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RobbyRatpoison's May 2026 BLAEO Review
Another month down, made some good progress! I beat 4 games (plus an extra one if you include getting 25% of the achievements in Goat Simulator, which does not have a definitive ending) and I 100% completed 14 more. I’m making this post a bit early because I don’t see myself beating any other games this month, but if I do I will try to remember to wrap it into my post for next month.
We’ll start with Gourdlets. It’s cute but it’s barely a game. You get little creatures and they interact with objects that you place in the world. When they interact enough, they sprout flowers that are used to unlock new items and the ultimate goal is to unlock all of the items. Not sure if I just forgot or if I never learned this, but you have to hover over a Gourdlet to get it’s flower. By not knowing this, getting 100% took a lot longer than it needed to.
Next up is The Messenger which was a great 2D Platformer with an amazing soundtrack. I played it years ago (maybe it was on Game Pass?) but I never actually beat it. Some parts were tough but I always felt like I was capable of overcoming the challenges. I enjoyed it thoroughly but after 14 hours I was ready to move on, didn’t go for 100% on this one.
Minami Lane is like a city builder or something? I twas a lot different from the other games I typically play but it was enjoyable. Not challenging but it was chill and had a nice art style. I don’t have much else to say about it.
Salamander County Public Television was a wild game full of weird minigames. Easy to beat but some of the challenges were quite challenging. The story was funny and the game definitely surpassed my expectations.
Pushy and Pully in Blockland was kind of like Bomberman. Mostly easy levels but some were quite difficult, not a lot in between. I didn’t have to do much clean up after beating the game in order to get the final achievements for 100%.
Sapo 3D is my type of game! Pixels, polygons, and 3D platforming. The movement was crisp and the extra challenges were a treat. Not sure how I feel about games having speedrun achievements… Apparently I don’t mind much since I did it, and it took about 45 minutes. Lovely game!
If Found is beautiful. Basically a visual novel with an eraser-style mechanic to make progress. Unfortunately I didn’t care for the story which is pretty damaging for a visual novel. Don’t let this turn you away from it if you like VNs, because I have never found one with a story that I enjoy. I barely ever “play” VNs because I don’t consider them games, but the stunning visuals made me have to try this one.
Berry People is a nice game about taking pictures of berry creatures. It’s not a true Sokpop game, but rather Sokpop adjacent. Had to look up some stuff and had some issues with the game getting really laggy after keeping it open for too long. It’s a nice game.
Milo’s Quest is a puzzle game with some lite combat. The game could be a little better if there was a map. Milo might be a good boy but his game is not a very good game.
Rex: Another Island is a 2D Platformer that kinda sucked. I didn’t hate it but I didn’t even consider continuing for 100% after beating it.
Merry Glade sucked more and I am glad it only took an hour for 100%. Mushroom boss fight was kinda cool though tbh.
Barro GT is a racing game that is completely trivial to get 100% achievements in. The achievements are all “Race on Race Track #” but there is no goal time to beat, and you don’t even have to complete a single lap! Just load a level, exit out, and you get the achievement. I decided to at least complete a 3 lap time trial on each map for good measure. It was lackluster.
Yon Paradox was an okay puzzle game with the frustrating mechanic of “you die if you see yourself” or something like that? I didn’t really get it. Like, a clone of you spawns after some time and follows the path you took, and you have to avoid the clone. I never really fully understood it. And when you die, you start from square one which sucks. The puzzles were decent and the clone thing was interesting, just a bit too punishing. I bet they added the clone as a way to pad out the time.
The Cat Games was a short game made of a few minigames, this one was nice. Just a small cute game where you can have a little fun.
Fox and Bunny was a broken platformer with a bad English translation. Avoid.
Jumps was plenty of fun for a short amount of time. First person 3D platforming done right, with some moderate speed and rocket jumping. Also interesting mechanic of needing to collect jumps to use them. I wish there was more achievements in this game so I could feel compelled to keep playing for longer.
She Sees Red was like a movie with branching paths for the user to choose. I decided not to make any choices and just watched as the default story played out. It was okay, maybe better when you play again and make different choices to see what happens. English dub was jarring, I had to switch to original Russian voice with English subtitles.
