Activities
Yesterday
August 2026
Another month down! I played 2 backlogs games and 2 wins/gifts, and added 2 more games (which I plan to complete for September’s PAGY). Everything must come in twos this month, I guess.
Games Completed
I won this game on SG at the very end of July (thanks ChrisKutcher!), setting it up perfectly to play for August's PAGY event. It had been on my wishlist for a while, so it was a pretty exciting win.
I reviewed it over on Steam but here's the TL;DR version. Until Then is a very narrative and character focused game, that starts off very slowly and picks up the pace (and the stakes) as the game progresses. And the story itself is a beautiful mix of genres and themes. It is a mystery story, a classic coming of age tale, a love story, and a story of grief, love, and loss and how we endure. The characters initially come across as shallow and a bit unlikeable but the game explores both their hidden depths and their capacity for growth. The devs really have a beautiful tale to tell, wrapped up in a broader tale of sci-fi and mystery.
That being said, the rhythm mini-games were some of the worst gameplay I have ever experienced. I admit, I've never been great at rhythm games; I was never a DDR or Guitar Hero champion. But some of these were just painful. And to get the 100% you had to do them perfectly. I hated them all so much and eventually had to give up and come back after I completed the game to perfect them. So while I enjoyed my time with this game and readily recommend it, I'd also suggest giving it a pass if you are a strict completionist unless you also really enjoy rhythm mini-games.
This was the first Inkle game that I have ever played and I can see why people enjoy them. This particular game appealed to me because it was a language based puzzle game which I feel like aren't prevalent enough in the gaming industry. Again, I wrote a longer review on Steam but I'm feeling lazy so here's another TL;DR version.
Pros: The world Inkle created felt very deep, as if there were a ton of lore and societal nuance present that your character was just not interacting with. The language that they created was surprisingly well-developed; I really felt like I was learning to read it as the game progressed. All the characters felt fully realized even though the number of meaningful interactions you could have with them were fairly limited. The design of the various locations were also beautiful and varied, even with the fairly simplistic graphics.
Cons: The movement speed was incredibly slow. There were long, drawn-out sections where you character would just trudge along a screen. This was especially noticeable on NG+ and even on the original playthrough, when going to one of the hub areas. This was made worse when the player character was talking to their robot companion because the conversation would prevent interaction points from appearing on the screen. So if you tried to walk and talk, you could end up missing a ton of important clues. This led to me just standing in place waiting for dialogue to finish to make sure no interactables were present before moving on.
Overall, I enjoyed my time with Heaven's Vault, I just wish it had been a bit shorter or the movement had been faster.
I labelled this as "SG Gift" because it wasn't technically a win but was a direct gift instead (thanks Chrisised!). Full disclosure: I love dystopian government worker simulation games and I consider the Beholder games one of the best iterations of the genre (sub-genre? whatever). "Conductor" is technically a spin-off of the main Beholder series but other than being somewhat shorter than the main entries, I found it just as robust a game as any of the main titles.
The basic premise is simple: you are a train conductor working for an evil authoritarian government under duress. You are expected to fulfill all the basic train conductor tasks (checking tickets, responding to passenger requests) while also being encouraged to act as a spy for the State, reporting any suspicious or illegal behavior. And, as always, there is a sinister bigger picture lurking in the background.
Most of the actual gameplay, however, comes from sneaking around and uncovering everyone's secrets and then trying to make moral--or not so moral-- decisions based on your imperfect understanding. All while also trying to earn yourself a happy ending in a world where happy endings are very hard to get. The new train setting adds a time pressure that wasn't necessarily non-existent in previous titles but was definitely less prevalent. On your first playthrough this can add a feeling of stressful pressure but once you become more familiar with the game, you'll realize that you have plenty of time to do everything that you need to do.
Overall, I'd say this was a very strong entry into the series and if you are a fan of the series or this style of game, it is well worth your time. Also, you can adopt a cat. He's very cute.
