Activities
Today
August Assassination #3 (Backlog)
Played on itch.ioI had been looking for so long for a game that scratches the same itch as GNOG. That game is Vignettes. A wordless, character-less sandbox where you rotate objects until they transmorph into unexpected, different objects. As tactile as puzzle games go. I had to resort to a guide towards the end when the game had already beaten me, but that didn't reduce my enjoyment of the game at all. Highly recommended. Also I love how the devs communicate with the players as we uncover more and more secrets!
A very-very late summary of past months because time is flying - June&July
My last post was about April, so I have May, June and July to catch up with. Summer is not exactly my favourite season, and it usually has its mark on my lower game count - I just don’t like the heat, so I have way less patience and mental fortitude for gaming, or anything really.
I guess I’ll drop the money spent, new games bought kinda thing, even if I buy little, from the bundles the backlog just builds - and it ain’t making me happier to focus on it and its tracking.
2026 June
After May’s MiaM and Infinite Backlog’s Bingo I played way too many games, I couldn’t really find what to play with so the drop is very noticeable, especially in June.
Mega Mosaic
SG win from lext
I have little to say about this game. Minesweeper-like game, colours light and dark, finish zones to uncover an art banner of some sort. I had to use the hint button quite often: The game is one big puzzle, as you could strictly just go from known parts, and eventually you get stuck most ways, and the puzzle is just too huge (250x250) to find valid blocks by yourself. It was good for what it was.
Inbeto
Make colourful bento boxes by adding new elements to the box, moving them around, rotate them, copy them, etc. Can be surprisingly tricky, but I deeply appreciate the simplicity - the box size is clear, the tools you can use is a few and it’s always set for the level, and you know how it should look like. You can’t lost on too big puzzles, or get overwhelmed by choices, as how other puzzles like to do progression. The cat-family story is presented as one (or two?) static picture after each of the 14 worlds, each of which consists of 9 levels if I remember well. So it’s still 95% puzzles, 5% story/art :)
Nuclear Blaze
Gift from vot4ol
I played a few 2D firefighting flash games, and I always loved them, and Nuclear Blaze also seemed interesting. It’s a wonderful little arcade-y game with its silliness and simple mechanics. Go through levels in a very SCP-coded location, stop fire from spreading, find secrets and hidden cats, unlock secret ending, and have fun. Good balance of knowing your goal and having some freedom how to approach it. Some levels are straightforward, others have extra goals / necessities to do, so they are a little puzzle-y without coming to a screetching halt.
Carefully done by devs who seemed to have fun - absolutely deserving its 96% :)
2026 July
Proverbs
It’s Mega Mosaic (almost) again! Zones are not uncovering designs, but pixel art depictions of dutch proverbs. Also, every zone is a separate puzzle, so you know each can be solved on its own, which is an upside compared to Mega Mosaic.
Record of Lodoss War-Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth-
SG win from schmetti
This game was on my WL for a loooong time, so it felt like a wonder that I won it. Also, I haven’t read / watched Record of Lodoss War, but a metroidvania sounded really cool.
And it was really cool! The pixelart is are absolutely gorgeous and the animations are detailed and fluid.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t get some references, but the game itself is pretty light on story as it seemed. It’s also pretty light on the metroidvania elements, as there is barely any backtracing needed. But it’s still a super solid experience - you can change between fire and water “states”, absorbing the attacks, like in Ikaruga. Your weapon and equipment/spells have different elements, that different enemies are weak/resistant to. The combat is quite simple but very solid, the archery skill isn’t used too often but very well done. The platforming and the design works really well, and the bossfights are quite fun and challenging. Had a lot of fun even in the boss rush mode, after figuring out them each :) Highly recommended for a fun platformer-brawler-ish game!
Evil West
A game with some super cool emlements that generally fails to be “good” as of cheap design choices when it comes to actual gameplay.
What could go wrong with a game, where vampires roam the wild west, and a secret government organisation sends vampire hunters after them?