Finally we have Graze Counter which is a SHMUP that rewards the played for close calls where enemy bullets graze your ship. Cool unique mechanic! Not sure why the game doesn’t have achievements, it should at least have achievements for beating the final boss using each ship.
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Gourdlets
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The Messenger
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Minami Lane
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Salamander County Public Television
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Pushy and Pully in Blockland
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Sapo 3D
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If Found
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Berry People
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Milo's Quest
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Rex: Another Island
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Merry Glade
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Barro GT
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Yon Paradox
4.0 hours playtime
no achievements
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The Cat Games
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Fox and Bunny
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Jumps
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She Sees Red
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Graze Counter
1.3 hours playtime
no achievements
May 28 2026
My birthday, my dad’s birhday and some visits to the hospital regarding my leg - that sums up this month for me.
Games added in April 2026
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Harold Halibut
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SEASON: A letter to the future
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Cabernet
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The Procession to Calvary
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8AM
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Urban Jungle
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NineHells
0 hours playtime
no achievements
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The Invincible
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Henry Halfhead
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Shy Cats Hidden Orchestra
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Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars: Reforged
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Mineko's Night Market
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Graveyard Keeper
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Nocturnal
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Unboxathon
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My Little Cafe Nightmare
0 hours playtime
no achievements
Games added: 16 (6 less than the last month)
Games won: 1 (1 more than last month)
Also got some DLC’s (Coloring Pixels and Pixel Puzzles)
A mixed lot, only 1 cat game :) Recommendations always welcome <3
May 27 2026
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Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead
8 hours playtime
13 of 13 achievements
Report #429: Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead
In principal just another Bridge Constructor. But I liked the mission variety more than in other versions. You don’t have just a car that is moving, but also you have to kill Zombies, destroy enemy cars or bandits. All that with different characters, that can lure zombies, throw granades, shoot rifle or slash through herds.
At the end only recommended, if you like Bridge Constructor games.
May 26 2026
May Abandonmnent #1 (Backlog / Snowball)
Please consider liking my review on Steam - it means a lot to me!
One of the worst, if not the worse twin stick shooter I ever played. It is incredibly opaque in communicating information to the player, to the point that you beat a boss and has no clue what each power-up is supposed to do; has this awful design choice of tying shots to the four face buttons, meaning enemies can approach you from each angle but you can only shoot in four directions; movement is sluggish and you'll frequently be mobbed against walls and into unavoidable explosion damage; and the success of your run is mostly determined by RNG - where enemies will spawn once you enter a room (if near the door, your run is over. and if far, you can kite them one at a time to beat the game without taking damage). Your pistol is piss-weak and if you're doing poorly, the game rewards you with not giving any powerups, whereas if you're doing well you'll have a lot of redundant powerups all at once. Awful design, poor gameplay loop, an experience best avoided
May 24 2026
May Assassination #7 (Backlog / Snowball)
Please consider liking my review on Steam - it means a lot to me!
One of the best puzzle games I've played in recent memory. What shines for me is the simplicity of it - every level consists of a 5x5 chess-like grid, and you receive anywhere from 1-5 pieces that need to be placed in order to power up or fuel up all your buildings on the map. And on this extremely basic premise, you have loads and loads of mechanical modifiers that ensure not only that each level is unique, but that each stretch of the game is unique as well.
Some stretches will have you dealing with spikes that come up and down on alternate turns, some will have you dealing with red crystals that prevent piece placement, and some will have you dealing with glitched patches that grow like a cancer, to name a few. The optional puzzles keep adding new mechanics, and the game is graceful enough to end before it becomes dull.
One of the things I loved about it is that, while some puzzles can be hard, there are just enough options that you can bruteforce the ones that stump you. Sure, it takes a bit of time and patience to do so, but it's better than getting stuck forever on a few levels like happened to me on Snakebird or Baba Is You.
All of that is wrapped in a game with a simplistic but confident art style that is charming and unique at the same time, some sound design that is arguably limited, but fits the atmosphere incredibly well, and some wordless environmental storytelling that works much better than it should.
