Activities

Yesterday

devonrv

Vertical shoot-em-up. A shoots your regular guns, B fires a laser, and X uses your limited, screen-clearing bombs. The laser is kinda awkward since it starts off slowly moving away from your ship when the button is first held, but it instantly disappears entirely as soon as the button is let go, and on top of this, I didn’t notice much difference between it and the normal shots besides piercing (rarely useful) and slowing your ship’s movement, so I stuck with the regular guns for most of the game. I won’t call this a bullet hell because, besides one moment during the final boss on the hardest difficulty, there was always an obvious ship-wide opening to get through the bullet waves, so getting hit rarely felt unfair.

One thing I really like about this game is that, unlike a lot of other arcade-style shmups, this one actually saves your progress between stages, and getting game over only makes you redo the stage you’re currently on instead of having to start the whole game over.

One thing I didn’t like so much is the fact that the enemy waves thrown at you during the levels are randomized. Even before I realized this, I noticed the last couple levels started getting kinda repetitive and longer than they should have been, but it became obvious when I briefly started new games as the other playable ships to see how they played (their descriptions don’t really explain this) and the game kept throwing different enemies at me as the first wave. Plus, there are times where the randomizer doesn’t spawn any enemies and you’re just flying through an empty field for several seconds. Still, despite this, there is an actual difficulty curve here as well, with the enemies being spawned closer together and maybe shooting more frequently, too. I think the higher difficulties even affect this as well (and sometimes give bosses a new attack), but it’s hard to tell since there’s no description of what’s different between difficulties, and on top of this, I also feel like the higher difficulties increase the number of hits it takes to kill enemies and bosses as well, so between this and the aforementioned repetition, I’d only recommend beating the game once and not replaying it, not even on higher difficulties.

Lastly, although the game is mostly fair with its bullet patterns, there is one attack that’s a cheap hit: the last two or three bosses have laser attacks of their own that spawn instantly, and the only warning for where they’ll show up is an orange reticle against the red/orange background at the edge of the screen, so you won’t see or even know to look for it until after you’ve been hit by it a couple times.

Still, this is a pretty decent game overall, and I can easily recommend it for its base price of $2 (even moreso if you already have it from one of those itch.io bundles). You can buy it here: https://cosmiccrystal.itch.io/hellstar-squadron

about 19 hours ago 0 comments
fernandopa

February Assassination #1 (SG Win / PoP pick)

20.7 hours
26/59

Please consider liking my review on Steam - it means a lot to me!

It's so good that you wonder why no one has done it before

Sleeping Dogs might look slightly dated from a graphical perspective, but it still plays like a good wine. You have the open world formula popularized by GTA (in particular Vice City and San Andreas) with a location that is more charming and full of character than anything that Rockstar was ever able to pull off. I've been to Hong Kon 12 years ago, and it was uncanny how many memories were brought back by the setting alone. Sure, it's not always fully realistic from a geographical perspective (I thought it was a bit weird that you don't have Hong Kong Island separated from Kowloon by the Victoria Harbour), but if it fails on that it succeeds entirely on the way it captures the vibes. I of course don't remember specific streets from my time there, but I remember the feeling of being there and Sleeping Dogs captures that feeling exquisitely.

Other notable differences from GTA are the focus on melee combat instead of mostly guns, and the acrobatic nature of movement (in particular considering earlier GTAs barely allowed you to jump). Driving and gunplay are as good as you'd imagine, and the world is peppered with fun side-activities to keep you busy when you need a break from the main story. Speaking of which, it is so good. It's a good mix of The Departed with Infernal Affairs, and most characters carry their weight in the plot and in the worldbuilding. The story is serious and deals with some serious trauma, such as drug addition, double life, cold-blood murders, etc, but all the while keeping things light on the side with some dating missions as well as missions where you escort celebrities for a night out. It's a good mix that keeps things fresh, moving and interesting.