Vampire Therapist 
5.3 hours, 34 of 34 achievements
Backlog
This game was…certainly something. I played it for Playtracker's special event and it was--fine? Everything was over-exaggerated to an almost cartoony degree: the accents, the personalities, the whole vibe. The gameplay was also a bit repetitive but since the game was so short it wasn't overly noticeable. It was a very easy 100%, I suppose, otherwise I don't have a whole lot to say about it. Not painful to get through but also not something that I'm going to remember in a couple of months either. Just generally "meh."
Games Added
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Beholder 3
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Planet of Lana
.
Overall Progress (on Steam…)
Ninglors Log 438
August Progress:
6
PPU monthly:
done
August Additions:
7
Games finished this month:
Lies of P 
54 hours, 37 of 53 achievements
Snowball 2025
Settlement Survival
78 hours, 49 of 51 achievements
Present from 2024
Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library!
23 hours, 12 of 12 achievements
Win \o/
Winter Burrow
7 hours, 32 of 32 achievements
Sandball madness 2026
PEAK
63 hours, 64 of 64 achievements
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden
81 hours, 43 of 43 achievements
Present <3
Won/Gifted Games:
Librarian: Tidy up the Arcane Library – Win \o/
Cat Mail Co. – Win \o/
Escape Simulator 2 – Ty <3
Bought Games:
007 First Light
Agatha Christy – Murder on the Orient Express
Nightshade
OZMAFIA!!
Currently playing:
So much from me :3
Have a lovely week!
Queen Ninglor
August 2026 Report!
A somewhat Halloween-themed month, but fear not! It’s not yet time to set up the decorations :p It was a decent month.
After having BLACKTAIL installed for more than a year, I’ve finally played it! It’s practically an indie Far Cry, and plays a little similarly. Unlike Far Cry though, its main focus is on exploration and side activities; main storyline is pretty short, and you won’t see 70% of the game if you only follow that. Main levels are also very formulaic, side quests offer a more unique level structure. Combat may also get a little repetitive, but it’s kinda enjoyable enough! Narrative, world and visuals are also done well! I enjoyed my time with it ^_^
Pupple Pop is an Idle/Incremental game! A genre I rarely play, but joined giveaways for this one because it was short for an Idler. It needs player interaction in early game, but it becomes a waiting/grinding game later. Overall, not bad! A day well-spent popping bubbles. Unlikely to play or join for more idle games though, it’s a once-every-year thing :p
Pumpkin Jack may be the most fitting game for Halloween season! Super nice art direction and soundtrack, with good levels (especially boss fights!) and some nice platforming. Its combat is however button-mashing repetitive, and it’s short. Still, a fun game!
Finished most of Idols of Ash last month, but finally beat First Kiln Inverted mode shortly after month begun!
If you thought Death’s Door lacks enough bureaucratic office Grim Reapers, you should play Have a Nice Death! It’s a somewhat hard Roguelike though, but it has an easy mode and you can make some sweet game-breaking builds with some luck!
Peak had a content update with two new biomes! I found Citadel more enjoyable than Kiln, and Gloom was also good! Also cheevo hunted with the help of some very dear friends <3
FAR: Lone Sails is like Playdead’s INSIDE but without the horror! Short but superb experience!
And played some Free to Play games! I should tackle that side of backlog more instead of adding new ones to it, woops.
Find Your Words was sweet and cute! I guess it’s similar to A Short Hike and Lil Gator Game, but not with much exploration. Still very nice!
Cursed got a remake! It was in development since last year or so. First one was very buggy, but remake brings it on-par with the rest of the series. I really hope Cursed 4 happens someday, I quite liked them!
Rose is like a developer’s first big project: Unbalanced, janky, a little rough yet I could see the effort that went into it! It’s a decent FPS roguelike.
Escape Lala was a nice little P&C puzzle adventure! Not much to tell really, it’s nicely made.
Stats!
