Activities
Today
Update 16
So I accidentally skipped April, but I didn’t beat any games back then so it’s not too much of a loss of an update. Lots of Tomodachi life getting played though, but I somehow still haven’t seen the credits. Anyway, here’s the little I managed in May after finally finishing my undergrad :)
Games beaten:
Played on PlaystationPerfection.
The game is like the reincarnation of the Arkham series, but in lego form. The combat and the open world are so well done. The graphics are on another level, unseen from a lego game before, the depiction of Gotham is genuinely on point. I was particularly impressed by the way they managed to mesh Batman's movies into one coherent story. I found myself saying, 'omg this is EXACTLY like in the film!!' or catching a reference way too many times to count, of course with that funny lego charm being added on top. I beg any Batman fan to play this.
And honestly, the unthinkable happened. This game has overtaken Resident Evil 9 in my personal running for the GOTY. That's really saying something ngl.
That’s kinda it for now. I’ve been playing bits of other stuff and there might be some new backlog additions, but I haven’t been logging the stuff so I don’t really remember everything. Hoping to have a much fuller list in the next update!
April-May 2026 Progress Report
Alright I’m chill again, gonna try and go back to my regular scheduled 5 games a month. I’ve gotten 100+ish hours into Witcher 3 Deathmarch edition and I cannot believe they announce an additional DLC as I’m playing it, so that’s really something to look forward to in the future! I had a bit of trouble picking the best game I played for these two months, Sonic Frontiers was objectively really solid but Stars in the Trash, despite being a maximum of three hours long for 100%, was fully hand made and painted with watercolor with hand animation and while I suspect recency bias is deeply influencing my decision, I would recommend it to more people over Sonic.
Next month, Still on my quest to 100% Witcher 3, but I also wanna play Mato Anomalies, The Devil’s Daughter, and blanc. I’m looking for another desktop idle game as well, since I really enjoyed Fish to Dish. That Lofi game seems super popular, but there is a lot of DLC and I’m uninterested in 100%’ing it while it’s still having updates. I’m eyeing “Ropuka’s Idle Island” right now but It doesn’t.. appear there is much to do, so I’ll figure it out as I go.
SG games won: 1 (Sonic Frontiers)
Total games added to backlog: 4 (Sonic Frontiers, Librarian: Tidy Up, Stars in the Trash, Sherlock Devil’s Daughter)
Total completed: 6
1-3 hours to complete, Stars in the Trash is a completely handmade adventure where you play as Moka, a spoiled housecat who, after multiple failed attempts at slipping past their wheel-bound dog sibling Trasto, finally manages to slip out to the great outdoors for an unexpected journey. As typical of Valhalla Cats, the game is completely hand made, the background is watercolor paints and all the animation was first drawn by hand. There are real authentic, PREMIUM meows, purrs, and rumbles and I strongly suggest playing with a controller because it vibrates when Moka is napping and it’ll make your heart melt.
Aside from it’s charming characters and expressive animations and the lovingly watercolor painted backgrounds, it’s a fairly easy experience to beat and not too complicated to 100%. The biggest downside is how short it is, but it’s a bittersweet feeling. You can see how much time, effort and care went into every brushstroke so it feels a bit cruel to have the game be so short, but it really is such a lovely game with so much personality from the artists I can only hope more people play Stars in the Trash, and think about it afterward.
ᓚᘏᗢ
Sonic Frontiers
20-26+ hours to complete, Sonic Frontiers is an open world adventure game built around exploration, obstacle courses, platforming and gathering collectables. Sonic and friends discover and crash land on the Starfall Islands, five regions that used to be home to an ancient civilization older than anything they’ve ever known, now just ruins and host to an evil being who trapped Sonic’s friends in a Digital Dimension. While Sonic once again goes on an adventure to free his allies, uncover what was the catastrophic event that abruptly ended the civilization here and try to make nice with Sage, Starfall Islands weirdly hostile sentient AI who’s goals are, apparently, drastically different than your own… probably!