Some of the side content can get a bit repetitive, but at least you have tools to keep them more manageable (such as location trackers on your map). Driving can be slippery until you get used to it, and once you start unlocking the fancier cars and tougher races, it's so satisfying. The auto-aim (playing on controller) made shooting good enough that it kicks Max Payne's ass while delivering blows and environmental kills that put Batman to shame. And don't get me started on freaking jumping from a moving car onto another just because we can.

Sleeping Dogs is an extremely solid open-world game owing nothing to the games that came before or after it


about 23 hours ago 0 comments
Jekofob

Then came October and I were finally able to come home and live again = more time to game

Games added in October 2025

Games added: 20 (5 more than last month)
Games won: 1 (1 less than the month before)

Also got the Scooby Doo DLC for HF2, hope to try it soon :D

Different type of games, not much in the cat department this time… any opinions on the games would be lovely :)

1 day ago 2 comments

Feb 17 2026

NateSCC
Half-Life 2

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

7.5/10
77.7 hours
26 of 42 achievements (62%)

#395
#5 of 2026
February 17, 2026

2 days ago 0 comments
HurrJackal1

Old Steamgift Wins

So, I intend to review all my Steamgift wins, one way or another (definitely not going to do it for the rest of my library). I’ve previously reviewed most of my completions month by month, but am missing some early ones (A bunch of which were from icaio – RIP), and have only sporadically reviewed my DNFs. I can recall most of them, but it’s hazy vibes for a few. The times are not necessarily right (did some idling for cards afterwards in some cases).

FINISHED (all 12/12 of those unreviewed)
• MirrorMoon EP: Go to a planet, which will have some set of structures and artifacts to find, and manipulate these to lead you to the next planet. I don’t think it’s a good game, but it did capture a sense of mystery and wonder and distance and isolation, aided by the simple geometric graphics (reminiscent of the ancient Domark games Dark Side and Driller). I finished Side A, but not Side B, where the universe opens up into a vaster collation of seasonal (technically multiplayer) randomness.
• Eternal Hope: A forgettable Limbolike. The animated screenshot refreshed my memory of the goat, but not more. Vibe: mid – worth playing if you already have it, but only if you’re hard up for unashamed limbolikes if you don’t.
• Tick Tock Isle: A (very) short and at times quite amusing time travel adventure where you go back and make the right changes.
• A New Beginning - Final Cut: Old-school point-and-click adventure from the guy who did Syberia. Mostly straight forward, with some very occasional obscurity/moon logic. It helps in adventure games if you find one or more of the main characters likeable; I didn’t (there was something a bit off in tone).
• Dex: It’s listed as a metroidvania, but the only things I can remember of it are that combat was overly laborious, and the backtracking was unfun (the world design may well have been more hub-and-spoke than true metroidvania)
• Cards of the Dead: I guess it’s a roguelike – collect cards to use against challenges and zombies and escape at the end of the chapter. More luck than skill-based, and gets increasingly unbalanced against the player. I finished two of the three characters but the end boss of the third one was an exercise in frustration.
• Save Room – Organization Puzzle: Fit weapons, ammo and healing items into oddly-shaped inventory grid, sometimes combining them or using them up. Not at all tricky except for the last puzzle or two, but I enjoyed it for what it was. I believe this is based on one (or more?) of the Resident Evils.
• The Last Campfire: A thoroughly charming cinematic puzzle adventure game – definitely worth playing.
• Super Dungeon Boy: A reasonably good platformer, with some slightly awkward physics, and a good –and occasionally devious – set of secrets to collect.
• Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons: Coordinate a pair of brothers (twin stick controller) through a cinematic puzzle adventure. Not just a good game mechanically, but also very effective emotionally – builds to a degree on what Ico did.
• Grim Legends: The Forsaken Bride: My first hidden object game, and one that at the time I found had a surprising amount of effort/care put into it. I liked it so much that I went on a bit of a hidden object game kick afterwards, but am now rather over them.
• The Innsmouth Case: A choose-your-own-adventure style visual novel with a tongue-in-cheek take on the Cthulhu mythos. I found it to walk the line well between silliness and faithfulness, and rather enjoyed it, but there will be Lovecraft lovers who will absolutely hate what they have done. It lacks any kind of narrative “map” for replays, so some of the paths are a bit tricky to find.