Other than featuring Temu Hugh Jackman, the game really shows it’s AA elements as you play. Corridor gameplay, invisible walls galore, and most of the game features lockdown room after lockdown room after lockdown room. You literally have to climb into “arenas” to fight enemies, kill them all, and move on. That’s 80% of the game.
And for that, the game really suffers in my opinion. The enemy variety is low, yet most enemies have way too high health, or a gimmicky way to fight them / break their shields. You have a lot of tools (mostly gimmicks) in your arsenal, but at the end of the day, most are super situational. Your good old gauntlet, rifle, and later explosives (if upgraded) are enough. Oh, and the game is coded in the way that every weapon uses a cooldown system to reload, and the cooldown only works if you’re in combat. If you kill the last enemy with your shotgun, you have to wait the cooldown in the next combat. Meanwhile between the fights, you can use the same shotgun to blow up up crates and whatnot. Such a jarring, stupid choice :D
The story itself is pretty alright. You can tell some plot twist from hours away it’s as unoriginal, but characters are surprisingly well designed visually and personality-wise too. This world and game just begs for a Dishonored-like mission system from a hub, instead of this rigid and repetitive combat recipe.
Had quite a lot of grief from tanky enemies (I suggest you keep on easy for the fastest progress) and the unimaginative, repetitive combat, while characters and some locations, set pieces and lore elements are the absolute high points. Like with May’s The Ascent, this is a game thats world deserves a different, better gameplay.
(also some enemy designs are just so funny. Who makes special, monstrous foul-bloods through special vampire blood, then hammer random spikes, fence pieces or metal sheets into them? The design is cohesive, but unfitting to the lore and needlessly edgy :D :D )
The Last Hero of Nostalgaia
SG win from s4k1s
Surprisingly good Souslike homage. Has a unique world, unique idea, lots of lore, takes itself seriously (hence homage, not parody) when it comes to lore, but you can still find many easter egg-like equipment (Dead Space, Doom armor, just to name a few).
Definitely doesn’t live up to the originals in quality, but it’s a really decently made indie. You unlock extra abilities of items by “remembering them” at a certain location, which prompts quite a lot backtracking - you’re also incentivised to do this by having permanent bonuses linked to the number of remembered items. The game has excellent interconnectivity, but it can get a bit too much if you want to play it like a classic Souls game. Has some wonky animations that you may be familiar with (hello Titanite Demon hitting through environment) if you played originals… so prepare for mace-knights doing a 180 around you, certain wide attacks hitting past its animation, or werewolves jumping around corners and so :D
I enjoyed the demo and I was quite happy with the game too. Was a relatively smooth ride, and I’m not a particularly experienced Soulslike player.
In the three months I’ve dabbled with:
Legend of Mana (I feel a bit lost, and the game doesn’t super resonate with me with its locations and systems)
Crash Bandicoot™ N. Sane Trilogy (started for MiaM, realised how stupid that is :D)
Quake II (Played its multi back in the school, was fun. Maybe the timing is not good, but the campaign fails to grab me, and didn’t want to force it more. Shooting through brown-orange rooms until the level ends doesn’t sounds fun right now)
and maybe a few others not worth mentioning.
A very-very late summary of past months because time is flying - May
My last post was about April, so I have May, June and July to catch up with. Summer is not exactly my favourite season, and it usually has its mark on my lower game count - I just don’t like the heat, so I have way less patience and mental fortitude for gaming, or anything really.
I guess I’ll drop the money spent, new games bought kinda thing, even if I buy little, from the bundles the backlog just builds - and it ain’t making me happier to focus on it and its tracking.
2026 May
In May I went for the Monthly in a Month participation, and also tried to get some entries for Infinite Backlog I think (Why not?), so it was a really active month. Left its mark on the next, I guess it was a mini burn-out?
A Guidebook of Babel
Interesting point and click-ish adventure game about a version of the afterlife. Has some feels to it, but it’s mostly puzzles - you have an “event map” of events, where columns mean time periods, and rows are different people. You need to uncover information to build a chain of knowledge/events so you can affect later events through butterfly effect. As it’s also presented in a non-linear fashion, it starts out with story ungrounded and design weird (just look at the screenshots), but it gets a lot better as you get accustomed to it. Good if you want something unique.