As a deeply casual player who’s never finished a Sonic game before, the only other game I’ve played being Sonic Adventure, which storyline abruptly came to a tragic end after I discovered the Chao Garden, I had a great time. Much of Frontiers gameplay is optional, and it simultaneously accommodates both speedrunners and people who’ve never encountered a time trial in their lifetime as there are multiple ways to gain the items needed to progress the storyline, from speedrunning, casual exploration, to fishing them up. The bosses were really fun to fight, the storyline about the first civilization and it’s destruction were pretty interesting and I particularly loved all the music that you could swap out and change anytime. While overall Sonic Frontiers was really good, I do have a couple tips! First, a controller is highly suggested, as while there are very few button mashing events, you can instead rotate the left joystick in a circle if you’re not too keen on carpal tunnel. Second is that this Sonic has various status you can upgrade, and I recommend not maxing them out early unless you want to beat all bosses within twenty seconds, before the music has a chance to play.
Duck Detective: The Secret Salami
2-3+ hours to complete, enjoy a cute and surprisingly interesting mystery detective game! Play as Duck Detective Eugene McQuacklin, investigating a serious lunch theft case at BearBus and it’s elusive culprit, The Salami Bandit! Question your suspects, snoop through their office, and comb through forgotten memos and abandoned post-it notes to piece together the evidence and deduce who would have committed such a terrible crime.
Duck Detective was a good surprise, it’s short, but very well made; every character has a simple first-impression sprite and a more detailed version once you start properly investigating them with the magnifying glass which was a fun touch. It’s fully voice acted, there is a dedicated quack button, and the actual mystery you are investigating has a fair amount of misdirection that feels satisfying to catch. The only part I got confused with, was when I had to figure out a number code, which I sadly had to end up brute-forcing as I didn’t understand the acronyms to get the actual numbers. I also recommend turning the hint system off, since it’s really easy to give up and just use it. Highly recommended, I’ll be playing the second game, The Ghost of Glamping, this month for sure!
The Stanley Parable
1–9 hours to five years to complete, The Stanley Parable is an absolutely delightful narrative-driven game about a completely normal office worker named Stanley, who suddenly finds himself unsupervised after his manager and co-workers all seem to have mysteriously taken the day off. Saying much more would spoil the experience, but it’s a game I’d recommend to almost anyone — even someone who has never played a video game before.
Going into this game completely blind is absolutely the best way to experience it, if possible. It’s funny, packed with numerous endings, and has ridiculously high replay value. The narration is easily one of the game’s strongest aspects, especially because the narrator reacts to your shenanigans in such entertaining ways. While the game itself is fairly short, it’s also very easy to spend nine hours in it uncovering… things I won’t mention, ahaha. Anyway, if you haven’t played it yet, please do. The Broom Closet ending in particular has to be a fan favorite!!!
Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library!
4-22+ hours to complete, Librarian is a mindless and relaxing finding and sorting game, where you play as a librarian under the great Principle Merlin, at the University of Celesthall. Fairies often cause mischief, and one has recently unshelved all the books and thrown them all over the floor; it’s your job to find, sort and re-shelf them, your reward being one of the greatest of honors – a pizza party of one with your name on it. Get to work!
“how could this game possibly be fun, you’re just shelving books.” you ask, and while I would like to agree with you, reading all the book titles and hunting them down to put in their proper spots and slowly recovering scarce floorspace was incredibly entertaining for me. I chose to do the no-major magic run first and it took me a lovely seventeen hours re-shelving the 3,072 titles, the magic run took me two hours since by then, I knew where everything went, and the special stage you unlock after your first run was an absolute treat. As for cons, I didn’t find any bugs or issues but it would be nice to have the ability to gently set a book down and stack them on the floor, instead of tossing them. There was a complication where I had a single book missing, but when you have ten books lift, you can summon them back to their original spawn position, even if they’ve escaped the library through the floor, somehow. I’m under the impression there will be more content in the future, as there is a greyed out “extra” mode I’m unable to access, but I look forward to finding out what that is and highly recommend this game to anyone looking to turn their brain off and just organize entertaining books.
