July’s Stats
aka. Where I blame the heat wave for my failure
It seems it’s already this time of the month again, how have you all been doing? In here July’s been a hell of heatwaves after heatwaves. Thankfully, I took a week of holidays to Catalonia and the time outside at the fresh hours helped a lot. Not so much for the backlog. At least I managed to complete Far Cry 3 for the monthly theme, before I got distracted with a bunch of digital board games (Armello, Gremlins Inc, Antihero…) and Solitarica. I also managed to finish a few games for challenges, as I keep signing up for these. Anywho, I hope you’re all doing good and are having a good summer (or winter for the ones in the south hemisphere. Please send cold weather). Have a good August and keep on fighting the backlog!
PS: If anybody’s playing Antihero and wanna start an asynchronous game, feel free to let me know in the comments.
| Played | Finished | Completed | Backlog+ | Achievements |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | 9 | 5 | 18 | 83 |
Most Satisfying Finish
Most Exciting Addition
-
Fallout Shelter
61 hours playtime
35 of 35 achievements
-
Gremlins, Inc.
7 hours playtime
10 of 100 achievements
-
Pictopix
42 hours playtime
18 of 18 achievements
-
Lumino City
4 hours playtime
no achievements
-
The Banner Saga
16 hours playtime
30 of 39 achievements
-
Hidden Folks
6 hours playtime
5 of 5 achievements
-
Solitairica
32 hours playtime
17 of 27 achievements
-
Far Cry 3
45 hours playtime
no achievements
-
Armello
13 hours playtime
15 of 50 achievements
-
WORLD END ECONOMiCA episode.01
9 hours playtime
no achievements
-
Tahira: Echoes of the Astral Empire
13 hours playtime
2 of 18 achievements
-
Antihero
3 hours playtime
6 of 30 achievements
Lumino City
4h hours playtime, no achievements
Such an adorable little handmade puzzle game. The plot is quite simple: you have to solve the mystery of your grandpa's sudden disappearance by exploring an odd city. What is less common is the handmade part: the whole city has literally been handcrafted and then filmed, and it gives such a unique look to the game (well if you except its prequel Lume, of course). The whole art style is colorful and really adorable, and the puzzles are nice. The game itself is quite short so I recommend you give it a try if you have the opportunity.
Gremlins, Inc.
7 hours playtime, 10 of 100 achievements
One of the great surprises of this month, Gremlins, Inc. is a steampunk boardgame about capitalism, power and corruption, where each player try to manipulate their way to the top. At first, the game may seem a bit confusing as there is so many things going on. After you learn the different mecanisms, the game is really fun, especially played with friends. I finished a few games but totally intend to play a lot more of it. If any of you have the DLCs I'm curious to hear if you recommend them or not and what they add to the game.
The Banner Saga
16 hours playtime, 30 of 39 achievements
Another great game played this month. I was expecting to like it as it seemed right up my alley (Turn-based tactical RPG are my favorite) , but I totally adored the game way over my expectations. You're leading a viking caravan through a desperate time and trying to save what remains of your people. The game is not only visually beautiful, it's also mecanically satisfying and well written. Most of your decisions will have an actual impact on the rest of your journey, and a second playthrough is probably necessary to explore the other paths, which is why I'll certainly be back to the game at some point for more. I'd definitely be getting the sequels (I was bummed to miss the star deal for the second earlier in the month, but the 3rd is not out yet anyway). Highly recommended.
Hidden Folks
6 hours playtime, 5 of 5 achievements
Hidden Folks is a short but really really nice hidden object games but forget everything you're thinking about Artifex & co, this is not this kind of HoG. Instead everything in the game is hand drawn and packed with details, very reminiscent of those books I had as a kid where you could stare at a page for hours and still find new things you hadn't spotted before. Add to that super cute sounds all made by mouth every time you interact with something, tons and tons of hidden references to pop culture stuff and you have an adorable little game you can get lost in for a few hours. I think the devs are still working on adding more content to the game (they added a whole new series of levels in june), but I think it's still already a nice game. Not featured as my most satisfying finish but definitely my personal highlight among the great games I played this month.
Fallout Shelter
61 hours playtime, 35 of 35 achievements
FINALLY! I managed to grind the 2 elusive cheevos I was missing, and then closed this F2P time sink for good. For some stupid reason I didn't wanna give up so close to the goal (and I need to have all the cheevos for every Fallout game so I couldn't just move on), but I wouldn't really recommend the game. It's okay I guess, but quite grindy/repetitive if you're going for the 100% after a while and for me it was long after I passed the point of interest. I'm just relieved I'm done.