CROAK CAFE : FROM POND TO PLATE
Free to play game merge game where you drop food into a “chute”. Two similar items merge into a different one. Combine ingredients to meals your customer orders, get money, pass the level. It’s nice, but I think there’s some inherent frustration with the bouncing items and the random order you get your ingredients to drop. It even has some bossfights with unique mechanics, which is a definite plus. I wasn’t overjoyed with it because of the RNG aspect, but it was mild, the game is relatively easy, and got 100% in ~3 hours while having fun most of the time.
Family Man
After a short prologue, you start the game. You’re Joe, and you owe money to basically the mafia. Get a daily increasing amount, by any means necessary.
Some of your will hate this, as it has a daily time limit, a set number of days to end, and multiple endings that require at least 2? 3? playthroughs. Or three if you mess it up as I did :D
The gameplay is actually fun - there are personal sidequests in the game with “good” and “bad” solutions (and they play a huge role in the ending). There is a morality system (also for the endings), and various ways to earn different amounts of money. You need your time or money to get food for your family, clean the house, and to spend time with your son by getting home before he sleeps. It actually works and is fun, because you get involved in quest lines, you get to know your neighbourhood and you need to plan ahead and think fast. It reminds me of Postal 2 with its neighbourhood and hidden items and shortcuts. Genuinely enjoyed it, but I don’t think I’ll return to it for other endings/achievements with my backlog.
Kathy Rain
I’ll keep this one short. I’ve had beef with the publisher for not giving the Director’s Cut for owning the game, and while I wanted the extra content, I feel weird about having to pay 3€+ (on sale) to play a bit of extra something I already have. Anyhow, ended up playing it,it looks like a good game afterall.
It is a really well made, moody game with heavy Twin Peaks inspiration, and now I kinda want to play Kathy Rain 2 as well :D
MouseCraft
Old SG win - a Lemmings-like game where you use tetris tetraminos to add to the level. Later multiple special blocks appear the game, keeping it fresh and varied (new thing every 8 level or so). It’s on the easier side, has charming graphics and it was overall a really nice experience. Feels like a hidden gem with its 200 reviews only. Had no issues with running it I think?
Poi
3D platformer collectathlon, visit different worlds and get explorer’s medals. It’s a bit by the numbers, and I think it desperately needs a different way to attack enemies than to jump on them (it’s not accurate enough) but it’s not bad. Seems like I missed at least one medallion, either it wasn’t interesting to get, or it bugged out, I’m not sure. Didn’t mean much when there’s still a cheevo for playing the whole game in one-hit-mode. Play it if it catches your eye, it’s an easy-enough game for MiaM, but honestly I wouldn’t buy it if I wouldn’t already own it.
Remember Me
I have to admit, Expedition 33’s French OST had a great affect on me, so I played Remember Me, that takes place in Neo-Paris, entirely in French, and it was a great choice considering the excellent voice acting.
It’s an early DONTNOD game, from the Life is Strange people. It does a lot of things really well, others a bit… meh?
The worldbuilding is fantastic. Both as looks, and as a setting. You play a bit too much in sewers and corridors, but the game made sure to show you much of the world in different ways. The story is pretty good, but I have a feeling that the ending doesn’t really land - it’s interesting, gives a lot to think about, but the main “story” mechanic is remixing memories… so it’s like timetravel, change thing (a memory) in the past, to change the person’s current thoughts. It’s a bit rough, and I’m fairly sure I’ve convinced somebody that their very living spouse is dead, and that just…works? Also the ending has horrible consequences, but we don’t think about it, task done, happy end :D
And a short note about the “combo-lab” where you build your combos - the base system is like an Arkham-version (controller X to punch, Y to kick) that works well, but the combo building is a system that’s surely advertised with an asterisk (*) after it. You get combos like X-X-X or X-X-Y. You GET attacks from leveling up, like a punch that heals you, a kick with extra damage, and you just organise them into your framework of set order and number of attacks. Ofc your can have a long combo to punch hard or heal big, but technically you change the effect of the combo, not building the combo, as I expected.