Hidden in my Paradise
3-5+ hours to complete, Hidden in my Paradise is a cute, fun, and well designed HOG that even lets you create and share your own levels with a huge variety of items, characters, and furniture. There are four areas and twenty five levels, as well as additional free extra holiday areas. Inside each level there are additional optional tasks, such as finding treasure chests, faeries, and moving items around to set up scenes to take cute photographs, although sometimes I found it didn’t work well, and I had to zoom out more or mess around with it.
Overall, it’s a fine game. It’s not too long, not too short, and I actually enjoyed making a little HOG map of my own then poking my steam friends to go play it – everyone who has this game can also play what you make and give it a rating, so you can get some little gold stars for your efforts. There are only two cons; one is that the looping background music gets too repetitive and the search function did not work for me when I was looking for my friends created areas, so I had to sort by newest to go hunt them down. I’m pretty sure that last bit will eventually get patched, so it’s worth checking out if you are a Hidden Object Game Enjoyer and/or have a friend group to share hidden object levels you make.
Report #26 May
As previously stated kinda slow month. With some luck at the end of this month will finish with the unplanned work that showed up but most likely in the beginning of July. Bad part is that RTO came to work so 3 days a week few hours go to commute. Probably part of my lunch break would add few gaming time to go for achievements in finished games but will have to see how that goes.
Back to the progress. Beginning of month they added the chapter select in Replaced amd was able to get my missing achievements. Again full month of Firestone. Also finished with Picross Fairytale: Legend of the Mermaid , got finished with Sex Apartment 2: Grand Hotel and story of Lust Poker Club(missing the two flush achievements which will take forever) and managed to cram at the end of month Lust Trip and Innocent Grape to finish.
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Picross Fairytale: Legend of the Mermaid
76.8 hours playtime
19 of 19 achievements
20.6 hours playtime
34 of 34 achievements
See you next time and happy gaming in the meantime!
May 2026
Finally managed to beat Core Keeper. Game turned into heavy grind. Riftbreaker and Turtles are being played in co-op so takes time to find suitable moments for them. Started StarVaders and it feels easier than I expected. Completed all three difficulties on first try. Usually these kill you easily on first tries until you unlock the cool stuff. Time to hit the heat on - summer mode engaged.
Finished
Grinding skills is grinding my gears. Middle part of the game had sudden difficulty spike but that evened out in the end.
Ongoing
The Riftbreaker
32.4 hours, 29 of 54 achievements
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate
16.6 hours, 61 of 79 achievements
StarVaders
4.9 hours, 28 of 100 achievements
Progress
May 2026
Only two completions this month, but at least one of them was in a game I’ve been working on for months. I’ve also put like 130+ hours into The Witcher 3 in this month alone, so I hope that makes up for the backlog growing and the lack of many completions :))
This was quite the marathon. This is a minesweeper-pictogram hybrid game with many nice puzzles, solid logic, and a variety of options. The pictures are nice, the animations are cute, and it's an overall nice experience. However, the game requires you to play all variations of story puzzles. This means you will need to play the game with up to 4 colors and on VERY large boards that take like an hour to complete each. Recommended, but don't expect this to be a fast achievement hunt by any means.
Overall, a very similar experience to the original Voxelgram. They didn't really change much with this, aside from a few quality-of-life changes and the ability to play it with multiple colors now. The novelty of the concept of a 3D nonogram kinda wore off by the time I finished this entry, so I likely wouldn't get any further versions of this game. It's not bad, though. Recommended, but know that it isn't much different from the original game.
