Activities
Today
September 2026
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007 First Light
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The Magister
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ONE BTN BOSSES
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20 More, Somehow Even Smaller, Mazes
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HAAK
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What Lies in the Multiverse
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HunterX
- 20 More, Somehow Even Smaller, Mazes: Another very nice assortment of maze-based/themed puzzles, each with their own innovation. 9/10 (free)
- The Magister: A bit of a mixed bag, this game. There’s the overall murder-mystery frame, where you seek out clues to help you determine the culprit. This is randomised, but on my first playthrough, I was thinking that I could already see the seams, the second time was way too close to the first, and the third start really showed how formulaic the randomness was. To progress through the game, there’s there’s not one but two deckbuilding games - a combat oriented one with tactical positioning, and a social one. I liked the social quite a bit better, but the combat one is still pretty good. Then there’s some side quests and another system or three with that. It’s worth at least a run, but after that too much of the rest of the game needs to be dealt with for me to play for the card games alone. 8/10 for one run, but it could really use its own Kaycee’s Mod to streamline things after that. (Steamgifts win)
- ONE BTN BOSSES: A bullet hell game where you autofire at the level’s enemy, while moving on a track. Your single action button reverses your direction by default, but there are alternative weapons (eg: laser) and abilities (eg: dash) which may be better for overcoming a particular level. What made beating the game achievable is that the levels before bosses are relatively easy, and I only needed half-plus-one of a boss’s linked levels. 8/10 (Steamgifts win)
- 007 First Light: This is nowhere near as good as Hitman’s World of Assassination trilogy, but then it’s not aiming to be WOA, and the developers were chafing against the standard WOA level design well before the end of Hitman 3. First Light does capture the feel of Bond films, the writing is more or less up to scratch, and the acting is good: Bond is an asshole, but a likeable one, which is rather important to capture, and its principal side characters stand out (though most of your class are more cardboard than ideal). Its stealth segments are far smaller, more constrained, and more linear, but also have a different flavour of social stealth as you can just bald-faced bluff non-enforcers without needing a change in uniform. Its AI is really not great, which was ok in WOA, effectively a tactical puzzle game, where the quirks of the AI is an advantage and avoiding notice is the goal, but stands out more here. On the other hand, if you get rumbled here, you normally just shrug and launch into combat, rather than restart, which is probably a healthier playstyle. The driving is ok. The hand to hand combat is reasonable. The gunfighting is there, and often mandatory, where you have the opportunity to mow down an army of mooks, but I would probably have been happier if I’d used more aim assist. There’s a disappointingly quarter-baked Mr Freeze style fight. I suspect that its replayability is going to be much much lower, though your selection of gadgets would alter things a little, IO do have a roadmap for continued play, and there’s clearly intentions of a sequel. 8-/10
- What Lies in the Multiverse: A good set of puzzles (different mechanics in each world) embedded into a walk-and-talk story. The game does not respect the time of its players (there’s a lot of unnecessary dead space to traverse, particularly if backtracking), and there’s so much text. But the writing quality is good, and the puzzles are both good and varied. 7.5/10, but patience/buy-in is needed. (Steamgifts win)
- Haak: Metroidvania as junk food: it’s fun enough while playing, movement is reasonable, difficulty is relatively low provided you have the right upgrades (and they offer the opportunity to make things even easier via options, a set of currency to temporarily make different things easier, and allowing a couple of codes resulting from some rather obscure puzzles to just be given), but exploration can be a little unfocussed (you can’t mark your map sufficiently), and it really doesn’t have anything that stands out after having finished it: Less than two weeks later and I’m having difficulty remembering details of any of the boss fights, for instance. Its reliance on access codes probably means that it is rather sequence breakable on a second playthrough. 7+/10
- HunterX: Very disappointing Soulsvania. It’s definitely oriented towards combat but that’s not nearly good enough to offset the uninspired level design and uninteresting platforming. A particular sin is a plethora of breakable crystals that give you souls. It would have been better to have either made these autocollect, or omitted these entirely and just adjusted costs. 5.5/10
Yesterday
September 2026 Main recap
Since i play 30+ games each month, here a main recap :
Top 3 Playtime Games beaten
Edge Of Eternity
13 hours this month – 45 hours in total – A indie RPG close to Final Fantasy series, game completed.
WRATH: Aeon of Ruin
10 hours this month – 11 hours in total – Nice FPS game, game completed.