How this game hasn't become a puzzling benchmark is beyond my understanding, but I hope my review at least help some people who are curious to finally give it a go!
Got this when it was free on Epic, but put it off because the cutscenes were too long for my tastes. Finally went back and started chipping away at it, and now I’ve 100%ed the game at last.
This is a hybrid Visual Novel+Picross/Nonograms game. It’s themed around being a detective and solving a murder, but all the evidence-gathering is just a cursor you slide around until it starts beeping, at which point you click to get sent to a picross puzzle. The rest of the detective work is either done by the characters for you, or you get a choice of three options, being looped back to the choice if you pick the wrong one. On one hand, you really need to be into the story to enjoy the game due to how big a part the Visual Novel segments are, but at the same time, if you’re hoping for more substantial detective-style gameplay, you’ll be disappointed.
The picross puzzles are all standard. No special or unique gimmicks here; it’s mostly just your average 10x10 or 15x15 boards, with the most it deviates being something like having a 5x10 board or 15x10. Near the end, you’ll get a few 20x15 boards (most of which are optional), but that’s as far as it goes.
The story itself is okay. Normally, I wouldn’t bring up story since gameplay is the most important part of games, but 1) it really is a huge part of this game in particular, maybe even more so than the nonograms, and 2) it really bothered me how heavy-handed the game can be with its foreshadowing, to the point it kinda makes the characters look stupid sometimes. For example, in the first chapter, you find out that one of the suspects planted a tape recorder that captured the audio of the murder, and it’s pretty obvious that this guy wasn’t the killer, but the game keeps looping you back to that dialogue choice until you finally accuse him and–surprise surprise–it wasn’t him. Then, in chapter four, one of the suspects asks “Am I a suspect?” because he wants to leave, and I was just like “Yes you are; it was YOUR memento we found near the body, and the other two suspects don’t exactly have the physique needed to beat someone up,” but then the characters are all like “Nah, you can go” without the game even giving you so much as a fake choice like last time. Guess who the killer was.
Overall, it’s okay, but you need to be someone who really gets into the story to fully enjoy this game (but not get into it so much that you notice the plot contrivances). If it sounds appealing and you missed the Epic giveaway, get it on sale.
Progress report: April ‘26 (a.k.a. Am I… Changing?)
…or do I just not have as much time as I used to? It’s taken me so long to get this out, I started considering doing away with write-ups again. Hard to figure yourself out when you’re mentally going ⤵️.
A puzzle game with a simple premise: examine a setup of blocks (or "bars") and remove a preset amount to ensure they'll stand still afterwards.
It's as minimalistic as it gets: the levels randomly cycle through a few muted, pastel palettes, the background is empty, evoking the feel of playing in a void and the BGM, though limited, further enhances the dreamlike quality. However, were it a dream, it wouldn't be a particularly good one.
Some levels stumped me, but that's probably because I don't know my physics. (Though because full guides are available, I never truly got stuck on a level.) In stark contrast to the BGM, the level fail sound is jarring. When launching the game, the first thing that pops up is a command panel window… and then it stays open for as long as the game is. Now that's puzzling.
When a game is as sluggish as this one from the moment it opens up, my first instinct is to lower the graphical settings; lo and behold, the options menu here is extremely limited. The only thing I could actually do was going from fullscreen to windowed mode… and then, the resolution it launched in had black bars at the side of the screen. Reading the (negative) reviews, apparently it was on me to fix that one by simply resizing the window. Most modern games just don't have this problem, so that's not on my mental troubleshooting list, I suppose. Heck, this game won't even tell you what resolution it changed to. (unless that showed up on the control panel, I didn't think to check)
All in all, it… well, it's certainly a game. If you have any experience with Blender, though, it seems you could run simulations like these for yourself without paying for it. I randomly decided to redeem this key from an old bundle that was rotting somewhere deep on a list and I'm sure I would not have stumbled upon it otherwise.
This one is huge, though for good reason. These cats really are hidden in a genuine painting from the Song Dynasty. That's not just some random concept to justify pushing out a dozen of these games at once.