Far Cry 3
45 hours playtime, 44 of 50 achievements (Uplay)
I had been wanting to play this for a long while, but I keep delaying "long" games since it feels like backlog wise I'm not accomplishing much. I'm very happy of the theme Nelly picked for this month as it was the perfect opportunity to play this one. Plus a holiday to a tropical island seemed fitting. Well, what a ride. It was my first Far Cry game and it was pretty fun, even though as with every Ubisoft game of the genre (hello Assassin's creed) there is always so much things to do on the map, but most of them become quickly repetitive: climb the tower, liberate a campement, collect one of the million collectibles, rince & repeat. That said, the story was ok, even though a bit cliché (without spoiling anything, halfway through the game, you totally see the ending coming) and the game was entertaining. Overall a good play, and it made me quite curious about Far Cry 5 (and maybe the 4 if I get my hands on it). Oh, yes I forgot. Uplay is STILL a pain in the ass when coupled with steam. Everytime somebody was messaging me it was making the fullscreen mode pop, f*cking up the resolution/ratio and I had to get back to the settings to fix it, or sometimes even exit the game. Also I don't get why Uplay can't put the cheevos both on steam and on their own app, as sharing stats from your uplay profile is not friendly at all. Oh well.
Pictopix
42 hours playtime, 18 of 18 achievements
After a lot of recommendations from friends, I got Pictopix while it was on sales on chrono.gg a while ago, and been casually playing it ever since. I finally completed the game and I have to say it was well worth my money. Pictopix is a picross (aka nonograms) puzzle game and if you like the genre, it's quite a good one. It has a lot of content as is, but also includes Steam Workshop functionality letting you create and share your own puzzles, as well as download new ones from other users. Definitely recommended if picross is your thing.
Armello
13 hours playtime, 15 of 50 achievements
Another one of my new addictions, I've been playing quite a lot of Armello since I came back from holidays. For those who don't know, Armello is another one of those digital board games I was talking about in the intro of this post. The premise is quite simple: it takes place in an animal fantasy kingdom where the king has been corrupted by Rot and is slowly dying while turning into madness. The turns go in a cycle of day and nights, where the king is fading away more and more until he's out of health (or somebody win the game in a faster way), which I think was a great mecanism to limit the lenght of a game and avoid it lingers for hours and hours into boredom (I'm looking at you talisman). The rules are quite simple to learn, yet not too simple to make the game boring, and the tutorial is well done to get accustomed with them fast. Will be playing a lot more of it :)
WORLD END ECONOMiCA episode.01
9 hours playtime, no achievements
Picked for me for Play or pay 8, I'm still on the fence about this visual novel. On the positive side, the story is nice and mostly interesting, and I liked the art style, which I guess is what you ask from a VN in the first place. Sadly, there was also a few negative points in my eyes that made the whole experience only lukewarm. One of them was the insane amount of black screens where the devs didn't even bother to give us an empty background scene to look at (and believe me there is a loooot of those too) while feeding us walls of text. Which leads to my second negative point. To me a big chunk of the text/story was unecessary at best, boring at most, and it didn't have to do with the story itself, but with the path the game choose to go to explain to you economics of the trade market. Yes. I should have got the hint at the title, but I didn't believe it would be that much in details, and since economy is just plain boring to me, it was a miss. I'll probably give a try to the 2 other episodes as I already have them on my steam account, but I was a bit disappointed. Oh, and before I forget to mention it, there is zero choices to be made in that VN, it's completely linear (not necessary a negative, but better be warned).
-
Old Man's Journey
0 minutes playtime
no achievements
-
Spelunky
0 minutes playtime
0 of 20 achievements
-
Hidden Folks
6 hours playtime
5 of 5 achievements
-
Rakuen
0 minutes playtime
0 of 15 achievements
-
A Long Way Home
0 minutes playtime
0 of 22 achievements
-
Finders
0 minutes playtime
no achievements
-
Glass Masquerade
0 minutes playtime
0 of 27 achievements
-
Kona
0 minutes playtime
0 of 35 achievements
-
Armello
13 hours playtime
15 of 50 achievements
-
Interstellaria
0 minutes playtime
0 of 28 achievements
-
Princess KAGUYA
0 minutes playtime
0 of 40 achievements
-
Mainlining
0 minutes playtime
no achievements
-
Batman - The Telltale Series
0 minutes playtime
0 of 30 achievements
-
Last Hope - Tower Defense
0 minutes playtime
0 of 27 achievements
-
Deadlight Director’s Cut
0 minutes playtime
0 of 32 achievements
-
Antihero
3 hours playtime
6 of 30 achievements
-
Alice's Patchworks 2
0 minutes playtime
0 of 18 achievements
-
Runestone Keeper
0 minutes playtime
0 of 80 achievements
Ugh, I can’t stand warm weather. A good August wished to you as well :)
Pictopix is definitely a game I’d enjoy, thanks for the recommendation!