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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
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The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
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Dice A Million
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Haven
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Far Cry 5
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Rune Dice
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Death Howl
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Luna Abyss
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Slot or Not
0 hours playtime
no achievements
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Until Then
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Meltopia
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Heroes of Hammerwatch II
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Nordhold
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Out of Line
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The Alters
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Guns, Princess and Braves
0 hours playtime
no achievements
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The Iron Oath
0 hours playtime
no achievements
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While the Iron's Hot
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Cubic Odyssey
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Critter Cove
0 hours playtime
no achievements
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The Colonists
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Moonsigil Atlas
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Payroll
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CloverPit
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Odinfall
0 hours playtime
no achievements
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Bang Average Football
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Flick Shot Rogues
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Kaamos
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TownsFolk
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Void Miner – Asteroid Roguelite
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Dice With Death
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Dice of Kalma
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Fortune Seller
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Luck & Loot
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Crysis 3 Remastered
Mostly completed or played - May 2026
- Night Call was far better but i still appreciated Neo Cab theme about AI replacing jobs
- Memoriapolis is linear but i really liked the concept of placing buildings and letting the AI settle organically around them and compete for neighborhoods
- Better than dead is an early-access gem. Though many players won’t appreciate that you’ve to play the full game Max Payne sliding (the heroin is willingly extremely imprecise otherwise)
One Eyed Kutkh
79 minutes, 8 of 8 achievements
Neo Cab
3 hours, 9 of 18 achievements
Memoriapolis
18 hours, 21 of 40 achievements
Growth
9 hours, 22 of 30 achievements
Better Than Dead
9 hours, no achievements
Pip My Dice
22 hours, 12 of 41 achievements
April/May theme - Not Without My Cat
- Firegirl was grindy but really fun ! A mix of lenient platformer and firefighting game, with 4 randomized sort of levels and a lot of cats
- Gibbous beaten, partly with a walkthrough for some puzzles. I liked a lot the funny parts with colorful light ambiance that reminded the old point’n’click classics. Didn’t like the horror ambiance part and the end though, i guess that’s to open to a sequel but i would have prefered something more optimistic
- Blacksad was excellent ! Good ambiance and well writen characters. Appreciated that the full game was logical enough to be solved without tips. UI is awful though : hero can’t run, no way to skip cutscenes or select directly a chapter to replay it, too many long loading times even on a recent PC. Enough to ruin the incentive to discover the other endings.
A Case of Distrust
5 hours, 10 of 10 achievements
Firegirl: Hack 'n Splash Rescue DX
8 hours, 21 of 21 achievements
Gibbous - A Cthulhu Adventure
7 hours, 34 of 48 achievements
Blacksad: Under the Skin
9 hours, 17 of 39 achievements
Chicken Police - Paint it RED!
5 hours, 21 of 31 achievements
In progress - plan for next month
- Occasionally : CoH3 (finally i played it again, i had forgotten how amazing it is !), AoE4 (i’ll slowly play the campaigns)
- Waooh about Gray Zone !! Stunning forest, super Ghost Recon like gameplay. Even if it could be obviously better, i like to solo it.
Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition
9 hours (5h this month), 8 of 175 achievements
Gray Zone Warfare
22 hours (22h this month), no achievements
Company of Heroes 3
34 hours (11h this month), 10 of 24 achievements
Ara History Untold
11 hours (no playtime this month), 14 of 45 achievements
Trench Lord: Eastern Front
74 minutes, 4 of 78 achievements
Have fun for next month !
Report 94: April - May 2026
- Clean Break
45 minutes playtime
7 of 7 achievements - Growing My Grandpa!