Shelldiver
SG win from DancingXmas.
A simple, cute, light, laidback incremental game that’s a joy to play and can be finished in ~5 hours. It’s not super varied as you shoot different stuff to collect new materials to buy more, but it’s active, it’s fun, it’s without any dirty tricks. Simple in the best way possible. Highly recommended!
The Exit 8
SG win from SzymonL
I have little to add after its store page description. Got forward in the metro tunnel. If all is okay, go forward. If something is off, turn back. Do the correct choice 8 times, get to Exit 8 and leave. Took me a leisure hour to get to the ending, finding all the anomalies can take a bit more. (You need them to spawn, and you need to notice them. Easier with a list/guide).
It was alright, and as with Shelldiver, it’s very open and clear about what it is. Well worth getting if you want it, but it’s really not a must play (what a recommendation lol)
The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales
The Bookwalker is basically a point and click adventure game hidden in different shapes and forms. You enter books in an isometric view, run around in real life in first person, but everything comes down to choices/actions, I think nothing is timed. Game has combat, but it’s really forgiving, most fights can be optimised, and even if you die-die, there is no punishment and the enemy may keep its damaged state too.
The story is interesting, but because of the different books and wildly different chapters I wasn’t as involved as I would be in a proper beginning-to-end story, I’m not a fan of stitched together storylines. I really enjoyed the individual chapters, but it was hard to care about the overarching story of the main character, he was a bit meh. But the world itself is intriguing - unsanctioned writers entering books, and smuggling out items to be delivered in special chests, delivered to shady people? That’s cool!
The Ascent
This game is baffling.
A semi-mediocre action RPG where EVERY SIDEQUEST leads you through areas where enemies are respawning when you look aside, sometimes crossing regions where everyone onetaps you. I was level 14, doing a “suggested level 6” quest, and the path lead to a region with level 20 enemies that oneshot me. WTF??
The map has floors, and even with an EXPENSIVE fast travel system (the maps are HUGE and filled with enemies), you can’t travel between floors. So you get close to the elevator, shoot yourself through the mobs, get up/down, maybe fast travel again, then shoot yourself through the mobs to your final destination. Then do it again backwards, to hand in the quest. It’s so incredibly stupid, that you get exhausted by the combat, because there is no breather, and you die quite easily. There are no health potions you can carry, there is basically no loot worth taking other than upgrade materials, the same few weapons and augs are dropping throughout the game.
And for a game with this chaotic and badly planned combat comes:
A very solid cyberpunk story,
Fantastic voice acting
Shockingly beautiful, high fidelity art of all characters (only seen in cutscenes/zoomed in to a useless degree)
One of the best cityscapes in the background I’ve ever seen
Complex worldbuilding and lore
All of this makes me think that The Ascent is either built on an already existing IP I don’t know about, or making it into an ARPG was a late thought. It feels criminal how wonderful its “supportive” elements are, and how little thought was given to the main gameplay loop, it’s a shame.
Shape of Dreams
The most single-player MOBA-like roguelike I’ve played.Tons of unlocks, entirely different characters with fundamentally different gameplay and style, and even these characters have at least two (or three?) different builds, not to mention the extra abilities and modifiers you can collect through your game. Attackmove, animation cancels, skillshots, sidestepping enemy attacks, crowd control, challenging bossfights - it’s just great, absolutely deserving its 94% review rate
Feel free to ask more, I don’t want to bore people who got this far with further mechanics :D
Yesterday
August Assassination #2 (SG Win/ PoP Pick)
Please consider liking my review on Steam - it means a lot to me!
If you're tired of AAA games, please play Crown Gambit. It will show you that there is still a lot of energy and creativity in the indie scene. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, this game is good.