Omega Pilot Evolution
7 hours this month – 7 hours in total – Nice arcade racing game, game 100% completed (all items customization, all 1st place in championship & all gold medals).
Top 5 Playtime Game unfinished
Dokimon
13 hours this month – 15 hours in total – Nice pokemon like, getted for free, at level 63 (57-70)
Disney Speedstorm
11 hours this month – 134 hours in total – Nice free mario kart like, playing on current season 22, having a total of 103 racers, and 121 / 310 of shards to collect from others racers.
Swords & Souls Legacy Collection
7 hours this month – 7 hours in total – Nice old flash RPG Game, around 73% of the game completed.
Chronicon
7 hours this month – 26 hours in total – Nice Hack’n’slash, replay it after 4 years, at charcter level 66.
Fairy Fencer F
5 hours this month – 15 hours in total – Nice RPG game, at character level 43.
Top Playtime Game Abandonned :
Okhlos: Omega
11 miinutes this month – 1 hours in total – Too much hard roguelike game for me, skipped game.
Some others backlog game i will try to beat : Pacer / Sea of Stars: Sunset Edition / The Elephant Collection / Decline’s Drops / Cavern of Dreams
September ‘26 report
🏆 SG Wins Progress Bar
🕹️ Overall Progress Bar
Lots of great wins in September! Thank you everyone for
A bunch of played games as well, and even though they are on the shorter side, the backlog still managed to take some damage and I'm proud of that.
Let's see what October holds for me!
Stats End of September
First challenge done! 🥳
Overall
Overall statistics
Monthly change
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| Beaten | |
| Unfinished | |
| Unplayed | |
| Won't play |
Overall wins statistics
Monthly change
| Completed | |
| Beaten | |
| Unfinished | |
| Unplayed | |
| Won't play |
Yearly Challenges
Yearly Challenge 2026 - Simulations
Finish all games on the Secret Santa 2025 list
Beat all least 50% of the games on the Runs on a Toaster list 🎆
Beat all least 50% of the games on the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Play Them list
Beat all least 50% of the games on the Trust Issues list
Beat all least 75% of the games on the Old wins list
Beat all least 50% of the games added in 2025
Progress Report #40: September 2026
Monthly tally - Backlog: 1, Yekhus: 0
Total play time: 12.2h
Played (2)
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Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark
2.9h playtime
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Path of Exile 2
85.3h playtime
Not on steam
Added to collection (Steam) (1)
- Zero Protocol (SG giveaway)
September 2026
an interesting souls-like game, it lacks some polish(texture clipping, hard to read animations, but a very generous parry window to cover that kind of things), overall had a solid time
short and sweet, just be an innocent doordash driver and get locked into an escape room.
a very interesting game, could definitely feel some of the dated parts being it was originally a game from 2011, definitely has some visually wonderful parts to it now, I especially liked act 2 I think it was visually(the one and only SS I uploaded)… wish there was a photo mode or way to unlock the camera for screenshots, so many potential SS locations would be unlocked by just being able to move the camera.
definitely liked this more than Phoenix Wright, that final case was great.
yet another nice little incremental game
Manifold Garden
9.3 hours, 25 of 25 achievements
September 2026
Continuining the progress on Odyssey. I’ve finished the main story defeated all the cultists at around the 79 hour mark, then went through all the free Lost Tales of Greece quests and all the Legacy of the First Blade DLC with 100 hours done! I’m currently going through the Fate of Atlantis DLC, and I will definitely finish it next month! According to HLTB, I should only have around 10 or so hours of gameplay left. What a journey!
On the other side, even though I didn’t finish anything in September again, I didn’t add any game to the backlog! I don’t remember the last time that happened!
September 2026 Report
Well, another month down and I made a lot of progress. Unfortunately, I also left a couple games unfinished with no intention of returning to play them any time soon–something that I usually hate to do. Thus, I am feeling less satisfied with my progress this month despite the number of games I managed to complete. Ah, well, maybe I will get back to them sooner than I think. Qué será, será.
Completed Games
I picked this game up during the brief window that it was free on Steam and I didn't have a ton of expectations going into it. I knew it was a text-based, choose-your-own-adventure style game but not much else.
