Acquisitions

• Graveyard Keeper
• Two Point Hospital
• Whispers of a Machine
• Mages of Mystralia
• Edna & Harvey: The Breakout - Anniversary Edition

All links should open in a new tab besides the category tags. I'm currently about to finish the long process of categorizing my games into short, long, medium, etc. to help people picking for Challenge Me and Play or Pay. I keep a million other lists, so I figured I didn't have an excuse not to make ones that are more likely to be helpful, long as the process has been.

• The Cat Lady
  

  19.8 hours playtime

  19 of 25 achievements

• Saints Row: The Third
  

  50 hours playtime

  42 of 83 achievements

• Nancy Drew: The Secret of Shadow Ranch
  

  38.4 hours playtime

  0 of 0 achievements

• Staxel
  

  70.4 hours playtime

  12 of 23 achievements

The Cat Lady

Achievement Clean Up Cool-looking Detectives! Mystery! Murder! England, My Lionheart Kitty Cats Quirky

I was wanting to finish some of the short games I'd started and never finished. So I set out to play The Cat Lady as it fit the January theme. I beat most of the game several years ago, so there wasn't much left to do. Because of the way I played it, I only vaguely remember most of the game, but there were some things that stuck with me, like an impressive/surprising scene early on, the cats <3, etc.

The gameplay is pretty weird. You use the arrow keys to move left and right (it's kind of a sidescroller, I guess), and also the up arrow to pick up items or interact with things. So it's technically not a point and click in the normal sense, but it wasn't hard to get used to and fit the game well.

Saints Row: The Third

Achievement Clean Up Dress Up LMAO Noticeably Good Music Player Homes USA

I don't really have much to say because I think everyone knows how this kind of game is. My expectations were met. I liked that you can unlock abilities to eventually take no damage, unlimited sprint and ammo, auto/no reloading. It was fun using deadly falls as a means of escape.

Just killing an old guy by walking into him against a car.

Unlike GTA, which tries to tell somewhat serious stories, Saints Row is just silliness, and because consistency and realism weren't important here, missions incorporate different themes or genres. Apart from the expected shooting and driving around, there is a zombie mission, a text-based choose your own adventure, and acting out scenes for a film, among others.

Nancy Drew: The Secret of Shadow Ranch

"Archaeology" and Anthropology At Least Somewhat Historic Detectives! Mystery! Murder! Educational Favorites Food Ghosts Literary Ties USA West

This is one of my favorite Nancy Drew games and my second time playing it. It's the 10th game in the series, which I'm playing in order. When I wrote about Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake (7th game, which had also been an old favorite, I mentioned that it didn't hold up quite as well. Fortunately, that wasn't the case here. Fyi, my actual playtime is probably more like 10-12 hours.

You are staying on a ranch in Arizona, where the appearance of a "phantom horse" accompanied an accident. You have to help out with some ranch chores, which is something I was looking forward to because of nostalgia. While some chores are one-offs you only do once (fixing wiring for chicken fence, preparing animal food in proper proportions, baking a cake), some you do each day (3 days). The daily chores are collecting chicken eggs and vegetables. Different variety of vegetables are picked at different stages, which you can read up on in an in-game website from your phone.

When you finish with your chores, you can work on solving the phantom horse mystery, which turns into a local history treasure hunt. You have to get help from a writer of cheesy historical fiction novels for some info about daily life to help solve clues. I feel like the characters of this game are particularly good and memorable, especially the ranch cast.

Oh wait, did I forget to mention the pictograph search and ghost town?

This game marked a fan-favorite quality of life upgrade: the portable checklist. In a couple of the games immediately preceeding this one, you get a text file checklist on a computer. As mentioned above, the keyword searches using a web browser on your phone is back in this entry, as well. That is good from a story-telling perspective since it helps space the content more appropriately than just having 10 books you can pick up and read from the beginning.

Educational content seems more focused on domestic/craft/DIY type stuff. In addition to the basic farm stuff, there is measuring ingredients for a cake (and even having to guess at correct baking time and heat), learning about knitting patterns and how they're made, redoing historic beadwork according to a pattern. You also get some helpful tips about surviving a downed powerline (hint: don't run, shuffle away) and rattlesnakes. You learn not to be cruel to Bob, the horse you ride to different locations, as you will be scolded and guilt-tripped if you don't take the effort to remove his saddle when back at the ranch. You also have to make sure the straps on the saddle are tightened or you'll fall off.

Staxel

Crafting Dress Up Halloween and Horror Kitty Cats Make Believe - Simulated Lives Next Up Player Homes Winter Won on SteamGifts

This is my 2nd Staxel update (first is here). Once again, I somehow don't have the most up-to-date screenshots, but I still have some work to do on the building I started after this stuff, anyway. Last time I was finishing up the first house I built (had previousy built a depressing and borderline abusive barn and pet store. The castle was pretty much finished but needed a roof.

Did anyone wonder why Oscar spends all his time outside?

So after finishing the castle house for Oscar, I got to work on the task to build a museum. It was my first attempt at a normal roof. It was really straightforward and honestly I'm not sure I've improved much since or as a result. I plan to take apart some other roofs that came in the game and see how they were made at some point. I made the center/top point flat so a large flying dinosaur skeleton would fit and dominate the town. If there are any lava blocks in the game, I was thinking of making it look more like a volcano.

The dinosaur skeletons were too large for the interior, so most became outdoor decor.