Number of games finished this month: 11
Number of games added to account: 14
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BLACKTAIL
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Pupple Pop
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Pumpkin Jack
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Idols of Ash
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Find Your Words
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Arima Lodge
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Have a Nice Death
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PEAK
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Final Exam
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Overclocked: A History of Violence
8.0 hours playtime
no achievements
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Cursed
7.9 hours playtime
no achievements
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FAR: Lone Sails
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Rose
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Escape Lala
0.4 hours playtime
no achievements
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The Lamplighters League
Completed
Beaten
Unfinished
Progress Report #39: August 2026
Monthly tally - Backlog: 4, Yekhus: 1
Total play time: 21.3h
Completed or Beaten (1)
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The Procession to Calvary
3.3h playtime
Also Played (1)
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Path of Exile 2
76h playtime
Not on steam
Added to collection (Steam) (4)
- The Procession to Calvary (SG giveaway)
- Cult of the Lamb
- Dredge - The Pale Reach (DLC)
- Chants of Sennaar (SG giveaway)
August 2026 Main recap
Since i play 30+ games each month, here a main recap :
Top 5 Playtime Games beaten
The Sealed Ampoule
44 hours this month – 47 hours in total – Nice grinding RPG, game completed, and all achievements.
de Blob 2
8 hours this month – 10 hours in total – Nice 3d platform game, game completed.
Sonic Rumble Party
8 hours this month – 116 hours in total – Nice little battle royale, at score multiplicater x51, currrent event done, enough for me.
Clicker Ore
7 hours this month – 7 hours in total – Ok tier idle game, all commun achievements get (20+ % off the players getted them), and all 45 pickage unlocked, enough for me.*
Hell Clock
6 hours this month – 6 hours in total – Nice hack’n’slash & roguelike, game completed on normal mode.
Top 3 Playtime Game unfinished
Hero Siege
18 hours this month – 55 hours in total – New Saison 10, with nice update with many new free class and Act 8 + Act 9 now free on the base game, at character level 89.
Disney Speedstorm
11 hours this month – 123 hours in total – Nice free mario kart like, playing on current season 21.
Fairy Fencer F
6 hours this month – 10 hours in total – Nice RPG game, at character level 26.
Top Playtime Game Abandonned :
The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria™
2 hours this month – 2 hours in total – Ok tier Survival / craft game, but rage quit on a death (no keep inventory …), not for me …
Some others backlog game i will try to beat : Neon White / Octopath Traveller II / Faaast Penguin / Sea of Stars: Sunset Edition / Dokimon
August 2026
Not much progress done for the backlog, but a lot of hours spent in virtual Greece: I’m loving Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey so far!
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Assassin's Creed Odyssey
51 hours playtime
23 of 93 achievements
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Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge
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The Chef's Shift
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Darksiders Genesis
Monthly Statistics:
| August | Finished | Abandoned | Added | Balance | Most Satisfying Reduction | Most Exciting Addition |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steam | 0 | 0 | 4 | +4 | - | Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth |
I recently joined Play or Pay group and here is the progress after 2 months!
Completed
Beaten
Playing
Yet to Start
August 2026
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STASIS: BONE TOTEM
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Pseudoregalia
7.4 hours playtime
no achievements
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Fourmiworld
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Voidwrought
16.9 hours playtime
51 of 69 achievements
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PixelJunk™ Eden
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ILA: A Frosty Glide
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Candellum
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Where the Water Tastes Like Wine
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Mind Over Magnet
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Late Shift
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DAVE THE DIVER
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Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
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Etrian Odyssey II HD
- Stasis: Bone Totem: Highly atmospheric horror adventure, as a couple and their deceased daughter’s robot bear (so ugly a design!) explore an abandoned deep ocean rig, descending into a post-Lovecraftian nightmare (post Tomb Raider 2015 too, I think). Satisfying puzzles, reasonable acting, and story development that on a number of occasions answered some initial skepticism. You will be handwaving the science throughout; the ability to teleport objects between the characters is a core mechanic introduced almost immediately. It has body horror, gore, and the deep ocean, and is tense but not scary (there are some death scenes, but they’re more of a tension break because of the way they’re rendered). Particularly welcome was how the game immediately identified necessary points of interest. There were two earlier games (Stasis, and the free CAYNE) which I haven’t played, but they don’t appear particularly related, or necessary to have played first. 9+/10 (Steamgifts win)