Overall, I was pretty satisfied with my experience. The developers created a very compelling world where there were several very distinct paths you could send your character down that nonetheless coalesced back into a single narrative in the endgame. Unlike a lot of games with a similar story structure, this didn't feel cheap; rather, it felt like your choices up to that point mattered a great deal in how you could resolve a situation that was always going to happen because it was much larger than any one person--even if that person is the protagonist of a videogame.
That being said, I did find achievement hunting for it to be a serious grind. While there were a lot that were fun (each of the three main routes, for example, came with a bunch of route exclusive achievements) there were also quite a few mutually-exclusive achievements that required replaying a substantial portion of the game--even with chapter select. After my first run, I muted the game music (there is no spoken dialogue in the game) and just streamed podcasts while I replayed for all the remaining achievements. On the upside, I made substantial progress in a lot of podcasts that I had been ignoring!
Overall, a very fun game for anyone but achievement hunters. If any achievement hunters are still planning to play this…I salute you! And I recommend you download a nice long audiobook before starting.
Not a lot to say about this one. It is exactly the kind of game that it purports itself to be. I simultaneously didn't enjoy playing it and found it weirdly addictive. The experience between doing a no magic run and a magic run was immense though. I would definitely recommend doing it the no-magic way first if you are going for the 100% because I can't imagine how frustrating the experience must be in the reverse.
I was gifted this game by a SG user (thanks again, Chississ!) and honestly, I really enjoyed it despite it still having a "mixed" rating on steam. That rating is heavily impacted by the number of bugs present at launch and the fact that some bugs continue to exist today. But if we can play Bethesda games despite their jank, surely we can do the same for smaller dev teams.
You can read my whole steam review here, but the long and short of it is that the game itself is very good but the bugs do require a little bit of patience. The main issue I encountered was no longer being able to interact with objects/people after loading a save mid-session. And it was easily fixed by quitting the game and relaunching (you could save the game right before quitting and that save would load without the issue persisting). Definitely still worth playing if you are a fan of the series overall.
I reviewed this game on Steam, so here's a link to that if you want more detail. My tl;dr version, however, is that I didn't enjoy this game as much as the sequel but it was still a fun experience with interesting characters. The gameplay was even more simplified than the sequel (which was hardly a complicated game) and I didn't feel as attached to the npcs as I did in the sequel but definitely still worth the roughly 10 hours that it took to fully complete.
Another game with a much longer review on Steam. I won this in a public, level 0 giveaway with approximately 4500 entries, so I felt incredibly lucky to get to give this game a chance!
My tl;dr review is that this was a charming and beautiful puzzle platformers obviously inspired by titles like Inside or Limbo but with a much more wholesome vibe. I did find that the puzzles were too easy but there was a lot of promise there. I haven't followed the reviews on the sequel but if the devs learned from their experience making this one, then it should be a truly special game.
I picked this game up for free and left a Steam review already. Overall, I didn't vibe with the main game at all--the puzzles were way too simple and I didn't feel any of the emotion that I think the game was trying to inspire. I liked the Jack DLC much better (included with the game) as I thought they hit the emotional beats more successfully.
Another free game, this one is technically not complete since one of the achievements is bugged. I manually marked it complete anyway because I got all but the bugged achievement. Here's the Steam review and the tl;dr is that the game started off well with cute dogs, an excellent voice actress, and reasonably challenging gameplay but quickly became both repetitive and way too easy. It was fun for an hour or two but overstayed its welcome.
In Progress Games
I won this on SG (thanks again eeev!) and am really enjoying my time with it so far! I will leave the review until I actually beat the game, but I plan to continue to play this in October. I've already submitted it to PAGY and plan to make it my first priority in the beginning of the month. I won't be able to 100% it since that requires several DLC that I don't own, but I should be able to beat the main campaign (hopefully by the end of this upcoming weekend, fingers crossed!).
Abandoned Games (Hall of Shame)
I don't have a ton to say on this one. It is a free game that I chose to play because it was one of the community challenges on Playtracker. I do appreciate that despite having many paid DLCs, the devs stated their commitment to make sure all achievements were tied only to the free base game. Unfortunately, there are still quite a lot of achievements for a game that I just didn't enjoy that much. I don't mind pinball in short bursts, but it will definitely take me quite a long time to get through. I've uninstalled it for now and may eventually get back to it just so it doesn't drag my play stats down, but probably not for some time.