WILL NOT FINISH (9/26 of those unreviewed to date)
• Summum Aeterna: A roguelite whose combat is ok, but that is distinctly lacking in its (random) level design. I guess it’s a filler game for the studio to bring in some income between their metroidvania releases.
• Meadow: An odd combat-free MMO with a striking patchwork quilt visual style built around exploration and emotes and cooperation, where you play an animal. Somehow a number of my achievements are very rare (but to me blindingly obvious), while I’m missing a bunch that would require far more time and effort to have achieved. It is not a good game, but there are definitely those who will love it as an experience. I might – might - end up playing it again some time, but it’s not a game that can be “beaten” other than collecting everything, and some achievements can only be gotten if you buy a bunch of the developer’s other games.
• Eidolon: A lost-in-the-wilderness game, that really captures some sense of that despite it’s retro graphics. A deliberately horrid experience, but an atmospheric one (literally, at times). Meadow scratched my exploration itch far better, and I really don’t have a survival game itch.
• Remnants of Naezith: Get to the end as quickly as possible. What makes this particularly difficult is that you need to do it by swinging and releasing, and retaining the right amount of momentum. I beat the first world (only 5.5% of owners have done that), but the second (only 3.2%) and later worlds were beyond my abilities/patience. The best players are amazing, though (the game allows you to watch their runs).
• Gemcraft - Frostborn Wrath: A deep tower defence game I played and enjoyed a bunch, but it did get to the point at which it was more frustrating than fun, where you really need to optimise everything very carefully, possibly with a spreadsheet as there’s a lot of variables to optimise.
• The Divine Invasion: A woefully bad game with some unbelievably – unbelievably – good reviews, and the only game I have ever left a Steam review for that wasn’t badge related: “One of the most miserable hours of gameplay ever, with 5/6 of the achievements reached. Watch a Let’s Play on youtube before even thinking of buying this, at which point you won’t”.
• Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet: Technically a metroidvania, and quite stylish with its black silhouette plus zone colour graphics, though zones loop back to a common spine rather than being properly interconnected. I completed 5 of 7 zones, but constantly manouvering something like an overfull shopping trolley with wobbly wheels is is painful.
• Weaving Tides: A puzzle/shooter/explorer which could really have used a map – because not only is some of the navigation a little confusing, but much of each world is visually fairly similar, so you have to remember the geometry of the level without sufficient other cuing. Getting to the last boss from the save was a pain, the boss was annoying, and when I retried it after a significant amount of time I couldn’t remember how to get back (though admittedly I didn’t try very hard).
• Toki: A remastered (literal) arcade game – I completed a couple of levels and that was enough. I probably shouldn’t have entered this, and just played it on MAME.

2 days ago 0 comments
Jekofob

The worst month of my life, glad its over.. I still got games though.. what else is new..

Games added in September 2025

Games added: 15 (1 less than last month)
Games won: 2 (2 more than the month before)

So there is that, if Hogwarts will get some bad glances, I will just add that I got it to remember my mom by (I did get 2 angry messages on steam and 1 person unfriended me) … so… yeah not much else I want to say about this month…

Recommendations are always a great thing though :D

2 days ago 2 comments

Feb 16 2026

devonrv

More itch.io games, including finally reaching that 1700+ games bundle from six years ago (there were a few I bumped up after seeing SG giveaways for them, but only now have I properly gotten to the bundle chronologically).

