A rare full color one. Dunno what makes this one "New Year" over Christmas… it just looks like it's set during Christmas.

How delightfully dehumanizing.

I like it when I can play one of these for long enough that the playtime doesn't say "0.0 hours". These cats were decently hidden, with a zoom option to match. The BGM was vaguely Christmassy, but pleasant to listen to.
(UPDATE: I've been gone for so long, I hadn't realized this is one of the titles affected by the whole trademark drama. Yikes!)

One of those, shall we say, "unaffiliated" coloring games that don't cost an arm and a leg. Short and simple. Features an option to switch between "classic" and "modern" gameplay - not locking in completed pixels vs locking them. The UI seems to not scale with at least one resolution (pardon me for forgetting which one). There are well over 100 images in the game, but the achievements haven't caught up and I don't know if there's any plans for them to do so.

God, I still love this game. It's been about 11 years since I first watched a playthrough, then another one, and some for the other games as well (they weren't even localized yet back then!) When this version was brought to Steam, I couldn't help but lament how inferior it is to the PSP port: amateur voice acting and a more indie-like art style. Now that I've tested that assessment, I can say I wasn't wrong… but this version has its charms as well.
The voice acting for most characters isn't bad; in fact, I have to wonder if the cast for the later entries was chosen based on the original voices, as they felt similar to each other (or at the very least, were in the same ballpark).
The art style is great, too; half of the sprites were clearly redrawn to be identical in the later versions. Playing this version after the newer ones also reveals that Ayumi's pixel sprite actually matches her original hair color; in the new version, she has blue hair while her pixel sprite retains the brown hair from the original.
The OST is the same and kicks ass like it always has.
I know there are some aspects of this story - like the entirety of Yuka's character - that some people couldn't possibly get over, but no matter how many times I experience it, I find it to be a truly excellent horror story. It's also got multiple lessons to teach:
Don't trust everything you see on the internet.
Don't meddle with the occult (and if you must, take care).
Not everyone is what they seem like.
Never give up.
If a bloody, messy and terrifying RPGMaker-style game with no turn-based combat sounds like something you might enjoy, I highly recommend you check out Corpse Party. If you like a more old-school and imperfect look, feel free to try this version. If you think big-name VAs and updated art would serve a better experience, go for one of the many console versions that came after or the 2021 Steam release. If it's still a favorite of mine after all these years, I think it's safe to say it'll remain this way.

Since the Game Pass build of this game wouldn't even recognize my controller properly, I decided to start the Steam version with my DS4 in hand, having assumed it only works with a controller (something other Outright Games titles have done in the past)… lo and behold, after the tutorial wouldn't pick up on one of my inputs, I switched to K+M… and it worked! That, and it was much easier to play. Made me feel like I was really good at the game all of a sudden… for the most part, anyway. Oh, and I've now seen the movie this was based on. It's pretty funny.
That being said, this was my third playthrough of this game and I'm more than okay with it being the last. There really is no replay value to speak of, here.

This is one of those games I meant to write a more detailed update about, but then I ended up getting lost in the sauce.
Something about an update for this game essentially requiring you to complete speedruns of both maps with a gold medal was absolutely infuriating. Then they came back and added the Christmas map, which thankfully made it so you no longer had to worry about perfecting the speedruns. That being said, I'll gladly stare these devs down like Elmo if they ever try and pull a thing like that again.

A rare example of improvement over the original, FIND ALL: Christmas has you looking for more than just cats (seriously, do most of these have to revolve entirely around cats? the OGs had variety!); in this case, multiple kinds of toys, candy canes, crescent moons and even mushrooms.
There are always three kinds of things available for finding and when you complete one of them, the game lets you choose what you'd like to look for next. This is great, because I'd find myself passing by multiples of the same thing and learning that I can go back and "find" them now was satisfying. These devs can also tell that their game lasts longer than five minutes and so, there's multiple looping tracks.
This was closer to a proper HOG and I hope more of this niche subgenre follows suit.

Hotel VIP is a weird little game from the makers of Meet My Teacher, Meet My Stepmoms, and many other NSFW titles. It's got suspiciously little gooning, as the game is limited to letting you explore a hotel where no one is allowed to speak (clever excuse not to have any plot), meeting girls and solving puzzles of… their faces. You can also pick up clues laying all around the hotel. Some of these let you unlock girls' rooms, but if you're a F2P player like yours truly, most of these will be unavailable to you anyway. Pretty pathetic to lock all the NSFW content behind a paywall, especially when your studio is called "NSFW18 Games".

A mini VN about the lengths one might go to for a chance to eat the perfect choco chip cookie.
Although the renaissance painting sprites and Kevin MacLeod OST give the game a classy feel, in the end I wasn't particularly charmed by its comedy.

It's finally fixed. Took them a while to outright remove the cheevo instead of modifying the code. Off my hard drive you go.