- Pseudoregalia: 3d metroidvania platformer built around a range of movement abilities. There’s only a few times when you actually need to fight, and most enemies are just a minor hazard that can easily be ignored, particularly the near-harmless chickens – it’s the traversal and exploration that’s the star of the game. Particularly nice is the way that so many small shortcuts can be unlocked to facilitate speedy backtracking. The interconnectivity plus the range of abilities consequently allows for some flexible routing; there were a few times when exiting an area that I realised I could have approached from that way instead. Geometry and texturing is very N64-era (though thankfully without the pop-in of those games), but this can actually aid readability as your agile anthropomorphic jackalope (?) navigates the world: a hazy crumbling castle, which is perhaps influenced by those in games from Ueda and Miyazaki. The map is where it falls down very slightly, with no markings for collectables or save points, no identification of your position and orientation in the “room”, and no way to look at other areas to help plan what to do next. The challenge ramps up towards the end as you need to do some fairly well-timed sequences of wall runs and multiple wall kicks, but it’s still all on the right side of frustration. No achievements, so endgame screenshots a,b,c 9/10 (Steamgifts win)
- Fourmiworld: A truly open world 2d side-on digger/metroidvania, where almost all terrain is destructable. It’s a little hard to explain, but this feels particularly unironically old-school UK (say mid-80s to mid-90s) in a way that I’ve not seen too many modern retro games even aim for: it’s not just the aesthetics, but the combination of overall focus (there are requirements for completion that aren’t digging, but it doesn’t feel discontinuous from the core game) and playful experimental weirdness in the details. A very subjective and debatable 9/10. (free, but you can pay for the lore tracker DLC)
- Voidwrought: A metroidvania, which got much much better once I finally defeated the second boss (I should have done it sooner rather than exploring thoroughly… although it might have been possible to get Phased Flesh before that, which would have opened things right up)… and then I accidentally sequence broke my way to a late-game ability. Routing is highly flexible and much of the game is optional, as the map is nicely interconnected , and there’s a range of core and special abilities and buffs (double jump was my last ability gained, I apparently missed an ability, and there’s a method of augmenting a different form of traversal which I barely used). The world record is well under an hour. I took much longer. 9/10
- Pixeljunk Eden: In search of five “Spectra” blossoms in each Garden world, you collect nearby pollen to grow new plants that you can scale on your way upwards and outwards. Each world adds something new into the mix, whether moves, enemies, or changes in the world rules. You are mostly leaping from perch to perch. There’s a swing, but this is mostly for area control/collection and only every so often for additional distance in traversal but it’s not really chainable. Good electro+vocals music, and abstract/psychadelic silhouette graphics. Overall an enjoyable experience. Interestingly (?) there’s no recorded speedrun.com completions for Garden 10 or Any%, so you could become a World Champion if you were so inclined to time and record it. 8.5/10
- ILA: A Frosty Glide: An exploration collectathon where a young witch must summit an island in search of her cat. It is not hard, but certainly a little more difficult at times than its kiddy veneer might suggest. Often not entirely different to a wintery Re:Fresh in vibe, but better overall. There was one thoroughly unintuitive progress blocker where got stuck because I needed to repeatedly stomp something a lot despite the lack of feedback or (I believe) significant cluing that that was what was needed. 8/10
- Candellum: A free very short game (there’s an achievement for completing in under 10 minutes) with an interesting life mechanic: as a warrior candle, your wax is constantly burning away, but you can send your flame to enemies and regain wax through killing them. It’s a linear set of arenas and puzzles, with one necessary upgrade, one “collectable” on a branch, and one boss – not (as the tags might have you believe) a metroidvania. It is, however, excellent for a student game. 7.5/10 (free)
- Where the Water Tastes Like Wine: You travel an out-of-time and mythic dustbowl-era America, experiencing events and hearing stories, which you later discover have mutated into taller tales in the retelling. At campfires dotted throughout the land, you’ll run across travellers and share tales with them – travellers who are in the process of transforming mythically themselves. It’s well written, overall (there’s a wide range of writers; you may recognise some), the mutation of the stories can be very amusing, and I wanted to see where everything went. The music is great. Where this game fights you – and fights you hard – is the travel. The map is large, you need to physically move from story to story, they are scattered at random locations and at named cities, the map has untraversable mountain ranges that constrain your pathing, and … walking … is … slow. You can hitchhike, but cars go only one way on roads and you can’t hop out voluntarily if you see events to pick up. You can hop a train, but each will take you to only one city, and distribution is uneven. You need to complete the journeys of all 16 fireside travellers, with multiple fireside chats at different locations per traveller, to finish the game. Each of the travellers rewards you with an item allowing fast travel to a city, but even with that they’re unevenly distributed and there’s so much tracking and backtracking and backtracking. I think this would have been more enjoyable if navigation were abstracted out. Particularly cheeky is that the final achievement deliberately cannot be obtained. 7.5/10