84 minutes playtime
4 of 4 achievements - Infectonator 3: Apocalypse
17 hours playtime
41 of 41 achievements - Wordle 3
9 hours playtime
30 of 30 achievements - Wordle 4
3 hours playtime
100 of 100 achievements - BLACK SOULS II
41 hours playtime
102 of 102 achievements - Water Womb World
29 minutes playtime
3 of 3 achievements - Tharsis
13 hours playtime
12 of 12 achievements - BALL x PIT
39 hours playtime
63 of 63 achievements - Crush the Castle Legacy Collection
11 hours playtime
45 of 45 achievements - Riichi City - Japanese Mahjong
279 hours playtime
no achievements
- Panzer Dragoon: Remake
3 hours playtime
19 of 22 achievements - Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders
13 hours playtime
50 of 50 achievements - Cryptmaster
20 hours playtime
28 of 28 achievements - Cooking Witch
2 hours playtime
40 of 40 achievements
I had a short leave that turned out medical, so I spent most of the april in the comfort of my flat, hence so many games played.
Clean Break - Short psychological game about breaking stuff. Had some fun achievements. 6/10
Growing My Grandpa - Pretty cool horror game with weird concepts and some cool-ass visuals. A bit heavy on the text side though. 7,5/10
Infectonator 3: Apocalypse - I loved Infectonator games way back then, and it’s still fun. I should aslo finish that Survivors one. 7,5/10
Wordle 3 - Although this is the cheapest-looking word game franchise, it’s still a word game and I enjoy those. What I didn’t enjoy is the fact that the Flowers section near the end is pretty much impossible to beat without hints and it took about 75% of the playtime. 5/10
Wordle 4 - And that’s the installment I’ll play last, that’s for sure. This one is just lazy and extremely short. The only reason I got 3 hours on it is because I left it on for cards farming. 2/10
Black Souls II - I still can’t believe it’s on Steam, feels like a fever dream. It’s obivously unplayable if you don’t install the content patch though. Anyway, it’s a huge step up from the previous one. If you’re okay with very questionable h-parts. 9/10
Water Womb World - Eh. I liked GMG way more. 5,5/10
Tharsis - This is a pretty fun dice-based survival game where you have to repair your ship and manage your crew on their way to Mars. You’ll get used to carefully plan everything after a few runs, but it’s short enough so it doesn’t get too boring. 7,5/10
BALL x PIT - Very fun and engaging at firtst, but gets more tedious when you go for the achievements completion. It’s stll really good, don’t get me wrong. 7,5/10
Crush the Castle - Never played those in the past, but it was pretty fun (although a bit rage-inducing sometimes). 7/10
Ricihi City - I had problems connecting to the servers for more than a year now, and in May the game finally stopped connecting at all. It’s a shame, since I really love mahjong. Riichi City was going full-coomer mode with gacha characters and their outfit (unlike Mahjong Soul), which may be a problem for someone, but it had quite a few cool collaborations. I got to 6th dan on 3p Mahjong and I didn’t even bother to get the 1st dan on 4p since it felt so painfully slow after 3p (and I was playing mostly with newbies that took their sweet time discarding the tiles.) My only hope is that the war will someday be over, we’ll hopefully stop with the internet blocking bullshit, and I’ll be playing that game again. 9,5/10
Panzer Dragoon Remake - Really fun, what I can say. Whoever thought making an achievement for playing 100 hours was a good idea is a crazy person though. 7,5/10
Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders - Never read it. It’s a simplified point’n’click that throws occasional puzzles here and there to make you scratch your head a bit. Overall I had a good time, but some of the deduction segments are kinda annoying since you have no idea what the game wants you to pick exactly. And also an achievement for observing everything is ridiculuous and ruins the game flow. I had to go through the game with a guide, since getting it the natural way is almost impossible. 7/10
Cryptmaster - An extremely fun dungeon crawler with typing mechanic that controls pretty much everything in the game. The grinding can a be a bit tedious, and I encountered a few bugs here and there, but nonetheless I loved it. 8/10
Cooking Witch - Weird little game with hilariously fucked-up sounding premise. Had to grind for a while for that last achievement. Nothing much to say about it. 6/10
Backlog progress status:
Completed The Wolf Among Us
Very good mystery and story. So far the best telltale game I’ve played.