This had to have been the worst HOG I've ever played that's trying to be a complete experience.
It starts off with our main character meeting a rich and handsome painter who invites her to his castle. After a pleasant night out together, she wakes up to find him gone and starts wandering around the castle. This made me think, "oh, that's cute! a HOG where nothing bad happens!". Oh, how wrong I was.
As it turns out, the guy has made a pact with a demon back in medieval times to try and get back the woman he loved by getting revenge on women descended from the men who killed her. By making them fall in love with him and painting their portraits, he'd break their hearts and doom them to a miserable existence. In less than 2 hours (!), you can help the main character free all his past lovers and, by combining their essences of love, defeat the demon.
This game couldn't have been more sloppy if it tried to.
Most minigames are stupidly easy (and the two that aren't you can just skip, since the game doesn't have any achievements). The hint system will make you go back and forth between locations instead of staying in one place and doing everything you can before moving. The map doesn't point out locations with available tasks, so you might find yourself spamming the hint button to learn/remember where to go next. A couple of item names in HOG scenes are not translated from Russian. In a realistic setting, one of the obstacles standing in your way is an axolotl made of electric energy. And last, but not least, the confrontation with the demon is anticlimactic. You just give him the concoction and poof! - he's out. There's one choice preceeding this that's an obvious trap and now I can't help but wonder if I made the game shorter by choosing not to fall into it (lol).
This was absolutely terrible, but now it's done.

This could have been an okay game if it just allowed you to shuffle the board somehow, for fuck's sake. I played it on PS4 before, since it's available in the PS+ catalogue, so this was a "formality" kind of replay, but still… the amount of times you'll end up with an unsolvable board because the few tiles left are blocked off from each other is infuriating. And the first time you launch the game, it's in French for no apparent reason. I reckon it at least took me less time to complete on Steam just because I could use the mouse.

I somehow missed the fact that this is set after Milo and the Magpies, which I've not played yet. Oops!
Anyway, this is a short story about how Milo's family gets a new member - a rabbit named Toby - and Milo not taking well to him.
The presentation is very much reminiscent of the Flash days, which is always a plus. It's just a shame there's so… little to do here.
Minor interactions to find/kill time with a'la Humongous Games could have been nice. (Though the secrets do fulfill that role already, I suppose.)

More AI slop from an AI slop dev. This time, it's a casting couch-type deal: pick a girl you like, talk to her for a bit, then fuck her. This could be simple, yet effective, were it not slop.
As it is, all the girls sit in the exact same pose and have basically the same body type (I think breast size is the only thing that visibly differs between them). Hell, for half of them descriptions of their looks or mannerisms don't even match the visuals. It's incredibly obvious stuff too, like arm tattoos or multicolored hair. The fact that glaring logical errors such as these consistently come up in what's considered to be a "finished product" only indicates further that the script is AI generated too. And even so, the dev has locked half the game away behind paid DLC. I've only played the free half and I've had more than enough. Fuck off.

Rotate a cute diorama of a castle room filled with Christmas decorations to try and find mimics - items that pretend to be inanimate.
Short and sweet, not much to talk about here. The devs seem to be working on a bigger game in the same vein, we'll see what comes of it.

A Christmas spin-off of Seaberry Keep, featuring the characters you know and love (I have to be honest… I haven't played Seaberry Keep yet), like Strawberry, Chippy and Raspberry. Your job is to help them prepare for the holiday festival that's about to take place in their village.
You can help get cats out of trees, decorate cookies and buy a gift for Chippy's mom. When you're ready, you'll be able to see the mom's response to the gift, then go hang out at the festival.
It's a ridiculously pink VN/point-and-click hybrid that is completely safe for kids. The amateur voice acting is adorable, too. I'm gonna check out the other games in the series too, since they're free. (Although apparently they went F2P because the devs decided to stop making games…)

This free promotional spin-off of Skystead Ranch has you look for 24 Skylets (a.k.a. the made up creaches from the main game).
Not having to look for cats the hundreth time over is already good enough, but there's also the mechanic of "looking" by throwing snowballs at the Skylets or things you think they might be hiding behind. To get these snowballs, you need to mouse over the snowflakes falling down the screen.
I've seen negative reviews focus on this bringing down the whole game, but I think those complaints are misplaced. Anything that makes these games longer than 5 minutes is good in my book. Each Skylet also has a description of where/how they can be found that shows up when mousing over their outline.
This was nice, though the main game is still too expensive for my liking.

This short adventure game (though text-heavy enough that it earned itself a VNDB entry) with RPG-style dice rolls puts you in the shoes of the unnamed owner of an old dog named Jedediah. Jed has been sick for a while now, and it's been the main source of your daily worries since the start. You're ready to enjoy a relaxing day watching TV with Jed when suddenly, the heating in your house breaks! Can't have that when Jed seems to be doing fine! You go down to the basement… and soon enough, you'll learn just what the title stands for.
The overall presentation of this game is absolutely top notch. The graphics, the UI design, the script, the music… it's all fantastic.
It's only a shame Snow Cone Serenade lasts about an hour; I would absolutely play this storyline for a few more hours, had the devs had more material to share.
As it stands, though, I'm looking forward to their upcoming point-and-click and might even check out their non-Steam games at some point.

