psychology (or whatever their special term for this is) like predicting the enemy's next action in a fighting game.

I think a lot of card games since Hearthstone haven't been all that different. The constantly increasing mana curve has been the main difference from older card games, instead of being able to play almost whatever you got in hand. Runeterra mianly differs from Hearthstone in that the blocker can, for the most part, decide who fights whom. However, like many other card games that resemble Hearthstone, the differences are minor enough that they don't usually change the essence of what a game is. They all feel the same, looking from the outside, even if the new mechanics are a breath of fresh air to the player who has grided a single game for too long. The reason Runeterra is the first card game I've gotten so far in, is that it's the first card game that has given me the resources to build the decks I wanted. I'd argue that most other card games, while not having a technical paywall, released new cards too fast, and gave too few away for free to allow for people to be competitive while playing a reasonable amount of time.
Maybe it comes as no surprise, based on what I've already told you, that I don't really like card games. I don't like building my decks, I don't like netdecking, I don't like losing to luck (and don't care enough for winning due to it). There have been some better attempts at card games, but sadly they've died off. One I quite liked was Duelyst, which also introduced a board to the game, bringing a new aspect of non-luck-based gameplay. I think that is a massive improvement to shifting games away from being luck-based and increasing depth. They also had an amazing feature allowing to swap one card from your hand every turn, lessening the effect of the luck of the draw on the game. Why they scrapped the latter later on is beyond me. Sadly, it was also plagued by stuff costing a bit too much, especially as they started to run out of money before finally closing up.
I think the only card game I can truly say I think is good, is Prismata. It has no luck, no making of decks whatsoever, and no imbalance of matchups since you're playing the same deck. It's a game purely based on skill, yet it feels every bit as fun as the other card games I've played. (Okay, I actually really enjoyed the board mechanics in Duelyst and related board-based card games, but that's not important right now.) It also has an amazing AI, providing a challenging game to all but the very best of players, yet hitting that sweet spot of allowing you to feel good about yourself by letting you win more than 50% of the games. It's also dead. Not that it was ever alive. I don't think it ever hit even 100 simultaneous players, and is at maybe around 10 right now. And that's sad, because it also means there's no development resources to keep the game fresh and going.

So I didn't explain what Legends of Runeterra is actually about, but should I really? I think a lot of people have played at least one card game with attackers, blockers, and spells. They're all so very similar. Hearthstone mainly brought in the constant mana curve which gates playing cards, and Runeterra mainly switches it up with the blocking player deciding who fights whom, alternating turns letting both players play within the same "mana turn" with the attacker alternating between "mana turns", and maybe the 3 mana that can be left over each turn to go into a reserve for spells only. Draw a card, play your units and spells, attack, end your turn. They're all the same, and if I had to recommend one card game, I would indeed recommend Legends of Runeterra right now. It's got a big company backing it financially. It is very generous with cards, allowing anyone to be competitive, and it's still fresh right now, with promised changes bringing a lot of variety. Personally though, I don't think I'll be playing it much anymore, and I wouldn't recommend it (nor any other card game) to someone who doesn't already know they like card games. As explained, I don't like that so much is decided by just copying the best decks and being lucky. I feel the losses aggrevating because they're undeserved, and the victories meaningless, because they too are undeserved.

Slipstream

Racing games are in a weird spot for me where I really liked a few as a child, but I haven't played anything quite as good in the last... 10 years? So I'm not sure if it's nostalgia or if I really haven't found / given any good racing games a try. Well, I played some Slipstream today, and it was at least as bad as the other ones I've played recently. So that just adds to my reluctance to try them out.