May 2026
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100 Africa Cats
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100 Archeology Cats
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100 Blacksmith Cats
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100 Camp Cats
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100 Candy Cats
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100 Cats Lost In Space Find & Color
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100 Cyprus Cats
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100 Demon Cats
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100 Dubai Cats
https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/4324620/e342409a33b32b8cf865456cbba68951c1ca9b01/header.jpg?t=1779029989
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100 Factory Cats
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100 Hong Kong Cats
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100 Indonesia Cats
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100 Los Angeles Cats
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100 Marshmallow Cats
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100 Nature Cats
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100 Olympic Cats
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100 Radioactive Cats
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100 Ruin Cats
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100 School Cats
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100 Singapore Cats
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100 Snack Cats
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100 StarPaws Cats
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100 Thailand Cats
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100 Tiki Cats
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100 Underworld Cats
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100 Zombie Cats
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101 Cats in Dublin
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101 Cats in Florence
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101 Dogs Hidden in Bangkok
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101 Dogs Hidden in New Delhi
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101 Dogs Hidden in Rome
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8Doors: Arum's Afterlife Adventure
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A Rite from the Stars
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A Tithe in Blood
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Bad Dream: Afterlife
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Chemically Bonded
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Judgment
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Lives so Sweet
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Lock & Key: A Magical Girl Mystery
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Nobodies: Silent Blood
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Our Home, My Keeper
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Syrup and the Ultimate Sweet
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Witch You Want
Stats
Completed: 43
Achievements: 46,563
Perfect: 1212
Average %: 95
Comments
While looking through my completed list I found a few that had new achievements added to it without my knowledge so I decided hey lets put them in new. I then decided why not do the same for all beaten games I frankly didn’t realise how many I had uncompleted as I lost over 100! A whole 2% got removed by my decision and while I could wrangle them back in place I’ll just leave them be because that sounds like a pain
My favourite of the month goes to Judgment. While I would love to have another yuri to round off the favourite again I just can’t. Judgment was a great game and frankly our home betrayed me. It calls itself a cute and wholesome story. Don’t get me wrong most of that is true, but I mean it starts off with suicidal thoughts and ends in bloodshed. I then immediately played a tithe of blood and got hit the same way but that game at least lets you know!!! That was just a bad day for my yuri
May 2026
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Mafia: Definitive Edition
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Mafia II: Definitive Edition
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Assemble with Care
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Gori: Cuddly Carnage
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Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library!
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Life Eater
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The Red Pearls Of Borneo
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The Monster Inside
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Conscience
0.1 hours playtime
no achievements
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Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy
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Lingo 2
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Vampire Crawlers
25.75 hours playtime
153 of 161 achievements
GAME
PASS -
Motorslice
11.3 hours playtime
24 of 24 achievements
GAME
PASS -
Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy
3.4 hours playtime
12 of 26 achievements
GAME
PASS -
Archives of Trevosa
0 hours playtime
no achievements
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The Case of the Dungeon Descent
0 hours playtime
no achievements
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My Friends the Monster Trainers
0 hours playtime
no achievements
- Mafia: Definitive Edition: This is a post-GTA3 game, but one with clarity of design. Each of its 21 chapters is a single mission of varied styles and content, and while your One Man Army will explore the map over the course of these, it does not encourage you to go off-piste. Indeed, it may time you out if you stray too far outside zone. Similar games will drown you in side activities and side quests, which can actually draw attention to the thinness of their worlds. Mafia has a bunch of collectables but those are mostly for its free roam mode. Its laser-focus on progression through the story it wants to tell might feel constraining in a lesser game, but Mafia has such good writing and acting overall that it wasn’t an issue. Driving generally felt pretty good. Only significant niggles were that the AI was not great, that stealth could have used a distraction method, and that the somewhat janky lateral cover system could have included a dash forward into next cover rather than needing manual disengage and movement. 9/10
- Mafia II: Definitive Edition: I was wondering why the characters of this game felt worse than its predecessor, when I discovered that M1:DE had had a new writer overhaul the original. It’s still the same missions and broad beats, but with significantly strengthened relationships. In particular Tommy’s love interest Sarah is barely in the original version, while she is a consistent figure throughout the rework. M2:DE, however, appears to be fundamentally the same game as M2. Unlike M1, the writing and acting didn’t absolutely have to be replaced (at least from my quick sample of a youtube playthrough), and the duration that the story extends over was welcome, but the relationships do feel lesser and pulpier and more caricatured than M1:DE. There are vintage Playboy Playmate nudie pictures as collectables but the models aren’t identified in any way other than a collectable number, which speaks to a specific lack of care. 8/10
- Assemble with Care: A recent BLAEO review reminded me that I’d stalled halfway in this tiny tinkering puzzle game, so I finished the remaining puzzles. I did not pay attention to the story once I resumed, as it was largely why I initially stopped; if it wasn’t deliberately constructed to pad out a very short game, the writing and acting was at least not compelling enough to justify the roadblock in progressing to the next puzzle. As for the puzzles, you’re taking apart small personal and household items, replacing broken/misplaced parts, and putting them back together – and they’re ok, but mostly straightforward. 7-/10, but be prepared to race through the story if it shits you.