SATAN LOVES CAKE is okay for a free metroidvania, though it can be kinda confusing at first because the right path has a few different branches that all dead-end until you go through the left path. Worse, it takes way too long to charge your weapon–and then you have to wait even longer for it to cool down before you can attack again! Sure, there’s an upgrade that reduces its charge time to what it should’ve been from the beginning, but you’ll need to spend your currency on progression powers first, including one that gets quietly added to the shop as you explore the second area and wonder how you’re supposed to get past all these new dead ends. The bosses could also stand to have less forced-waiting in their attack patterns.

Mobility is another platformer that’s really only okay because it’s free, since the levels are quite insubstantial for at least half the game. The goal is to touch all platforms in the level, but you’re really not doing much besides making basic jumps. There’s a hard mode, but that has the platforms disappear after you touch them, and given how aimless some of the levels can be, that’s the wrong way to increase difficulty for this type of game since it can take some trial and error to figure out which path the game expects you to go, so I’d still recommend playing on normal. The harder difficulties also remove checkpoints, which–as I’ve said many times in the past–doesn’t make games harder, only more tedious, so that’s another reason to stay on normal mode.

And now, a few of the bundle games. BIT RAT Singularity is mostly easy, but the last one-and-a-half puzzles are kinda tricky, even if the gameplay is quite sluggish. The rats ironically don’t have as much impact on the gameplay or story as the title and narration would lead you to believe, and the game does end on a cliffhanger, but don’t worry: the full game will come out sometime in 2018! XD So yeah, this is probably all it’ll ever be, and $2 is quite a stretch for how few tricky puzzles it has, but if you already got it in one of those bundles, I say give it a try.

EAT GIRL is kinda like Pac-Man but with more enemies and levels, and instead of one wave of dots lining every path, there are three-or-so waves of dots that only cover specific areas/patterns. It’s mostly okay, but Greg’s chasing pattern can be hard to get used to, and he makes such an annoying crunching noise that I used 7zip to overwrite those ogg files so I didn’t have to hear that noise constantly during those already-difficult levels. I also encountered a bug where the ghosts would sometimes chase you around a corner instead of stopping at the wall (which made a certain small postgame level very frustrating), but apparently, there was an update shortly after I downloaded the game that fixes the ghosts’ decision-tree, so maybe you’ll have a better time than I did. Also, postgame as a whole is kinda annoying since it requires revisiting certain levels with a new power you don’t get until after beating the game, but since you likely won’t remember which levels have those steel crates blocking secret areas, you pretty much have to do trial and error revisiting every stage until you’ve gone through all of them (and the postgame ending was quite disappointing). Postgame also includes a level with a wall of electric-volt shooters, and since the main game doesn’t familiarize you with them that much, it can take some trial and error for you to realize you need to rush forward and go near around half of them to make them put up their electric forcefield, thus delaying their volt-shots until after the other half shoot so that you don’t get trapped by an unavoidable wall of electricity and die. Again, its base price of $5 is a stretch, but it’s worth trying if you already got it in a bundle.

By the way, I’ve been trying to stick to games I’d at least somewhat recommend, but itch.io really pushes Lenna’s Inception hard for just how boring it is. Seriously, dungeon design struggles to be on par with the original Legend of Zelda for NES, and sometimes, it doesn’t even hit that low bar. For all the talk about procedural generation supposedly making games more replayable, a single run in this game felt like I was playing the same dungeon eight times over, just with a different texture pack and boss. Oh, and if you’re specifically looking for an easy romp, this game still won’t be for you since some of the bosses have unintuitive or cheap attacks, like the squid boss’s second phase where it turns into an invulnerable flying saucer and spams homing projectiles (it took a minute or two for the boss to finally use its tractor beam so my bombs would blow it up). Plus, the only way to access the postgame & good ending is to do a bunch of unintuitive stuff that you’d only maybe know about by wandering around the equally-bland overworld, or keeping a walkthrough handy from before you start the game since it’s very easy to lock yourself out of the postgame by accident, and the hint you get in the normal ending is too vague to be much use. Sure, a walkthrough would spoil the plot twist, but it’s also a fairly common plot twist that you’d easily figure out yourself during the bridge cutscene at the halfway point (or you may even figure it out before then). If you want a roguelite zeldaclone, I recommend Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos instead (on sale, of course).