And when I say the cats are hidden, they really are hidden. Some of them straight up blend in with the background. …YMMV on that one, I suppose. I do, also, enjoy the variety of cat sounds in use here.
I've previously played Plants Huddled Together from the same dev and I like knowing that they still put out F2P games from time to time. Will keep on keeping an eye on their stuff.
Bought Humble's Sekai Project 2026 bundle, so I'm back at it again.
This one is a prequel to the prequel to the original game and, much like vol. 0, a collection of vignettes of the Minazuki family spending their time together. Although there's no romance or sex happening here, watching Shigure talk about "catpanions" to Chocola and Vanilla feels like being privy to the start of a grooming process (and not the animal kind). I know this game is 8 years old by now, but really, is there still nobody on the dev team who can tell how bad this really looks? At least I got to enjoy Azuki being her regular self.
Night Book follows Loralyn, an English <-> French interpreter working the night shift remotely while pregnant and caring for her mentally ill father. It would've been a shift like any other, if not for the titular book being in her clients' possesion. Besides English and French, Loralyn also knows the fictional language of Kannar, which, by her own admission, makes her very employable. She's persuaded to read a part of the book and ends up summoning a demonic entity. Depending on your choices, she can convince her clients to help her seal the curse or fail, letting herself and/or others become possessed.
This was created in lockdown and boy, does that come through. Much like Five Dates and Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus?, Night Book is a series of video calls, so that no two characters are ever physically in the same room. Smart as this may seem, I think it hurt the story in the long run. I understand now why the playthrough I've seen a few years back never had a completionist-type follow-up. It's just all so… nothing.
It's really short, the choices don't give you much variety and nothing feels like it's happening as a direct result of whatever you chose, all the way down to the end. Whichever ending you get first, treat it as the right one and get out while you can. Julie Dray was great as Loralyn and this may well have been the first second game I ever played with a pregnant protagonist, but even if that's your sole criteria, there's still better games to choose from.
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK TELEVISION
I barely watch modern TV - not to mention retro - so I didn't stand a chance against these questions. I "earned" -$29.500 in the 21 question game (might have gone better if I had picked one of the other Jack Attack clues) and -$7.500 in the 7 question game. Only a couple of these left to go now.
See you…? …next month?
May 21 2026
May Assassination #6 (Backlog / Snowball)
Please consider liking my review on Steam - it means a lot to me!
After playing Technobabylon, a game I enjoyed a lot, I made a point of trying to play every Wadjet Eye games I could get my hands on, and Blackwell Legacy was the first one that I was able to. Well …. I'm certainly less excited about their back catalog now, let's put it that way.
First of all, Blackwell Legacy offers an experience that is much more akin to old school point & click games. Luckily the runtime is quite short, and there are few moon logic cases (I found two during my playthrough, which I won't spoil here but one involves Ouija Board connections and the other involves telephone shenanigans), but considering Technobabylon had none, this is a bit frustrating. It's an open world-ish game (to the P&C standards at least), meaning you could be stuck in a certain point with only possible option of what to do to advance the game, with no idea of where to go, what to do, who to talk to, what to say, what items to combine with what or to use where. Technobabylon solved it by 'locking' you in a small area with only items that are required in that area, reducing the amount of permutations possible. This is a great design choice that unfortunately the Blackwell Legacy lacks. This game still relies a lot on slow-traveling all over the place, some pixel-hunting, and trying everything everywhere if you get stuck, just in case.
While that's a low, some of the other things that made Technobabylon great are still on display here. You've got strong writing, superb voice acting, charming pixel art, and a well-realized world, albeit the one on display here is more mundane and less exciting/unique when compared to Technobabylon. Also, the pacing is a bit off, the game ended before it really got going, it feels there's very little in the way of a climax to the story, and that the credits roll before you have done what you were supposed to do. I don't know, it's weird.
If you're a hardcore point-and-click fan, you will probably like this one, but if you're casual about them maybe you better avoid it. General consensus is that the series picks up pace from here so I think I'll still try them, but it's very hard to really recommend this one as it is.
May 19 2026
#407
#17 of 2026
May 19, 2026