Alright. August is in the books. I spent almost 50 hours playing Ruzar - The Dark Stones. I’m at the final boss currently. I also have another almost 20 hours logged into Skald - Against the Black Priory, which I’m on the back half of. And I’ve continued my slow playthrough of The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero. Sovereign Syndicate was the standout game from this month. Really cool. Anyway,
August Completions
- Tachyon Dreams Anthology (Steam). Very cool old school text parser PnC.
- tomorrow won’t come for those without ██████ (Steam). Interesting existential experience.
- Backspace Backspace Backspace (Steam). This one is a bit of a thought experiment reflecting on AI and social media.
- Sovereign Syndicate (Steam). The first Disco Elysium-like? Super cool setting, dialogue, and overall experience.
- 8/8/88 Needle AL (Steam). A game that highlights the horrors of racism and religious fundamentalism. In very stark and disturbing ways.
- Twenty-second: Stories of Underground Kharkiv (Steam). A Ukrainian propaganda piece presented in game form. With some cool history lessons included. I thought it was interesting from the perspective of how people are conditioned to think in society, and especially when in the midst of a war.
August Retirements
- Assassins Guild. Poorly crafted game.
- NORTH. Confusing AF walking sim.
- Distant Space. Aight Galaga-like with annoying UI.
- Infinity Castle Dungeon. Difficult AF for me. Kinda like Exanima, but in a more Isaac-ish fashion.
- Deadlock (Playtest). Meh
- Urban Explorer (Playtest). Needs a lot of work. The actual game shows promise though.
- Moonring. Didn’t know what to do in this one.
- Seaside Racing. Zero player base. Fun concept though.
- SpaceEngine. Terrible UI IMO.
- Hoa. Meh platformer. Made more for children I think.
- Eve of Calamity. Decent JRPG, but with a lot of RPGMaker issues.
- Cats on Duty. Actually quite fun and recommended mash up of Plants vs Zombies and Match-3. Just not my cup of tea overall though.
Games Paused
Invaders Tower Defense Online (pending it possibly getting a wider player base to try out mp)
Goblin and Coins II: The Lost Recipes (I’m objectively bad at platformers, so it’ll take a bit to complete lol)
Plans for September
Chat with the developer of Ruzar about tweaking some aspects of the final boss fight and wrapping that up.
Finish Skald - Against the Black Priory
Continue The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero and Armored Core VI
Beyond that, I’ll probably play Venba, Chants of Senaar, and a few other things I’m sure.
Skald - Against the Black Priory
Give me the deets. I really liked the demo. How is the game that far in?
It’s about as tabletop D&D campaign as a game gets, which I think is really cool. The story is pretty interesting, and the gameplay is a lot of fun. I didn’t play the demo, but I imagine it let you explore and fight a bit. The campaign continues to ramp up throughout, and there are some pretty of “oh shit” moments, lol. It’s a lot of fun IMO. I’m in what I’d guess is the home stretch now. Also, there are a lot of subtle Easter eggs which you’ll catch if you are familiar with the source material. Arrow in the knee shows up of course, lol, as does a pretty famous line from Aliens, for example.
I think the UI is a bit cluttered and inventory management could be better, but those are minor gripes.
That’s great to hear because that was the takeaway I had from the demo as well.
Congratulations on your assassinations!! ᓚᘏᗢ
I seriously need to get back into the trails series, loved the first one but I flopped on my second when I realized I had to restart the entire game because I left a book on the bed (in my defense, that door was only unlocked during a hallway sequence where you had to rush downstairs and was locked in free-roam!!) while I was aiming for 100% and never got back to it.
The skippable quest unskippable. Gotta hate that. I would’ve also set the game down after that.
This one is pretty seamless so far as I’ve played it. I haven’t seen anything you can really miss or skip that is required. And the story is pretty fun.