Thanks :)
I really liked Pictopix, it filled that hitch for picross puzzles. It was nice while watching movies/tv shows at night :)
Ah yes, very hot weather is never pleasant. Luckily, it’s been mostly cloudy/raining here in the past month, but this week, this week the temperatures are well over 30°C. Hopefully it won’t last long >_<
Anway, those are some really interesting games you’ve added to your backlog, especially Hidden Folks, Glass Masquerade, Rakuen and Runestone Keepers :) Also, Antihero looks really tempting to me, but I’m really hesitatnt becuase I prefer singleplayer games. How does the multiplayer work?
Yeah they announced another heat wave for this week and indeed it’s already bad. I can’t remember when I had a good night of sleep last. Blerg.
I can’t wait to try Rakuen, it looks adorable yet seems to have a nice back story. Hidden folks was really a great surprise if you’re into those kind of things I recommend you check it out.
So for Antihero, I also prefer single player games in general, but it’s really great nonetheless if you like board games. First, it has a single player campaign that I haven’t finished yet (hence not beaten this month) but I only got gifted the game this past sunday. As for the multiplayer, there is 2 modes. First mode is like your classic live multiplayer game, it’s a bit weird to understand at first how to launch it as it asks you a name that both me and the friend I played with thought was the other’s name. Actually it’s like a “room” name or say a password. You just need to both put it in and then you start playing. Games are not too long, which I always appreciate in those kind of games. And then the second mode is even more convenient, is the equivalent of the “play by email” mode that is so convenient. One take their turn, and then can log out. The other player can then play whenever is convenient for them and so on and so forth. You can even actually activate notifications to your email when it’s your turn to play if you want. That type of game obviously last longer than the last one but there’s no rush and you don’t even have to sit an hour at the time.
If you end up getting it and you wanna play with me, lemme know ;)
Hmm, I see I see… Doesn’t sound too bad, maybe I’ll buy Antihero when it’s on some nice discount or in a bundle one day :) Won’t be anytime soon though, so you’ll be long done with the game :D
And indeed, I’m keeping an eye on both Rakuen and Hidden Folks :)
Well, I wish you good luck with your games and also with the hot weather, hopefully you’ll get a nice wave of rains some time soon! :)
Thanks, good luck to you too :3
Hot weather should go extinct! It’s summer right now and we get like 40 degrees (celsius) daily and I can’t wait for winter again :(
Did you buy anything for Fallout Shelter? How do you get those legendary dwellers? I played the game on Android but after seeing how grindy it it I never wanted to touch the Steam version.
Armello and Hidden Folks both look amazing. I especially have my eye on the latter, it’s a possible purchase for me in the future :)
Congratulations on your progress :) If you get 100% on Banner Saga, I might ask about its toughness :P
Oh, somebody else who lives in my personal summer hell >___< Out of curiosity, where do you live? If it’s too personal feel free not to answer. But yes please be winter again.
I did “acquire” some of lunchboxes for Fallout Shelter indeed to get those last legendary dwellers I was missing by using a save editor, boooo me. Actually, the saves are compatible so when I saw they had a steam version out, I imported my save from the phone and resumed playing (I had stop playing on the phone as it was draining my battery during the day). Like I said though, those cheevos are so grindy, I recommend you stay away from installing the game.
They’re both really great! Hidden Folks doesn’t have that much content for now but it’s really awesomely crafted and you see all the love and attention the devs are putting into it.
Thanks. I’m not sue if I will manage to 100% The banner saga anytime soon as some specific cheevos may need a whole playthrough just for each of them seeing how hard are the requirements, but I’ll slowly try to work on it.