And now we get to the controversial review. I'm glad that BLAEO doesn't have down votes because I am sure I'd earn quite a few for this review but…I just didn't have fun with Half-Life 2. "But Tiajma, it's one of the greatest games of all time! It was a seminal entry for the FPS genre!" I know, I know. And I remember the hype when it first came out and marveling over the physics engine. I mostly watched my brother play it as I didn't get a steam account until 2011 but I remember what a big deal it was.
And yet, playing it again in 2026, I just don't think it lives up to the hype. And I love to play a lot of old classics! I'll defend BG1 and 2 with my life--THAC0 included. I'll insist that anyone who thinks VTMB is anything other than a masterpiece is objectively wrong--even if it is being held together pretty much exclusively due to one random guy in Germany. I've poured hundreds, maybe even thousands, of hours into all the HOMM games and the Might and Magic games and continue to boot them back up regularly. Old games are great, even if new players can't always appreciate them the same way as those who experience them live.
But HL2 just didn't hold up for me. I could immediately see why I couldn't remember what the story of the game was---because there honestly isn't much of one. The gunplay felt…fine. The various NPCs were…present. The vehicle portions went on for way too long. I was honestly just bored most of the time. I had to keep convincing myself to launch the game and play for another hour; not because it was terrible but just because it wasn't gripping.
I will go back to finish it, if only to reassure myself that I'm not crazy and the ending didn't somehow save the whole experience. But overall, I think this is a game where nostalgia is doing more than most gamers are willing to admit. Or maybe I'm just weird.
Added Games
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Figment
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Before Your Eyes
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FINAL FANTASY XVI
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FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH
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0 hours playtime
0 of 56 achievements
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Beyond a Steel Sky (1994)
0 hours playtime
0 of 56 achievements
Plan for October
I need to play my two wins–Solasta: Crown of the Magister and Final Fantasy XVI but I also want to squeeze in at least one thematic horror game so I am going to try to at least beat Resident Evil Village. Is this way too ambitious of a plan? Yes, yes it is. But we’re going to give it a try anyway.
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Solasta: Crown of the Magister
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FINAL FANTASY XVI
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Resident Evil Village
September 2026
Chrono Trigger (100%): I almost forgot that I technically 100%’d this game this month. I don’t really have any new thoughts on it. I still have the same opinions from my previous post.
Not For Broadcast: I love this game. I’m buying the DLCs during the next Steam sale (I won the base game on SG). The politics felt very exaggerated but I appreciated that there was an ending where you didn’t have to pick either sides. If that ending didn’t exist and I was forced to pick between Advance and Distrupt, I’d probably dislike the game a bit. Honestly, probably avoid this game if you dislike “both sides bad” type of storylines. But I really enjoyed this game. The gameplay is one of the more unique ones I’ve encountered recently. The game’s best parts were the non-political/serious stuff IMO so I really cannot wait to get the DLCs. The absurd humor really worked on me. I think my favorite part was that fictional sports they made (Sportsboard). 10/10, cannot wait to see the developers’ next work (which I’m hoping is another FMV).
BioShock: I love everything about this game except the combat and the later parts (escort mission + ending). The combat just felt kind of clunky and the enemies were too repetitive. But the atmosphere in particular was what I really loved. I thought the game felt lonely. It reminded me a bit of SOMA although I think this game felt more lonely than SOMA was. At least you had Catherine in SOMA. I really like the fact that you never really meet people face to face. They’re always unreachable/behind a glass or barrier of some sort. I really enjoyed those parts where you think you’re finally about to meet someone and they just die.
Fort Frolic was my favorite mission. The escort mission was the worst one. Final boss and the ending in general just felt anticlimactic for me even though I got the good ending. Still a 9/10 though. The early to middle part was just too good even if it goes downhill a bit near the end for me.
Cuphead (DROPPED): Dropped after ~20 hours. This game was 10/10 for me until King Dice. It didn’t help that the boss I was doing before that was Dr. Kahl’s Robot (that boss really drained me). I managed to push through that boss and I was really hoping the game becomes fun again because I was already very close to dropping it, but King Dice was even worse. I was avoiding using the DLC but I ended up giving in and using crackshot and Ms. Chalice. Both didn’t help that much. I really hate the mini bosses and the dice thing. I couldn’t consistently parry the dice into getting the bosses I want. Either way I already had a lot of fun with 80% of the game and I don’t want to ruin the experience any further by forcing myself to beat it. I think I might come back to this game at some point. I do want to play the DLC as I haven’t touched that part beyond getting the weapon and Ms. Chalice. Maybe in a few months I’ll give it another chance.