Lastly, On Rusty Trails is a platformer that actually stands on its own somewhat. You automatically walk on the walls/ceiling when you jump at them or walk to a ledge, and after a few levels, you get a suit that lets you switch between orange and blue, likewise toggling collision with same-color blocks and hazards–and even checkpoints! Speaking of, checkpoints are very frequent, maybe even more frequent than they need to be, but that’s not a problem. It’s not even a huge deal that you have to find a nearby token before you can activate a checkpoint, partly since the game doesn’t expand on this mechanic much and there’s almost always a nearby token that’s easy to see/obtain. You could try to beat the levels without spending any tokens, but I didn’t notice any aknowledgement the one time I did beat a level with all of its tokens, so I say just use the checkpoints as you encounter them. There is a difficulty curve here, but it’s very gradual, so it might take a couple worlds before the game starts being fun, but there are also seven worlds total, so it does get there. My main issue is that the last level of world six has green meteors fall way too fast for you to react, so you kinda have to memorize where they fall in order to get past. Also, the first two levels in world 4 weirdly barely have any checkpoints, making them kinda annoying to redo if you die there. (EDIT: And the momentum can be awkward at times). Still, this is a decent game, and even if you don’t already have it from one of those itch.io bundles, it’s still worth getting on its own on sale (it’s even also on Steam).

3 days ago* 0 comments
ninglor03

Ninglors Log 428

09.02.26 – 16.02.26

February Progress:
2
PPU monthly:
done
February Additions:
1

Games finished this week:

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

123 hours, 55 of 55 achievements
Present from 2025


Untold Mystery: Angel’s Cry

6 hours, 20 of 20 achievements
Replay for cheevos


Won/Gifted Games:
Bought Games:
Currently playing:
Growth Dahlia’s View

So much from me :3
Have a lovely week!
Queen Ninglor

4 days ago* 4 comments

Feb 15 2026

Εμεθ

Two-Week Report: February

Half-Life 2
Beaten -> Mastered

Jak 3

24.7 hours
88 of 88 achievements

The postgame here was much easier than Jak II. Nothing in this trilogy really comes close to Jak II's gold races in terms of difficulty.

Half-Life 2
Unfinished -> Mastered

Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix Subset: Level 100 on Destiny Islands

189.2 hours
10 of 10 achievements

Got it done about 30 hours earlier than expected, with no fast forward, macros or autoclickers. I took on this challenge to prove to myself that I could put tons of tedious hours into something without quitting halfway—more of a doomscrolling detox exercise than an achievement hunt, but I'll take the badge. I might do something similar again with a Professor Oak challenge.

+1 Backlog

7% (62/892)
4% (40/892)
3% (24/892)
86% (764/892)
0% (2/892)

Free Games Added: 1

4 days ago 0 comments

Feb 14 2026

Daerphen
  • Aragami

    34 hours playtime

    51 of 51 achievements

Report #425: Aragami

There is no rush

Well well. This has been in my pile of shame (started, got some achievements and dropped) for quite some time. First achievement I got in 2017. Finally took the time to finish it. And my god this has been a fun game.
It is mainly a stealth game, because if you get into fights, you will die (most probably). Teleport from one shadow to another, my favourite play style was the “no kill, no detect”. For the sake of achievements I also had to play each chapter once with “kill all threat”, but also this helped to gather all the collectibles.

If you like games like Dishonored, Styx and Assassins Creed, I recommend check this out. There is also a sequel, which will be played in the next 9 years :D

5 days ago 0 comments