Yea I read that it’s possible to use the mobile save on Steam version, that’s actually really nice. But yea I don’t think I’ll get close to this game even though I kinda enjoyed it when I played on Android. Once achievements are a part of the experience on Steam, I’d just get annoyed :P
Banner Saga is a game I’d really like to play but yea achievements and completions and yada yada :P Such silly reasons get in the way :D I wish I wasn’t a completionist but it’s easier said than done ;) Maybe on GoG as I decided to pursue very specific types of games, I would not play on Steam, on GoG.
I don’t feel comfortable with disclosing my country in public. But I’d to you in private :)
If you have the patience, I’m sure the banner saga is 100%-able but in multiple playthroughs. Or yes you could get it on Gog and not care bout the cheevos :p
I’m currently playing through episode 3 of World End Economica. The stock market econs stuff definitely feels longer and gets harder to read through every time. The story is interesting enough, but I found myself wondering “When will this end?” quite a few times.
Argh… I guess I’ll still go into the 2 other episodes but I’ll maybe skip a bit of the economics stuff as really i already had an overdose in episode one. Do episode 2 & 3 still have as many black screens or did they improve that a bit?
There’s still the occasional black screen, but it’s definitely better. I think they also had more backgrounds. The music transitions are still abrupt though.
Oh also, this is like a minor thing but it bothered me: the character names aren’t consistent across episodes… e.g. Hal vs Haru, Lisa vs Risa, Serrault vs Cerrow
The music in the first episode, even though i forgot to talk about it, was quite annoying. Especially those short looping tunes >___>
I hate when it’s inconsistent BUT if it means they changed the trad team, maybe it’s for the better. The english version of episode one is quite low quality in some parts.
WEE is one of the games that were chosen for me for the Challenge and I’ve yet to get around to starting it. Seeing you took around 10 hours to read it I should probably start soon >.>
Far Cry 3 is the one Ubisoft-sandbox game I managed to stick to all the way to the end and I can’t even explain why, maybe it just got the balance of its ingredients just right. Still, I don’t see myself going back to another game from that genre anytime soon, I’m good for a few years, thanks :p
As for The Banner Saga, it was one of my favorite strategy games in the past few years, I found the health = attack power mechanic to be a brilliant twist that makes it pretty unique compared to other games in the genre.
I remember having a conversation with a friend 3ish years ago right after beating it and we were both pretty disappointed about how it ends, it felt too abrupt and it clearly showed they run out of budget halfway through and decided to just cut it. I’m relieved to see they’re still managing to work on the third and final part of the game, I was concerned the project would be cancelled at some point
Yeah, it was picked for me in PoP8, and I thought it would be an “easy” start. I usually read quite fast but I have to say I got so bored in some parts that I think I’ve been a bit slow. It was even making me sleepy sometimes.
I get what you mean bout Far Cry, as I think I’ll not get Far Cry 4 because I’m scared as often with Ubi it’s a “prettier” version in a new environment but it gets pretty repetitive fast. I’ll see in a few years when FC5 will be cheap :p
The Banner Saga was really a great surprise as it even managed to exceed my expectations. And yes, the ending is pretty abrupt but thankfully they got the sequels funded on kickstarter. To be honest after playing this game, they’d be one of the company I’d confidently kickstart (contrary to some who ran with the money or delivered an half baked game).
I’ve tried Far Cry 3 (Uplay) but just couldn’t get into it. I think I stopped playing after around 2-3 hours. Apparently, nice graphics alone isn’t enough to make me continue playing a game. :p
WEE sounds like something that would put me to sleep. Couldn’t get into any of the VNs I’ve tried so I think that one won’t be any different. I also found Economics class soooooooo boooooooring.
It’s rainy season in my country so it’s not as hot as it was back in April and May. I’ve experienced winter (snow and all) only when I visited Hokkaido last year. Although I’m not that fond of snow, I liked the cold. I wish we had winter here.
FC3 suffers I think the same syndrome than a lot of Ubi game. It’s pretty, yes, but it gets super repetitive super fast.
WEE did get me sleepy, I admit easily. I think it’s the VN that so far took me the longest (or rather, the slowest read, I’ve read longer VN but they didn’t make me sleepy). I never took economics for that very reason, turns out i was right not to.
Where I live we really rarely get snow in winter (like once every 10 years or so) but I’m just craving for colder temperatures. Even autumn will do, I just want the temperature to go back under 25°C so I can get a good night of sleep >___>
My goodness– six gifts or non-SG wins played, and another nine added to backlog. Is there another SG I’m not aware of, or did you just have a milestone birthday or something? =)
Note that some of them are the same though :p
Most of them are either gifts from friends (remember the sales were still going at the beginning of the month), or bundles leftovers friends gave me because they had it and I only wanted that in the bundle.
