BLAEO — Backlog Assassins Extraordinaire

Olija

5 hours playtime

10 of 10 achievements
Spiritfarer

33 hours playtime

28 of 39 achievements
Luna's Fishing Garden

3 hours playtime

14 of 14 achievements
Cozy Grove

68 hours playtime

56 of 70 achievements

April-May

Oops, a two-month period again. I wasn’t even sure which games I was playing in April when I started writing this post! I had to search back in my Steam playtime and work it out. Hopefully, I got them all. I’m not even sure why I didn’t post. I guess I didn’t have much to report on as I still don’t a month later.

So, other happenings. I turned 42 during this two-month period. I didn’t do anything special, a meal with my gf but nothing much else. I kept it on the down-low at work too, so only one person with a good memory remembered and gave me a present. Work has been up and down. Getting up before 6am every day to go to the office isn’t great, but I’m much more productive in the office, the work is better in person, and I’m much more sociable. There has been a lull at work this week, but I’m gonna be busy again from Monday. This busyness and just a general lack of attention for longer games means most of my recent gaming has been on the Steamdeck. Short bursts during my commute or before I go to bed.

Onto this month’s games:

Steam

Olija

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Great game for the Deck. A pixelated adventure game. Slightly strange story about a sailor in a 'mysterious country' with people wearing what looked like Japanese clothing and islands with Japanese names, and a legendary harpoon. It kind of worked though.

The 'very positive' rating on Steam kind of sums it up. There's nothing really groundbreaking there, but it all works well and it's fun to play. Enough of a challenge to be an enjoyable game that you want to keep playing, but 100% in about 5 hours. Good in a sale or a bundle.

Spiritfarer

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I won this in a discord channel's scavenger hunt competition. A game I kind of let pass me by when it was on sale or bundled somewhere but I'm glad I gave it a try.

I'm gonna be honest here. I kind of zoned out a bit in some of the cut scenes. I played kind of a grim reaper type role, helping spirits cross over into another world? Presumable where they would be at peace. Most of these characters seemed to already know me and made reference to things in the past or people we both knew, I think. Yeah, I should pay attention. I know!

It looked great. The ship with buildings on it was fun and kind of novel. All the characters in the game had their own personalities and were very well done. It would be difficult to play the game and not feel anything at all. All the characters reflect on the different kinds of lives they had and are in different emotional states when they finally leave to the other side. So, overall a great game. I played for over 30 hours when I realised the end of the main story was available. I could have continued to try and get a few more achievements, but... I'm sure you can guess if you've read any of my other posts... Yes, I'd had enough! ;D. Haha! So, just beaten and 71%.

Luna's Fishing Garden

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I noticed this based on the rating alone. There aren't many games that are Overwhelmingly positive' on Steam that you don't know much about, but this was one of them. Had it low down on my wish/watch list for a while and got it in a sale.

Kind of an idle game. Very simple. Collect things and do tasks. There's a story but not much to it. In fact, the game is very short too. 100% in about 3.5 hours and I wasn't rushing. I'm not sure I'd recommend it, but it was kind of mindless fun for a few hours. I guess as an 'idle' game, it matches the description well.

Cozy Grove

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This is a difficult one. I kind of have a love-hate relationship with this game. Some of the reviews and tags on Steam describe it as a 'life sim', 'Animal crossing', 'a ritual'. and there is mention of 'depth of storytelling'. The one I would agree with is it's 'a ritual' or, maybe it's like a drug.

I put 68 hours into this game and now, after finishing the main story, I'm not sure why. I didn't really gain anything from it. I feel like it was just a habit or a ritual that I needed to continue until I finished it because I didn't want to go back and do it again. Like I was in a cult. I'm going to quote another Steam review here, 'The aesthetic is lovely, the vibe is great, the characters enjoyable, and I was quite keen on the idea of just popping in for fairly short sessions each day - but after a week, when I loaded up for my 8th consecutive day, I realised I had absolutely zero motivation to grind through another round of incredibly repetitive hidden object fetch quests.' This sums up my feelings for the game pretty well, but I guess my motivation to get it off my backlog was greater and I just stuck at it and so I continued to pop in every day for about 2 months.

There were 3-4 more achievements I could have got, but when I saw the option to end the main story I went for it. Getting 100% achievements requires the DLC, I think, and there was no way I was getting that! 80% and in the beaten pile. Thank god! I do not recommend this game unless you want to get sucked into a daily routine of hidden object quests. Friends don't let friends play Cozy Grove.

Backlog Additions

The additions are easier to check than the games I played as I can check back in my Steam account activation history. The list of shameful additions are:

Chicken Police, Teslagrad Remastered (I haven’t finished the original and thought the remastered version would replace it, but alas it’s another entry in my library!), Rollerdome, Restless Soul, Aground, Apico, Metro Last Light, Good Night, Knight, Mail Mole