- Gori: Cuddly Carnage: An anthropomorphic cat on a hoverboard kills an Adorable Army of mutated biological toys, mostly unicorns. The game tries way way way too hard to be edgy, they could have cut a percentage of the combat, the combat camera would be better a little further out, because it tends to be quite chaotic and it can be a little tricky to track ranged combatants behind you. But the hoverboarding definitely works – there’s a button to lock onto rails, a double jump, an air jump, limited wall-riding, and some generous hang time to help you manoeuvre both during platforming and arena sections; it was rare that I fell during the former. And the levels are mechanically different enough despite common enemies. 8/10. (Steamgifts win)
- Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library: A second screen game for those with mild OCD. Books have been removed from their shelves by a mischievous fairy, and you need to put the sets of books back in order into the right section. At the start it’s a slow object hunt, but the more sets you do, the more points you’ll have to spend on spells to make the job easier. By the end, you’ll be grabbing and shelving a full set with a couple of button presses… unless you are going for the one non-magical achievement which is a far slower and more painstaking process. I didn’t experience any physics bugs (books pushing on books resulting in things falling through surfaces could have been catastrophic). 8/10 – but it very much is what it is.
- Life Eater This game is one of those oddities where it’s not pleasant or enjoyable, and nor is its gameplay particularly good, but I’m still going to recommend it if you are into experimental games. In Life Eater you are probably an insane serial killer, but you may well also be the only person stopping the god Zimforth from destroying the world. Either way, you take no pleasure in performing each year’s necessary kidnappings and sacrifices. You will spend your limited time selecting methods of gaining information to identify what your potential victims are doing and who they are (just a short text description with a name of an associated non-openable media file for each time period), while attempting to avoid notice. When you finally kidnap them, their status and attributes will determine how they are to be mutilated (there are a couple of more or less static images for the post-investigation phase, but the gore level is mild). The investigation gameplay is rote and significantly random (there’s a post-game endless mode), and is really more of a resource management game than a detective one. Disappointingly, except for unlocking some related periods, the methods you use to uncover information do not appear to affect your risks and abilities in future information gathering – you are not following delicate threads so much as making educated guesses with a shotgun and hoping to hit one of the few pieces of key information by happenstance. 7-/10 for gameplay, 8/10 for vibe (Steamgifts win)
- Red Pearls of Borneo – This pure detection game is well worth a play. You are a psychic who, in search of a client’s sister, works out what happened within a plantation in WW2 Borneo under looming threat of Japanese invasion, and beyond. A partial transcript for a particular hour at a particular location can be read when you use an object associated with a person at the scene, and the full transcript unlocks when you identify all people there at the time. There are a few minor oddities in the writing (though no AI use has been declared), and a fair bit of the last third is worse due to the structure and writing, but it’s still a 9-/10… and it’s free!