Starting with the obvious -- this game looks incredible. Fantastic, Inspiring. It's insane how well it looks. The graphical style is pretty unique and consistent throughout the game. Character design, menus, animations, locations, cutscenes, everything gels together and enhances the beautiful artistry on display. The cards, the enemies, the Paladins, everything is so consistent, that it becomes very hard to fault the game visually. Literally every frame could be a cutscene (maybe except for the battles themselves), and the game doesn't rely only on 2D art, also having incredible 3D effects and animation interacting with the 2D elements. It's chef's kiss, really.
Sound-wise, it's fine. I never got tired of the soundtrack, but it's nothing to write home about. The moments with vocal backgrounds are standouts, but they are so rare that it's hard to highlight them. Regular sound effects are good but unremarkable. You're not here for the sounds and neither am I, so let's move quickly past it.
Gameplay-wise, it's a happy mix of so many genres recombined. Battles are grid-based deckbuilding bonanza, where you draw skills from a card pool and use action points to either move, attack, or cast a skill. It's a system that's easy to understand, and yet, never gets old and keeps bringing exciting combat encounters based on map layout, environmental effects, size and type of mobs, and unique traits of champions and bosses you face. I played on Normal difficulty and found the beginning a bit hard (when you're still pretty weak and lacking skills), but 1/3 of the way into the game I started blazing through encounters and even bosses. It became risky near the end, when you have a massive gauntlet of boss battles and some duels (my decks were definitely not tailored for duels), but overall I still beat the game without ever letting one of my heroes die.
If you are experienced with deckbuilders like Slay the Spire and its ascensions, except something much easier. Adding the grid and thinking about movement adds somethign to the fold, but it's not overwhelming. If I had to fault the combat, it's mostly because it becomes somewhat repetitive quickly, and the skill trees offer some build variation, but not much. I assume most people will end up with Aliza as a rushdown melee fighter, Rollo as a tank-ish AoE brawler, and Hael as a support/ranged/effects caster, regardless of how they progress through the skill tree. Which is not the end of the world, but is something that could be improved. Part of the skill is choosing which cards to keep and which ones to remove from your deck, but any experienced deckbuilder player should have this as second nature. I will admit that I didn't need to engage with the Ancestral Grace system, so I only touched the surface of the card system and maybe playing on harder difficulty would be more fun in that sense. Same thing for enemies' relics -- I destroyed them all, but some of them seemed to have really fun effects to mess around.
When you're not in combat, you're either in some light-randomized traversal (from node to node, nothing too complex), and interacting with the world in a visual-novel manner. There is a decent amount of choices you can make throughout the game to customize your run and roleplay your characters, and if you want, no two runs will look the same. I thoroughly enjoyed the choices I had to make and how they played out. I wasn't happy with the ending, but I could see how clearly I shaped it and there's satisfaction in that.
Last but not least, the story -- this is a high drama about noble families backstabbign each other, religious factions with swinging loyalties, and a populace ready to revolt. It's entertaining as hell, and the amount of variations in the places you can visit, the characters you can join forces with or rebel against, and the amount of events you will experience is really staggering. I can only imagine how many branching paths you have before you arrive at one of four (or five?) endings. I was a bit troubled with the pacing at first -- it really is a lore dump, but after one or two hours the pace improves a bit and the dump lessens, thus the game becomes easier to follow.
It is an absolute work of passion and symbolizes one of the reasons why I love indie games. It's such a well crafted and polished game, and except for two game-breaking bugs I had after beating certain battles (both already reported on the devs Discord and which just set me back 5-or-so minute each time), it's certainly a game worth your money, full price.
Aug 14 2026
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Figment 2: Creed Valley
6 hours playtime
18 of 18 achievements
Report #431: Figment 2: Creed Valley
Lovely short game
I was very happy, when this was part of a Humble Choice month. Already played the first game and had it on my wishlist, once it was announced.
Very short and very funny. Actually some of the dialog puns I only noticed once I replayed some chapters for achievements. So the story took me around 4 hours, then some chapters replayed because of the collectible orbs. And most of the achievements for doing certain things can be obtained even without spoiling yourself. Just play as if you want to break the game mechanics
Aug 09 2026
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Vampyr
41 hours playtime
28 of 28 achievements
Report #430: Vampyr
Bloody hell
This has been on my pile of shame for a long time. Played it soon after I got it in a sale in 2019. But then somehow dropped it soon after the tutorial mission.