- Mind over Magnet: Short and pretty good puzzler about flipping switches, magnetic fields, and polarity. I got stuck on the very last level, forgot about it for a couple of months, and on returning had another few stabs at the level, and then discovered that it could be skipped in the options… which sent me to the end and gave me the final achievement. Having rediscovered a mechanic while the credits were scrolling, I then went back and solved it for real. 7.5/10
- Late Shift: An FMV, with high production values and overall good acting, but some incredibly dubious plot developments. As a made-up example, imagine if the main character had been knocked down by a hit and run driver, and a paramedic tells him “You’ve got some broken bones and internal bleeding, and you’re going to die if you don’t get treated properly. It’ll take you at least an hour to reach a hospital. Better start walking that way.” The achievements suggest that the game should be played multiple times to see its seven endings and everything in between. The game suggests that this should be arduous, because previously watched scenes are unskippable. 7+/10
- Dave the Diver: Dave the Diver is about the most jack-of-all-trades master-of-none of games I’ve played. It can be charming and amusing, and I thought I’d like this way way more than I did, as I hadn’t paid attention to reviews, but knew it had a bunch of awards, and remembered hearing good things about it in passing from a couple of streamers. On the one hand there is the more-or-less expected roguelite as its core, where you dive, catch fish, upgrade your gear, explore, complete quests and sidequests, and face bosses. On the other it’s what must be hundreds of different minigames and systems in a
trenchcoatwetsuit, and most of them are not particularly good. The real Balatro is certainly better than this one’s anemic micro version. Even the various special harpoon heads each have an individual mechanic for how they reel in resistant fish. One requires frantically waggling the thumbstick – which is pleasant for neither hand nor controller, and is a mechanic that should have gone out of fashion in the 1980s. The map variety in the Blue Hole is limited; its fish and pickups will vary in their range and location, but not significantly. The key problem in its apparent focus – catching fish – is that your harpoon damage upgrade path tops out both early and with relatively low damage, which means that you need to be spearing even small fish on deeper levels 2-5 times before you can catch it – and that adds length and tedium but generally not challenge. If you like your games to have more variety than focus, with a grab-bag of systems and a huge list of things to collect and upgrade you may well be one of the many who love it. I, however, avoid restaurant and farming and grindy crafting and bullet hell games, and Dave the Diver is all of that and more and more. A justifiably biased 7/10 (Steamgifts win) - Bomb Rush Cyberfunk: This is absolutely a love letter to the Jet Set Radio series, though I only played JSR Future and don’t remember its details after so many years (my vibe is I enjoyed it). But that released in 2002, and we’ve had a number of arcadey extreme sports with deeper mechanics and level design since (and before – THPS3!), such as Tony Hawk 4, Aggressive Inline, and various snowboarding and wakeboarding and cycling games, among others. BRC may well replicate JSR/F’s gameplay, but in 2026 it disappointed, with: perfect balance no matter how long the grind (you grind not only for navigation/mobility, but for required points/combo so it matters in a way it didn’t in, say, Gori or Sonic); a limited range of tricks; levels with way too much dead/mundane space (with limited lines, and without things like skitching to speed traversal or named gaps to keep areas meaningful); unsatisfying regular combat with unlimited enemies when you trigger heat by graffiti-ing, only being reset by changing your outfit (and at some point even once will trigger or raise heat); and overall a relatively low level of challenge. On the upside, the art and music is pleasant, controls are fine, the bosses are ok, and levels have some optional secret side areas for collectables and tag spots. 7/10 (Steamgifts win)
- Etrian Odyssey II HD: A Japanese blobber RPG whose key gimmick is that you draw your own map (although there is an automap option to skip that; I didn’t). Given that you have thirty character slots available in town, and your party size is five, there’s some complexity available in combining and optimising character builds that’s severely lacking in the dungeon crawling but I didn’t get around to exploring that. You’ll have a random encounter every twenty steps or so, there’s a few secret walls that can be passed through inspection, and a couple of minor stepping puzzles to avoid tough enemies (represented by a featureless disc of various colours), but the dungeon world is thoroughly non-interactive compared with Grimrock, Eye of the Beholder, etc, though apparently there’s some kind of gimmicks in strata after the first. I killed the first major boss on the fifth floor, climbed the stairs to the second zone, and quit. The pop-in from the extremely limited viewing-distance is emblematic of how lazy this feels. 5.5/10 (Steamgifts win)
August
Loved the original release of summer pockets, wish this was the original release because it has 4 additional routes all of which are great.
