#18 | Mid-September Update

2 months since my previous post and I finally decide to stop being a lazy ass. It takes so much effort to write these posts. :/

I have a confession to make. I haven’t been tackling my backlog diligently enough… There are bouts when I play 5 hours a day, and then afterwards I don’t log in for a week. Despite that, I managed to complete some games in the past weeks, though they’re mostly short ones. (But hey, any progress is better than no progress, right?)

Completed Games

fault - milestone one was quite an unexpected experience for me, but a really good one. The only other visual novel I’ve played so far is Hatoful Boyfriend, and I didn’t know what a kinetic novel was, so I went in expecting a lot of choices. Man, I was so wrong. There is only one “choice” you make in the entire game, and it only changes the next few lines of dialogues. So, yeah, the story is linear, and there is no replayability (unless you can read Japanese - then you can play in its original language). Despite that, I actually really like this. It’s the first in a series (trilogy?) of kinetic novels, but a major portion of the game is pretty much self-contained. The overarching storyline isn’t featured much, except in the beginning and end, and it ends on a cliffhanger - which makes me want to play the next one so badly. D: The story starts out pretty serious, is kinda light-hearted in the middle and gets rather dark (and sad) at the end. The soundtrack is pretty ok - the track on the menu screen is wonderful, but some of the others aren’t as memorable.

One issue I have with the game is that the beginning is too content heavy - it serves as an introduction to the world the characters are living in, but I felt that it could have been done gradually throughout the game, instead of throwing out all the information right at the start.

Completed the Time Mysteries trilogy, but not in time for the August theme. Where is my TARDIS when I need it? :P I can’t help thinking that Artifex Mundi could do better than this, when playing these HOGs. The first game is excused, since it was released a long time ago, so it can’t be compared to the more recent Artifex Mundi offerings. But the 2 sequels had me feeling like I was just finding a key here, to open that door to that room, in which I’d find another key to open this chest in another room, and so on. Some of the hidden object scenes were also way too easy as the objects I had to find didn’t fit that well into the background. The time-travel device was interesting for a while, then it got tedious to keep switching between the different time periods. The Enigmatis series was much better. Something in common about these HOGs though: they should do away with voice acting as they’re all terrible.

Side note: I still think the Mystery Case Files series are the best HOGs I’ve played. Only a few of them are on Steam though.

I may or may not be slightly addicted to Hexcells. Just slightly. Finished all three games over a long weekend, and it’s now my new favourite puzzle game. :D It’s kinda like a cross between nonograms and minesweeper, and I love how every puzzle can always be solved logically - no guesswork involved. That was one thing I hated about minesweeper - I’d have two cells and one bomb left, but no way to know which is the bomb. The difficulty of the puzzles increase gradually, and across the games too, so Hexcells is kinda like the “tutorial” for the next two games. Which is also why my playtime increases by so much (though for Hexcells Infinite I was playing while doing work, so actual playtime is probably 4-5 hours less). Everyone should play this, especially puzzle lovers!

In Progress

I only found out about Renowned Explorers: International Society when I got it in that Humble Monthly ages ago, and have wanted to start since then but didn’t. Several posts here gave me the extra push to start playing, and I’m very glad I did. Super fun turn-based strategy game, and I expect to be putting a lot more hours into it.

I don’t think I’ll be participating in this month’s theme, as the games are all too long to fit into my limited playtime, which is only going to get less as more schoolwork pile up. :/