Slipstream is very simple, veering more towards "realistic" racing games. You got your accelerate, break, and left and right turns, and that's all. The tracks consist of straight segments, and curving segments. You can execute a drift by a quick and simple key combination, and driving behind a car will give you an acceleration boost.
You have 3 attributes on your car - acceleration, top speed, and handling. Handling is useless since you'll need to drift on every curve anyways, and that will be enough to make every curve if you're playing well. Acceleration is only useful if you're not playing well and losing speed, at which point taking it would gimp your other stats putting you even further behind. And then finally top speed is all you need if you can just play well and not hit walls or other cars too much.
Speaking of other cars, they don't exactly follow your rules. Their speed and turning is "as is convenient". Some examples include: Everyone overtaking you at the start of a race with extreme acceleration, possibly so it would be "fun" to catch up to each of them? They can execute instantaneous turns to avoid crashes. And I could swear there was something off with how fast they went at different parts of the race. It was as if they were trying to keep a semi-constant gap with each other when you weren't there.

Overall, the cheating AI and having very few game mechanics sucked. It had some different game modes but there wasn't much of a functional difference. Cars felt the same, tracks felt the same, and oh I hate having car collisions in racing games where it's not some central game mechanic. A penalty should not be imposed on me because someone else is occupying the same space as me while the lead, who is already better, is driving further away without interruption.
To compare to the racing games mentioned at the start, I was a big fan of Trackmania. The tracks were really interesting, had realistic-seeming physics (yes, I do question being able to drive on walls, the ceiling, or flying through the air to land so very nicely again, but I never felt like I was non-physically glued to the track), and I could see other cars without bloody running into them. Another one was some flash game, the name of which eludes me, that very much had collision as a game mechanic. It had massively unique cars from formula-like cars that were super fast, but you basically lost if anyone hit you or vice versa, to a damn truck which was slow but could just ram the opponents to oblivion. It had ramps, jumping through rings, doing tricks in the air for speed boosts... It was great, and a good example of varied cars and how to incorporate car collisions into a racing game without it feeling shit.

I got rambling a bit in the end about other games, but I wanted to mention them, since I have no clue when I'll next play a racing game. I'm trying to steer clear from any aiming for realism at least, since I really don't feel like driving on a 2D track just going left, right, and forward is fun. But Slipstream, I wouldn't recommend.

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon

As I first saw Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, I thought I misremembered. Bloodstained had... graphics. Real graphics, not the 8-bit era graphics I was seeing here. Well, luckily I was right. Curse of the Moon is a short game made as a stretch goal reward of the Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (which I will get around to eventually) Kickstarter, and I had added them both to my backlog as they came out.
Now, I can't say I have any nostalgia for the gaming of the 80s or 90s (possibly because I wasn't alive for most of that time, and was definitely not playing video games), or even that of 10 years past. I think games are becoming better and better thanks to advances in technology, mainly processsing power and tools, but also the amount of resources people put into game developent as a non-niche entertainment branch, and I'm happy to keep playing fresh games. Still, I thought, people are saying it's like an authentic Castlevania knockoff, why not experience it.

It definitely feels true to everything I know about the 8-bit era. From the graphics, to the sounds, to the controls, to how the character is obeying some very weird rules of motion which, under some observation, can be seen as very primitive and simple methods for approximating the physics of (the various parts of) jumping. I've never played (any) Castlevania, but I recognized it, somehow, so make of that what you will.

But ho boy, am I glad I'm not playing these games anymore. Mainly from the aspects of game design and system limitations, we've advanced leaps and bounds. So it's not just the hardware that has gotten better, the developers have too. (That is, if you ignore the lower-end who are producing trash because it's so easy to do these days.)
This devolved into less of a review of the game and more about how games are getting better. Honestly though, that's probably a better topic. This game's short, and has nothing new, literally. If you're getting old and want a childhood nostalgia experience, but for some reason don't want to play one of the actually old games, then, sure, I guess. For everyone else, play something new, from at least the last decade. New games are good, trust me.

Far: Lone Sails

Today's entry is on something that turned out to be a bit less of a game than I expected. I would categorize it under the "walking simulator" genre, even though it might appear to be more of a puzzle/simulation game, but I think calling it either of those would be misleading. You're not walking through the game either, strictly speaking, but Far: Lone Sails definitely has the air of a walking simulator.