Took me around 31 hours to complete the real playthrough. Playing on normal but helping all humans. This turned the normal difficulty one up. So after a chapter switch the enemies got so hard, I had sometimes flashbacks to Dark Souls. But in the end it got easier. Key thing to do is side quests 😯
Finishing the collectibles in Story Mode was quite fast, only 10 more hours. But the ending was very uncomfortable, letting everyone die 😒
Aug 08 2026
Beaten August 2026:
23.8 hours playtime
Aug 07 2026
#427
#37 of 2026
August 7, 2026
August Assassination #1 (SG Win/ PoP Pick)
Please consider liking my review on Steam - it means a lot to me!
Tinykin is an incredibly charming and fun 3D collectathon platformer. It does everything I expect a game from that genre to do, but does it with so much charm and personality that you can't help but smile from end to end as you play the game.
From a graphical perspective, it's awesome. Sprites are cel-shaded 2D but live in a fully modeled 3D world, making it very easy to read interactable elements on the screen. You're a tiny human in a regular-sized house populated by insect factions, and every room looks distinct, brings something new to the gameplay, and are an absolute blast to explore. The 3D models have this clay look and feel to it, and while none of them are next-gen UHD quality of texture work, all of them work in the game's context. Plus, a very generous draw distance allows you to just admire with awe how busy and fun the rooms / levels are. Add to it incredible character animation, both for you and the NPCs. The cherry on top of everything are the animated cutscenes, that wouldn't look out of place on a Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon show.
I feel these kinds of games live or die by how fun their worlds are to explore, and as I said before, Tinykin excels in this department. The worlds are varied, dense, and easy/fun to navigate. If you thought Dark Souls did shortcuts well, I am willing to say Tinykin do them better. From the get-go you have a bubble glider (whose duration can be extended by completing side quests) and a soapboard (a skateboard with a funny name), and basic movement is that. Unlocking new Tinykin extends your moveset by a little bit, particularly with the green kin that allows you to climb a makeshift tower at will and provides a lot of movement options. Two of the other kins unlock general interactions that work like keys for specific locks (the purple kin for lifting objects and the red kin for blowing up stuff), and the last two kin are a bit lame -- one that connects electricity but is super niche and kind of annoying to place, and another one that makes stairs, mostly useless for you, just needed for moving objects around on your kin. While movement and gameplay are nothing revolutionary, they enable fun gameplay and exploration, which is the crown jewel here.
The music is soothing and energetic at the same time, and I'm listening to the OST right now and loving it. It enhances the mood desired for any environment. I love how chill and suave it is in certain areas, just to pick up pace as you climb higher on the level and the stakes are raised, for example. A standour example is a hidden area that gets pretty creepy and spooky, and the music immediately shifts to show this tension. It's awesome.
Last but not least, my main gripe with the game is the difficulty to 100% it. Collectathons are at their best when they give you the tools to explore it all and collect it all, and while exploration is absolutely viable, collection isn't. By the time I beat the game, I had collected everything in only one level (Balnea), but missed 3-10 pollen in the other levels. The problem is that, in the first level, I missed 5 out of 1600 pollen. How am I supposed to find the missing 5 without any indication? That would require a very unfun meticulous backtrack through every and each corner of the level, hunting for interactables that I might have missed, and that is where the game would stop being fun for me. I decided to simply drop the 100% plan and stop where I stopped, but I can see that being a major issue for completionists.
At any rate, Tinykin remains as one of the most charming, chill and enjoyable 3D collectathon experiences I had recently. Not because it offers sandbox levels with great movement, but because the levels are charming and navigable enough even with its limited moveset, and yet, feel fully-lived in and is incredibly charming. It ends before it gets old, and is easy to pickup again at anytime. A must play, 10/10.
Aug 06 2026
