February 2024 Progress Report

Thick, toxic miasma blankets most of the world leaving the human race in a perpetual struggle to survive, a scarce few able to carve themselves out a home in safer pockets of the world. Coming from the little town of Little Rock, a new, young pioneer sets out to create a Homestead in a small fertile patch of land good enough to live on and grow a garden. With the aid of potions, magic, and a 300-year-old cat familiar called Huckleberry, settle down on this thin slice of paradise and start growing food to send back home. Like all areas of the world, this new place is dangerous, a dense purple wall of miasma just a short walk away; yet you see things in the fog, new things to explore, new mysteries waiting to be found – but you know what they say about curiosity.

20-30+ hours to complete, Homestead Arcana is a Southern Farming sim with witches, magic, flying brooms, and familiars. There are three areas to unlock with each area granting you a garden expansion for the new plants and vegetables you will inevitably find in each biome. Gardening is pretty fun as you can trim plants, move and adjust leaves, pluck individual fruits, and use magic to help them grow on your Homestead. With potions to brew, skills to unlock, miasma to clear, crops to grow, food to send back home, and catnip to give to your cute cat familiar huckleberry, there are a lot of good things that make Homestead Arcana a really solid farming game; but there are definitely some cons you should be aware of before buying.

The start of this game is genuinely terrible. You can’t jump, the exploration is timed, the tutorial is not explained well with many important functions being completely left out. To make matters worse, you can softlock yourself out of the achievement “Upgraded” if you’re proactive and finish Ruby’s questline, as she kindly gives you the blueprint to make and sell your own Resolve Pendants, which prevents you from buying it and thus, getting the achievement. Homestead Arcana also can’t keep itself straight lore-wise, as the seedlings and plants you collect in the blight shouldn’t exist since the miasma kills or mutates all life. The ending was confusing since a peaceful resolution was available but the game forces to be what I perceive as an unnecessary bad end. Despite its long list of flaws, I still genuinely liked Homestead Arcana for its unique farming system and uncommon story concepts, but in the end, this is a difficult game to recommend.

High schooler Touya is heading home from his part-time job when passing by The Restricted Zone, he hears a bell ringing and wanders in only to be attacked by a stranger with supernatural powers. Rescued last minute by a bizarre, petite girl with a sword, he goes home only to find her already waiting in his living room. Apparently having awakened an ability to “hear” and locate people using a supernatural ability, he’s been noticed by a mysterious organization and warrants a bodyguard – and a new job!

9-30+ hours to complete, XBlaze Code: Embryo is part 1 of a 2 game VN series, the other being XBlaze Lost: Memories. Fully voice-acted and with 12 endings to explore, this game has a lot of moving sprites, characters, animations, backgrounds, CGs, and 47 OSTs. The ending route depends on what news articles you read throughout the game; I suggest reading all articles the first time you play. Playing all the routes is fairly simple as there is a “skip already read text” feature and when new articles appear, the game automatically turns it off so you won’t miss anything. Higher quality than expected from a 2013 VN, I had a more enjoyable experience than anticipated and highly recommend playing. My only real complaint is that the keyboard controls are awkward, as this game was clearly made with controller use in mind.

Arriving into the blue after chasing after her little sister, a girl finds herself lost in an unnatural area missing her memories and having forgotten her name; and surprisingly, she’s not alone. On a quest to get to the bottom floor of this Phantom Field, collect scattered memory fragments with Nobody to create keys to access more areas and finally reunite with her sibling.

7-11 hours to complete, XBlaze Lost: Memories is the sequel of a 2 part VN series, the first being XBlaze Code: Embryo. Includes full voice acting, multiple CG’s, one storyline, 58 OSTs and the same impressive writing and quality of the first game. More linear in nature and easy to 100%, Memories wraps up the unanswered questions left from Embryo and touches on the backstory of important characters in the BlazBlue series. I can’t mention much more without spoilers, I can’t even name character names, but I highly suggest playing the Xblaze VN series.

Simon Jarret is a literature-loving Canadian suffering a brain injury from a recent car accident and goes to see a doctor to get his brain scanned and make a treatment plan – only to find himself 100 meters under the sea a second later. Walking around the abandoned facility called PATHOS-II, Simon must use tools to bypass security locks and other obstacles while avoiding, hiding, or outsmarting machines that sound uncomfortably human, and are strangely intent on killing him.

7-11 hours to complete, SOMA is a sci-fi survival horror, or existential horror if you play in safe mode, with one ending. Many reviewers say you should only play on normal difficulty and nothing else, but I prefer safe mode as you don’t lose out on “the SOMA experience” and the game is not as branching as it appears. Not dying from enemies making you replay stealth sections is the only difference, you still get stalked and knocked out – so I suggest you ignore reviews saying safe mode is for wusses and play how you want. Regardless, SOMA is an excellent game worth playing if you’re interested in the storyline or enjoy horror games. Aside from a scripted hallway chase, there are not any jumpscares.