The game's very short, lasting between 2-3 hours for the first playthrough, and consists of riding your wind- and engine-powered metal box on wheels through a desolate wasteland of ruins and abandoned technology. You have to manage your ship, picking up fuel, adding it to the engine, keeping the engine running, making sure the wind is in your favor when using your sails, and performing repairs on your ship.
It may sound like a simulation or a tough job, but the hardest part is the platforming you have to do in your cramped ship. There's no real possibility to fail either, so you just keep going until you eventually reach your next "stop". These stops each feature some sort of abandoned machination and a little puzzle you have to solve to progress onwards. Carry a few things, push some buttons, spray some water around - simple stuff. It's just a little something to make you not just watch the game as if it was movie, which it kind of is.

There isn't a lot to really do, and no choices. You complete your series of tasks like every other player before you, and the rest is watching the scenery unfold. Now, the unfolding scenery is nice, and I liked the atmosphere, but I just want something more out of my games than watching the world pass by. It was a bit of a snoozefest, and I'm afraid that without the chore of keeping my ship running and solving the puzzles, I would've fallen asleep listening to the serene soundtrack.

So, from a personal perspective, I can't recommend Far: Lone Sails. However, if you know yourself to be a fan of walking simulators, meditative experiences, or whatever you could classify what I described as, I don't see anything inherently wrong with it and you can give it a whirl for the couple of hours it lasts. But if you're looking for a game to play, this struggles to be categorized as one.

Roguelands

I'm on a streak of old(er) games recently and I just feel like mentioning it every time. This time the 13th oldest game left in my backlog - Roguelands. Either games don't age well, I'm on a bad streak of games right now, or I was just more lax with my picks back in the day. (Probably the latter, as there's actually plenty of great old games.)

So, Roguelands promises you a (potentially multiplayer) action roguelike experience. Tons of weapons, tons of equipment, many different areas to explore, and progression for days! It's probably not technically false, but boy does it fall flat on its face. The equipment diversity isn't really there. There's just stat upgrades for the most part. Despite being promised 15 different clases, combined with an allegiance, character types, and more, it's still just stat differences - no unique abilities or weapons. I didn't play it for too long so it was difficult to see all of what the game had to offer, but it's a huge grind to get much anything, and there's no good reason for that.
The different areas are composed of the same large rectangular blocks with the textures swapped. It's not level design, and it's an insult to procedural generation if it is that. There's some difference in enemies, but most of them are either semi-stationary mindless creatures or floaty things which jerkily move towards you, all in a very similar manner. No destructible terrain, but you can "build" your ship... as if that did anything.
And finally the combat, which is all this game really has going for it in terms of gameplay, is floaty, repetitive, and boring. Stamina? That's never going to run out, why even worry about it, just jump and dash endlessly. The game even tells you that you're not going to get anywhere by running, just dash everywhere. Why even add running in? Health though? Well, at first these guys 1-shot you, and if not you don't regen any and are doomed soon enough. But if you survive that you eventually just become basically unkillable and can regen it at will. There's no semblance of balance.

I'm somewhat upset, because this looked like a good idea a la Terraria or at least Starbound (I'd recommend the former), albeit without the mining and building. But the execution of this is just so sloppy and terrible. It's like they kept adding more and more "content" without stopping to consider if any of it was any good, and then just left it in this seemingly unfinished state, as far as polish is concerned. I hate this kind of development. Quality over quantity, every single time, that's how it should be. So no, I can't possibly recommend Roguelands.

Katamari Damacy Reroll

Straight up classic, this one. All the way from 2004. I don't usually play games this old, but it's a remake of a PS2 game that I've heard significantly much about, so I simply had to try it regardless. It's Katamari Damacy.
It's a game about rolling around a ball, running over items smaller than your ball to attach them to your ball and grow it while avoiding running into things larger than your ball, lest you break your momentum and bits of your ball chip off. There's different levels, each with a starting size, a size goal, a timer, and uh... That's it. That's the game.