and of course being a VN I simply need to 100% it so get to do the minigames again.
oh… and I simply love out of context screenshots to much
of the 4 new routes(Umi, Boobies, Nomiki and Shiki), Nomiki and Shiki are my favorites, I can't decide which I prefer of the 2.
I have mixed feelings on this, some things felt great… others terrible… doesn't help that action-adventure games like this is one of the genres I am the toughest to please with because Zelda games spoil me.
definitely not up to my standard to give a positive review
it only took me checks notes decades to get to this game, has aged pretty well… just like basically all SNES games(why is this console the main one where most games have aged very well!)
with this my SNES era backlog is finally finished… 2 games sit on the N64 backlog(jet force gemini which I own, and Kirby 64 which a friend owns)
the start of the game was a little to slow for me but it did get better pretty quickly at least.
nice little pachinko incremental
overall its a decent game… even if a bit to easy on the highest difficulty… the only thing that really posed any trouble(outside of maybe the first time surprise of what an enemy does) was the final boss.
the game world I found interesting at first… but it kinda got… boring, copy/paste level design, empty areas, not allowed to explore(you get teleported away AND lose some health… just for going places the dev did not want you which also did not have any hazards). Same with the color scheme they went with, interesting at first… but eventually the dull grey environments just get… boring.
most of the collectibles are not well hidden either, there are some a little more hidden, I did skip a few towards the end just to finish the game..
Aug 30 2026
August 2026
Lacuna: This was a really good game. Great story, art, music. I just wish it was longer, though. I thought it ended pretty fast. The puzzles weren’t that hard to do and I think some of the plot twists were pretty obvious, not that either of those are a bad thing per se. But yeah, had a great time with this game. 8/10.
Resident Evil 4 Remake: I was pleasantly surprised that it could run on my hardware. My CPU’s old and I recall the first time I tried the demo, it was stuttering a lot, but I think turning off Ambient Occlusion did the trick and removed the stutters. I thought it was great. There are a lot of things they improved upon, and I do prefer this one’s combat over the original. Ashley and Luis felt like better characters.
There are things that I thought the original did better though. The villains felt better then, they were kind of boring here especially Saddler. I missed Leon’s banters with the villains back in the original game. I didn’t like Ada and Wesker’s voice acting either. I thought Ada’s voice felt flat but I did think it’s getting better in her DLC (haven’t finished it yet but from what I’ve heard thus far, it sounded better) so could be a voice direction issue. Wesker, I thought his voice in general is fine, but it’s not Wesker. It felt like a generic try-hard villain. I really dislike the direction they went for his voice. I also wish they gave us a “Classic Ada” outfit. I understand they’re trying to make the remakes more grounded in reality (and her new outfit worked if that’s the goal) but the dress was too iconic.
Still a 10/10 though. I think right now, I still prefer RE8 (just really loved the atmosphere/setting and villains), but that might change once I start to 100% this game. I recall I didn’t like RE8 that much at first either then I went for a 100% run and I was sad when I finally finished it (except for that game’s mercenaries, screw that, did not enjoy playing those).
