Hello, all. This is my April 2017 “monthly report.” Please see my profile for more info.
All of the games I’ve played this month are listed here. I’d like to discuss them below:
Completed games
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Dracula: Origin
12 hours playtime
no achievements
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LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7
59 hours playtime
no achievements
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The Last Dream: Developer's Edition
11 hours playtime
13 of 13 achievements
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Supreme League of Patriots Issue 3: Ice Cold in Ellis
11 hours playtime
22 of 22 achievements
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The Little Acre
4 hours playtime
27 of 27 achievements
Beaten games
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Scrap Garden - The Day Before
2 hours playtime
20 of 21 achievements
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Doors
8 hours playtime
6 of 7 achievements
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An Octave Higher
12 hours playtime
1 of 6 achievements
Other progress on kids' accounts
Alchemist
3.8 hrs, 6/18 achievements. A fun little 2D platformer with frequent pickups (usually potion ingredients).
Cornerstone: The Song of Tyrim
12.7 hrs, 4/10 achievements. Decent 3D platfomer with a crafting and combat emphasis, some stealthy sequences. Could use some polish.
Scrap Garden
9ish hours, 42/42 achievements. See Scrap Garden - The Day Before (below).
A few notes on this month's games
- Two out of the seven games I played this month were Steamgifts wins (Supreme League of Patriots Issue 3 & Doors) and two others were gifts (Dracula: Origin and An Octave Higher).
- I played some of the games with 5-year-old twins (Harry Potter, The Little Acre, The Last Dream, and Scrap Garden - The Day Before). And also the “other progress” (e.g., Alchemist, Scrap Garden, and Tyrim).
LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7
This was pretty much just mop-up work to get to 100% completion; the bulk of my time on this game was last month. In my previous update, I mentioned that this was the first game that I’ve played co-op with my kids. My daughter’s favorite character was Harry and my son’s favorite was Voldemort (once he was unlocked). This provides a certain insight into my kids…
Dracula: Origin (gift)
This was a wishlist gift from an SG friend. It had stayed in my backlog far too long, but its time had come. To summarize my review, it’s a classic point-and-click game from 2008 with all of the good and bad that entails. If you like the genre, or if Dracula is your thing, then it’s definitely worth playing. It had some great puzzles and nice Dracula environments. Unfortunately it hasn’t been in a bundle for years so it would be hard to recommend at full price (is anything worth it at full price?).
An Octave Higher (gift)
This was a QUIPS Secret Santa gift from last Xmas. So, I haven’t played many VNs, and I don’t care for anime, but this one didn’t look too bad…plus it seemed to have a musical aspect to it, which helps. At this point, I’ve only done my first full playthrough, where I tried to answer as I “wanted to.” For the most part, it’s an enjoyable game. It has some really interesting world building, discusses the science and technology of magic, class struggles, revolution, academia, music– all topics that I enjoyed. The only thing that kind of killed it for me is that there are multiple scenarios where one of the early 20s-ish male protagonists is having all kinds of romantic thoughts and inclinations toward one of the female leads who is fifteen years old. At one point, one of them commands her to “service him.” She refuses, of course, and later gets to decide if she forgives him or not. You can guess what I chose. At no point do these males even appear to see an issue with going after a 15-year-old. I just don’t get it. Otherwise, it was an enjoyable game.
Supreme League of Patriots Issue 3: Ice Cold in Ellis (SG win)
For time reasons, I decided to skip numbers 1 and 2 and went straight to #3 (the SG win), but really I don’t think it had any negative effect. It’s a good game! The humor and voice acting are spot on. The puzzles were pretty good too. The only issues I had were with the user interface which was rough, IMO. There were several times I knew what I had to do but couldn’t figure out how to do it via the interface.
The Last Dream: Developer's Edition
A nice little HOG…pretty standard fare I guess. It did feature FMV (full motion video) cutscenes, which I’ve never seen in a HOG before, and of course reminds me of old 1990s point-and-click games. It featured “Fragmented Object” scenes (FROGs) instead of HOGs. If you’ve played HOGs before, you probably know the difference; if not, you certainly couldn’t care less. :P
The Little Acre
Quite short and not very hard, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It oozes character, is crafted with love, is very skillfully voiced, and has a nice little story to it. Great game to play with kids, and not a bad intro to point-and-clicks.