I'm not going to lie, I was expecting something a little bit more, but then again, it's literally everything I heard it was. Which is what I just described. Honestly though, it's essentially a 2004 indie game, so it's not all too bad for that. For the most part it's polished and nails the rolling activity. The levels you roll around, the size progression of items, the humorous aspect of what you're doing, and oh, most definitely the soundtrack, are all great. I have to make special mention of the soundtrack because it kept me playing as I was about to leave due to the game not being quite gripping enough. I usually couldn't understand the lyrics, but it had amazing energy.
I can't conclude without mentioning a very significant downside though, which was that the control scheme for the keyboard (and mouse, except there wasn't much mouse support) was terrible. I'm afraid many people exclusively play games with a controller, so they haven't the slightest idea how to make controls for a keyboard. A mouse maps pretty well to an analog stick, but alas, no mouse look. As fluent and rapid control over the katamari was necessary, the terrible control scheme was hugely detrimental to my experience.

I think most of the positive reviews come from people who played the original on the PS2 back in the day, and that's fine. But as a first time player, there isn't much of a game here, to be honest. The shoddy KB&M support doesn't help either. It isn't a long game, and at least I can now say I've played Katamari, but I still wouldn't recommend it for first time players. If you're already familiar with the game then I don't think my opinion is important for you. Still loved the soundtrack though...

The Final Station

Oh boy, oh boy, a game all the way from 2016, from before I even started this blog. It's about the 35th oldest game in my backlog. It's The Final Station! Honestly though, 4 years doesn't seem that long ago anymore, considering how long I've been playing games. If anything, I'm glad most everything left in my backlog is from 2016 and onwards, not older. But on to the game.

The Final Station is an Adventure game, if anything. It consists of hopping onto a train, using what little food and medkits you have to make sure any of your passangers don't die of hunger or blood loss while meddling with some knobs and buttons to keep the train going. And by fiddling I really do mean just pressing a few buttons in different locations every now and then. While you're not doing any of that, you can try to squeeze in some story by listening to (reading) your co-workers on radio for a few sentences of dialogue, listening to (still reading, there's no voices of any kind in this game) your passangers talk to each other, or reading station background information.
The other half of the game is when you arrive at a station, you conveniently have to find a code to unlock your train. (Why lock it in the first place, I will never understand.) Finding this code means running around a few buildings, talking to people, or trying to scrape more lore off of them or the notes on walls. Mostly though, the world has gone to shit and you have to be shooting non-zombies and taking what few survivors there are back to your train. Manage your ammo, click boxes to get supplies, and punch the not-zombies in the guts.

Honestly, when I first started it, I was expecting some sort of a simulation game? Taking care of my passangers, making difficult choices, fixing up my train. Well, that turned out to be trivial, and the majority of time was spent outside the train instead. And no, that part wasn't any deep either. A few enemy types, and just your run-on-the-mill pistol and fist. With limited ammo, each fight was a slog as you had to charge up your fist and wait for it to cool down between punching enemies. (Excuse me, what?) No upgrade system or anything either.
So what I hoped was left was the story? The lore? The atmosphere? Well, the latter more than the former. For better or worse, there were no walls of text. You had to piece together the story from sentences of dialogue and scraps on the walls. Even then it was scarce and loosely connected, with seemingly no storyline or goal. The atmosphere, while nice, couldn't save this game, I'm afraid.

So there you have it. The Final Station is a pretty lackluster Adventure game with a little bit of running and gunning (but mostly waiting for your fists to cool down). While I couldn't point to a better game of this type, I feel like both the idea and execution are lacking. So no, no recommendation. Go find something else entirely to play, this one's no good.

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.