- The Monster Inside: A microscopic pulp noir visual novel. Music and art are effective. Gameplay consists either of selecting a conversation choice or finding a couple of hotspots to progress to the next of its seven chapters. Good for what it is, which isn’t much 7.5/10 (free)
- Conscience: A 10 minute snack of a fair detective game - 3d, but uses a Golden Idol style word-slot mechanic. 7.5/10 (free)
- Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy: A surprisingly enjoyable action adventure which very much captures a Weird Space Fantasy feel. With the exception of Gamora, who generally felt overly gentle character-wise, the team hold their own against their MCU counterparts (and surpass in the case of Mantis), with some well-written and acted banter. Of note was that there were some choices and consequences in the dialogues which had a little mechanical effect. 8.5/10
- Lingo II: Like Lingo, where you need to enter words into panels to progress, but with a different main mechanic. This has been overall far kinder to this point both in a bunch of cluing and design choices, and getting to the first ending was significantly easier, though there’s definitely rabbit hole ahead. Curiously, the order in which I’ve reached my 4 endings are the same as the order by percent of players finishing, so it’s again giving that read-my-mind magic. 9/10
- Vampire Crawlers: A card battler spin off of Vampire Survivors where the three companions you use determine which cards you have in your pool, and you move around 2.5d levels, which gives you some choice in order of combats. It was fine as a second screen game, but it relies on you buying permanent unlocks of necessary improvements using coins collected in a run to deal with its balance issues, and it’s nowhere as mechanically complex/interesting as Slay the Spire or Inscryption (Kaycees mod). 7.5/10 (Xbox 25.75h 153/161)
- Motorslice: A girl armed with a chainsaw performs feats of improbable parkour while traversing a ruined megastructure infested with construction robots gone aggressive. There’s some Shadow of the Colossus here as you reach gigantic bosses and do enough damage to their weakspots, and some Prince of Persia: Sands of Time with its wall runs, pole jumps, and traps; and some Mirrors Edge in the feel. It’s not as good as any of those at what it wants to do (eg: the weakspots are somewhat exploitable and there’s no stamina meter), but it’s still reasonable. The sense of impossible scale is great. The combat was mostly not great, and was mandatory as there are magic walls that won’t let you progress until you’ve killed all robots in an area. The perviness in the cut-scenes was surely unnecessary, and possibly influenced by some Japanese game I’ve not played. There’s one rather amusing and silly achievement, but none for the load of optional orbs that can be collected for extra challenge. 8/10 (Xbox 11.3h 24/24)
- Mixtape: As a GenX/Xennial, this was a joyously bittersweet and highly playful nostalgic work that should be experienced blind if possible. It’s been a very long time since something made me giggle anywhere near as much. At one point I (correctly) realised that this was probably Australian despite the US setting (Rage was/is very much a mixtape of a music program overnight on Fridays and Saturdays). There are a bunch of relatively minor flaws, but its emotional core is true, and that’s what made it a 10/10 for me, but I don’t know how much anemoia will hit those who came of age in a post-analogue world. I will say that if it’s not for you because you want more game than toy/story in your systems that’s understandable – I have that with a fair few games that focus on story over gameplay – but there’s a bunch of discourse that is fucking stupid to the point of hysteria. (Xbox 3.4h 12/26)
- Archives of Trevosa: A good little Roottrees-like where you work out the names and monikers of a royal dynasty by hunting through (and for) incompletely-translated documents. 8.5/10 (free)
- The Case of the Dungeon Descent: A small Obra-Dinn/Roottrees-ish puzzler where you must determine the fates of those who entered a fantasy dungeon by scrying for people, their objects and spells, and the locations they have visited. You can only view a scene when you can isolate one of its unique scrying combinations. Good plotting. 8/10 (free)
- My Friends the Monster Trainers: Another small jamwitch puzzler where you must determine the nature and capabilities of various Pokemon-style creatures through letters you receive. 7.5/10 (free)