There’s a nice little artbook that comes with the game that shows concept art, animation tricks, etc.
Scrap Garden - The Day Before (f2p)
We had just finished Scrap Garden, and it was one of my son’s favorite games…so he wanted to play it too. While we will certainly do that someday, in the meantime I suggested the free-to-play prequel to the game. It’s a good little (free) intro to the full game in case you’re on the fence. It’s a mild platformer where you control a little robot who can pretty much only walk, jump, throw things, and pull levers/push buttons. The last achievement is to get through the whole game without being damaged, which really isn’t that hard, but after about five tries, I wasn’t able to pull it off, so I’ll be happy enough with 20/21 achievements. If you have any skill at platformers, you should have no problem with full completion.
Doors (SG win)
As I said in my review , It’s very simple: if you like logic puzzles, then you’ll like this game. If you don’t, or lack the patience or skill to solve them, then you won’t. :) There’s a fun little Stanley Parable-esque section in the middle to give your brain a break. Warning to completionists (like myself): there is an apparently unattainable achievement just to mess with us. I find this annoying, and wouldn’t have played the game if it weren’t an SG win.
Plan for May
See my Attack Plan. I plan to complete An Octave Higher by finding the remaining endings. I’ll play and likely complete The Turing Test (my most recent SG win) and Shtriga: Summer Camp (a gift). Lately with the kids I’ve been playing A Boy and His Blob, Alchemist, and Cornerstone: Son of Tyrim. With any remaining time I may go after some additional shorter games.
So, I know this is super late, but you haven’t posted a more recent one and now with us being friends, I think it’s appropriate (how the hell do you write that word? -.-).
I have the Dracula game lying around here as a CD (or DVD?) back from the day when one bought games that way……….. O.O
That’s sure long ago sigh
I liked that game. Although it was already near the line where I would say it’s to creepy for my liking. But it was Dracula (he somehow refuses to be written by me today. First Cracula then Dacula….) so he had to be played! It’s like Sherlock. Sherlock had to be played because he’s Sherlock!
Ok, back on track. :)
I’m pretty sure we already talked about Supreme Leagues of Gentlemen? Oh, sry, Patriots ofc!
It still was a bit to thick for my licking. Although I keep Mel in fond memory :D
So, I said something! Ha! Yes, I’m a friendly stalker, but since you do the same, that only fair :D
Happy hog killing!
Thanks for the note– it’s never too late!
Yeah, it had some grisly/disturbing scenes and artwork. I have some screenshots and whatnot on Steam. Friend visibility if I recall correctly.
Friendly stalking is allowed. :)
Not sure I’m ready to go back there. But then again… I have quite a lot of fond memories… and some not so fond ones. I might take a look later on :D
Oh, that’s a relieve. I only now how to do friendly stalking :]
What an amazing progress, big congratulations Trent :)
I’m intrigued by The Last Dream. I didn’t know it had fragmented object scenes, I actually prefer them to regular ones even though regular ones help a lot with one’s vocabulary. I am interested in The Little Acre but the speedrun achievement is putting me off, was it hard?
Scrap Garden was on my wishlist before I researched the game. Seeing it being a platformer, I removed it forever :) I thought it was like an adventure game or something, not a 3D platformer.
Thank you for the note, Lenor.
I don't think the speedrun achievement is hard if you try it shortly after beating the game (with things fresh in your mind), especially if you're not trying to get other achievements at the same time. In my case, I didn't want to play it *three* times (normal playthrough, get all missable achievements, and speedrun), so I used a YT video that combines the speedrun with the missable achievements. Just remember that one playthrough has be without hints and another has to be with at least one. But the game is short enough that you can do three playthroughs with the speedrun being it's own playthrough, and can be done naturally without a guide. Pausing the game pauses the speedrun timer, and supposedly there's about 10-15 minutes of buffer time allowed.