100% on Fallout Shelter, grats :D I got 34/35 and then just quit the game, couldn’t force myself more to play…
Which one were you missing? The last and grindiest one to get for me was the “raider attacks” one, as it took forever for that many group of raiders to attack (I was getting mostly deathclaws and ghouls). Part of me wanted to give up but I was just so close, I left it run a lot while I was working, looking from time to time that the apocalypse wasn’t happening in my vault.
I am missing 20 legendary dwellers, opened around 100 lunchboxes and got none of them. So with my luck getting 18 more dwellers would take ages, since the 2 i got were from quests… I was even thinking of editing save file to give me thousands of lunchboxes, so i can just get that achievement, but couldn’t do it.
Getting 50 raiders wasn’t hard for me, maybe since i was lucky enough to get pet that gives 3x objectives early in the game, so i needed 3x less attacks to get it :D
Might get back to game one day though :)
I guess my problem was that I imported my save from my phone when the game got out on steam, which yes saved me a lot of time, but at the same time my vault was already well over the limit where you start getting deathclaws attacks, so it’s what I was mostly getting. I didn’t know you could use that pet to make it count that way, I was mostly sending mine with my questing teams.
For the legendary dwellers, it was my second to last cheevo too. I did it the “give yourself tons of lunchboxes and keep opening them”. I think it took me around 500-1k lunchboxes to get the 20 (well minus the 2 from the quests). It was quite tedious.
Played it on the phone long ago and got bored after getting everything, so several years later i didn’t have a save file, but i understand the problem.
That pet could have been used for various objectives, when i got it i checked online what could have been used for :D
I hated waiting for it to open one lunchbox, having two of them were even worse. So i can’t imagine how that worked out in the end, maybe one of the reasons i didn’t use save editor :D
The save file was still on my phone long after I uninstalled the app so i guess i was lucky i never really clean manually all those files that remains.
And yeah opening those lunchboxes was so tedious. I didn’t even do it all in a row and i was watching something while doing it but still.
I would totally swap this stupid not so warm weather against your heatwaves! <3
Yeah, my part of the country had the lowest temperature in all off Germany the last month. Sucks -.-
Hope you had a nice trip though :)
I didn’t read every thing. But. World End Economica. I’ll tell you a secret: It’s no VN AT ALL. In fact it’s a KN = Kinetic Novel. Meaning there are no choices. I didn’t know that beforehand either. It would have been nice to know that, because I would have had a totally different approach. Oh well, we survived it :]
Have a great month!
Happy backlog killing :)
I’m so over summer, I can’t wait for autumn to roll over… (I was already over summer one day into it to be honest, as June was already horrible). The trip was greeeeat though. We managed to do outdoors stuff (beach, mountain hiking, etc…) in the mornings before it got too hot, and stayed in fresh places then til it cooled down again in the evenings. Also we ate a lot of delicious food, which is always the best part :p and hot weather is the perfect excuse for ice cream tasting. Thank you for asking :)
Sorry for the wrong category, to me KN falls into VN anyway, and I didn’t really mind. The detailed economy lesson though…. >__>
Have a great month too, happy gaming :)
I sooooooo enjoyed the spring when it was super warm over here <3
And yes, warm weather is a nice excuse to eat ice cream :D
Ah, it’s not your fault, right? It just had the wrong tabs on steam. And yes, KN is part of VNs, it’s just a subcategory to say: “Hey, you can’t choose anything here!” :D
And yeah, you’re absolutely right. This detailed economy stuff got to me as well. I’m in German already not that familiar with it and having to read all that in English was extra difficult :D
I’ll do my best, thanks :)
Exactly, I didn’t take economy in high school already for a reason: I don’t care. And like you said I’m already not familiar with it in french, let alone reading it in english. I felt that it inflated the length of the game in a bit of an artificial way. Especially because I’m not sure you can effectively learn about trading in real life with it. Seemed a bit weird.
Yep, did indeed. But! We overcame that obstacle :D
Indeed. Did you play the 2 other episodes? I secretely hope there is less economic 101 in it :/
(Also I didn’t really like the protagonist himself if I’m honest. He came out as really self centered)
No, not yet. But I got the second in my Batch. We’ll see how fast I’ll get there. I don’t feel that motivated. Although now I know it’s a book so I could enjoy it simply as a book :]
Yeah, I know. Had the same trouble :)