Twenty-something Naoki was planning on spending Christmas with his girlfriend Miyuki, but when he went to pick her up from work, he found her cheating on him. On his way back, he bumps into Yume, a highschooler trying to teach herself to play guitar. They get to talking and he invites Yume to the dinner he was planning to eat with Miyuki. Afterwards, since they both come from Kanazawa, they decide to go back home for Christmas together.
This wouldn't be all that surprising, except that Naoki and Miyuki have both been so busy living their adult lives in Tokyo that they've not gone home for Christmas for a few years now. When Naoki and Yume arrive in Kanazawa, they learn Miyuki is also there and not pleased about the whole thing. She wasn't actually cheating, he just confused the mannequin she was posing with for a real guy. Also, what a small world it is - Yume turns out to be the daughter of Naoki's guitar teacher.
From here on, you get to follow Naoki as he spends his winter holidays with Miyuki and Yume, and catches up with his friends.
Much like in Summer With You, animated sprites and Russian voice acting are present. I think this one has more minor characters, though, and it almost seems random who is or isn't voiced. While I said that Summer With You might have been made with Ren'Py, this definitely wasn't.
The options menu is the most basic-looking screen ever, and it's ugly as sin when compared to anything else, so… mayhaps this was made in Unity?
Animated sprites are a treat, but a VN is not supposed to feel like it's exerting your device - the ones here are a bit too sluggish. A few voiced lines have been omitted in the translation, a few others play twice in a row even though the script's moved on. The transition screens say it's January while the whole thing takes place in December. Sprite outfits don't always match the setting and the sprites themselves either stay on screen for too long or take time to load in. There is no proper end screen or credit roll, and even though the credits are read out in Russian, the game hangs on the last screen, so if you can't speak the language, you might not notice it's already over.
Point is, it's all incredibly broken, but there's still something charming about it. I'll take this over another story about how living in Russia sucks that leads nowhere, complete with crude MSPaint drawings any day.

Made with people who were teens in the 90s (a.k.a. "generation Y") in mind, YOU DON'T KNOW JACK HEADRUSH aims to be… edgy? Random? I'm not exactly sure what the deal is here, as the question segues are now wacky cartoons and you can choose to play as one of six characters that look like something Sid from Toy Story might have made. It's new, but it's not beating The Ride as far as edginess goes.
In my two games, I've not gotten a Headbutt question (the new mode in this game). The question values start at $10.000, so I've finished with two satisfying scores: $115.000 and $160.000. Sadly, you can't choose the length of your game - it's always going to be 10 questions.
I thought the questions here were fairly easy, and the few I haven't gotten mostly relied on high school-level knowledge that I've missed out on, on account of English not being my first language. It was okay, just not as exciting as the mainline games despite trying so hard to be.

I only earned $4.500 in the 21 question game and $2.000 in the 7 question game. Despite being a movie enjoyer, I clearly don't know my obscure 90s movie lore.

I did not like this one and its "2 edgy 4 u" style. The mechanic of randomly choosing the value of each question makes everything more interesting and the new question type - Roadkill - is pretty fun (apparently there's another new type, Jack BINGO, which I've not gotten), but it seems I know next to nothing about the then-ever-present pearl-clutching and all the satire it was answered by in the 90s, since my final scores ended up being -$10.957 and -$23.267 (or was it -$23.567?)
And oh yeah, based on my initial introduction to the game, it seems to have restricted me to playing exclusively 13 question games. (EDIT: Nope, that's just what this game does in general.) I mean, shit. From what I've seen of HEADRUSH, it doesn't seem nearly as crass, and that one's meant for 90's teens first and foremost! Yikes. Glad this ain't the last one, or else I'd have been left with an especially bad taste in my mouth.

Fresh from the oven (as of then, at least, lol), Yuletide Regicide is a Christmas-themed murder mystery - someone killed Santa right before the holiday!
Not to worry, though - Deliria B. Murder, a.k.a. "Del" and her undead partner, Skulbert "Skully" McSkullface, are on the case!
Yuletide Regicide is a linear story where all the choices lead to the same conclusion (although it's up to you what happens to Christmas at the end.) That being said, it's a comedy through and through, mixing referential humor, satire and perhaps even some absurdism.
I'm surprised to say this was made by the dev behind A Living Room, which I've slammed earlier this year for its inclusion of AI generated content. Maybe they realized that's not the right way to go, maybe they found some more confidence. Looking at this game, they're more than enough when it comes to making a polished product. The art is great and, as weird as that might sound, you wouldn't know they're not American by the writing. The soundtrack may not be original, but that's hardly an issue when everything else is top-notch.
The ending subtly implies Del and Skully may return in the future… I'd like to see that happen.