Beholder 2: I didn’t really like the gameplay that much. I thought it was too repetitive and boring. The story and setting itself didn’t really intrigued me. Sometimes it just felt edgy/shock humor for the sake of being one. Also, I’ve never played the first game, but I’m pretty sure if I had I’d probably give this game a lower score. I could see myself being very annoyed at what they did to the protagonist at the first game. Anyhoo it’s a 5/10. I’m glad that it wasn’t very long and that they didn’t really force the gameplay (mini game?) on you too much.
Penumbra: Overture: I’m not sure how I feel about this game. It wasn’t really scary and the enemies are too easy to kill. They weren’t the smartest NPC either. It takes a while for them to actually notice you. The story was… fine. It ends on a cliffhanger. When I looked it up, apparently the Penumbra series was supposed to be episodic and this was the first episode but they ended it in the sequel. I’m intrigued with what happens next though. Light spoiler: I didn’t really expect the reveal in the end. 7/10.
Blacksad: Under the Skin: Great story, but sadly the gameplay sucked and it was a terrible experience. Poor optimization, sluggish movement/janky controls, bugs. It just stutters a lot (to be fair, my hardware sucks but I’m seeing people online with decent rigs report poor performance as well) and the protagonist’s movement is so bad. He walks so slow and sometimes you need to be extremely precise to interact with some things you need to progress. He just sometimes doesn’t turn in the way you want him to so you miss what you’ve been trying to interact with for the past 5 minutes. There was also a section where you control a flashlight and that was one of the worse parts in the game to play. And two mildly annoying things: when the game starts, the music is 100% and takes a few seconds to remember your settings. And turning off controller vibration does not turn it off either. The voice acting is a bit of a hit or miss. Some of the characters are decent. I like Blacksad’s, but some of the other VAs are terrible and I wish I could just read their dialogue and skip their VA. Sadly the dialogues are all unskippable. The story is genuinely great though and it gets better as the game goes on. It just sucks that the game itself is terrible. 8/10 for the story, 5/10 for the overall experience.
Chrono Trigger: I think it’s a good and very well-made game especially considering when it was first released. I had fun playing it but ultimately, I don’t think I loved it as much as I was hoping to. My expectations going in were just too high because of how people talked about it online. I was expecting an amazing, deep story but it was more simple than what I was expecting. Not that that’s a bad thing, they did the story well, but I was expecting more. When it ended I just thought “that’s it?”. That’s on me though. I really should’ve had a lower expectation going in.
I loved pretty much everything else besides the story and the combat though. Speaking of the combat, I hate the active turn-based thing. I wish it wasn’t timed. But I appreciated the lack of random encounters. The art is legit one of the best pixel arts I’ve seen, and the OST is also one of the best ones I’ve listened to recently. I never got tired of them (and I’ll be honest, in a lot of games I play nowadays I tend to mute the music because I get sick of it looping). It was also fun to explore the different time periods (the one in 12000BC really impressed me when I first got into it). 8/10 for now. Not sure if the rating will increase as I go through the endings and 100% it, but we’ll see.
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Beholder 2
11 hours playtime
19 of 52 achievements
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Blacksad: Under the Skin
19 hours playtime
18 of 39 achievements
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CHRONO TRIGGER
56 hours playtime
3 of 13 achievements
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Lacuna
8 hours playtime
12 of 25 achievements
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Penumbra: Overture
7 hours playtime
no achievements
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Resident Evil 4
20 hours playtime
17 of 46 achievements
Goals for September 2026
All of these besides Rain World are Play or Pay picks (Rain World is a PoP win). I’m hoping to 100% as much as I can. I don’t think I’d be able to 100% Cuphead and Middle-earth though but I’m hoping I could beat them before the cycle ends.
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BioShock Remastered
6 hours playtime
7 of 65 achievements
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CHRONO TRIGGER
56 hours playtime
3 of 13 achievements
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Cuphead
19 hours playtime
6 of 42 achievements
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Middle-earth™: Shadow of Mordor™
8 hours playtime
9 of 74 achievements
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Rain World
10 hours playtime
5 of 47 achievements
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Spirit of the North
6 hours playtime
4 of 24 achievements