Rain World: I don’t know how I feel about this game. I’ve been playing it on and off for like 2-3 months, and I think I rushed through it a bit. I don’t think I explored enough and I also didn’t really get most of the story, but looking it up on YouTube, it looks like there’s a lot of lore in this game. No rating for now, I want to replay it at some point with the Survivor (my first playthrough was with the Monk).
Neo Cab (100%): I don’t think I really changed my views on this game (BLAEO link of my first playthrough’s thoughts). I still hate the main story and a specific character (Savy) but I think I actually like the game a bit more now compared to my first playthrough. I was able to focus on the good parts of the game and I tried hard to just ignore the main story. The side characters/passengers and the conversations you have with them are really what makes the game good IMO.
There were some people that I didn’t manage to talk to during my first playthrough (Agonon, Fiona, and Carlos) so I prioritized on picking them up this time and I really loved them especially Agonon. I think Agonon and Oona are my overall favorites, with Gideon, Klaus & Marek, Fiona, and Carlos coming close behind. Still a 6/10 though. Savy and the main story really drags the game down for me so I’m sticking with my first review’s score.
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BioShock Remastered
24 hours playtime
26 of 65 achievements
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CHRONO TRIGGER
83 hours playtime
13 of 13 achievements
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Cuphead
42 hours playtime
11 of 42 achievements
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Neo Cab
11 hours playtime
18 of 18 achievements
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Not For Broadcast
15 hours playtime
20 of 95 achievements
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Rain World
16 hours playtime
6 of 47 achievements
Goals for October 2026
I’ve already been playing CONTROL for a bit (~1.5h, the rest of that playtime was from previous card idling) as it’s one of my Play or Pay games for Q4 and I am really enjoying it. I’m still confused with the story but I think I’m supposed to be confused. Either way, can’t wait to play more. Also adding SOMA because I love that game, it’s my favorite video game of all time, I want to replay it again. I wanted to add another horror game but I’m not sure what yet. I’m kind of getting an itch to play and finally beat Alien: Isolation, but we’ll see. The rest are PoP picks.
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Control Ultimate Edition
7 hours playtime
7 of 67 achievements
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Metro 2033 Redux
76 minutes playtime
0 of 49 achievements
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Not Tonight
12 hours playtime
11 of 15 achievements
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Shady Part of Me
3 hours playtime
0 of 16 achievements
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SOMA
54 hours playtime
10 of 10 achievements
July August September 2026
I've created a priority list for my big games - I'll try keep it small(ish), so once I finish a bigger game, I can move on to these. I usually break these up with smaller games in between!
🔝Priority
Screenshots
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2026 Yearly stats so far:
Beaten and Completed: 7 + 10 = 17Added to library 7 + 13 = 20 (boo!)
Played
Completed/Beaten
Went back for the 1.0 release - its great fun!
Played with a couple of friends on a friends server.
Achievements wise:
There was a bug when I played where all the collectibles needed to be not used, to count towards the achievement.. so I ended up making a separate world/character to find these. This required me to replay the early game and fast track trying to get a decent flying pal to do this. The devs fixed this as I finished most of them haha.
The hard mode bosses weren't bad once you had a playstyle that worked - I did spend a lot of time min-maxing my pals though which I enjoy.
Frostallion carried me in the Hardmode tower fights.
007 was a fun game - so many times you felt the game was ending as the action seemed to be hitting the peak, and then it kept going.
It really felt like a Bond movie and I recommend it.
I played this with a controller while in bed - it was actually a really charming game, and really enjoyed it.
I felt like I 100% it very quickly though
Played
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Valheim
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STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor™
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Megabonk
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Yakuza 0
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The Thaumaturge
Backlog
Secret Santa Sandballs (July)
The Secret Santa event somehow returned.. ! Tried to make some progress in my gifts this update. Partially succeeded. Partially...-
A Shelter Full of Cats
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Megabonk
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A Tower Full of Cats
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A Park Full of Cats
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A Game About Digging A Hole™
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Forever Skies
Gift
Surprise Gleam Win
People win things from Gleam???-
STAR WARS Zero Company™
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Fields of Mistria
Bought
Random Bundle Additions
Do I really need more +1s? Maybe I will try them...-
The Blind Prophet
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DOOM 64
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Monster Slayers
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How to Say Goodbye
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Hellslave
