UPDATE NUMBER UNKNOWN +21, ABOUT TRYING AND FAILING.

So, may monthly theme didn’t go too well - I managed to beat just one game. One ended on my “won’t play” list and another one sits on the “unfinished” pile. Sigh.

⁉️ STATUS: Won’t play

✔️ LIKED: It’s a nicely drawn game.
❌ DISLIKED: Unfortunatelly, the gameplay is centered around playing hide and seek with a monster. That’s something I’m just not fond of. The game does give you a warning when the monster appears, but you often don’t have enough time to react (either because you just so happened to go through the “wrong” door or because there is no hiding place) so the monster kills you instantly. From my experience, there is about 50% chance that you’ll die everytime you change rooms. I have no patience for that.

⁉️ STATUS: Beaten

✔️ LIKED: Interesting visual stylization, cool swordplay. Generous time limits in some story- and side-missions. I hate time limits of any sort, but here I never felt stressed out by them because the game provides enough time to pass the level and even pick up some collectibles along the way. I also really liked the “Ulti-Mondo” skin that you unlock by beating the game for the first time.
❌ DISLIKED: The utterly, ridiculously terrible button-mashing during boss fights with the Big Bad. It’s nearly impossible to pass, at least with KB+M (though from what I read, people with controllers had troubles with it as well). If you can’t smash the button fast enough, it’s game over for you, beceause there is no other way to get past those fights. That’s just plain bad design, pointless and unfair. Also, the optional challenges were frustrating as hell (but yes, they’re optional).

⁉️ STATUS: Completed

✔️ LIKED: A good mix of adventure, walking sim and platforming. The core idea appealed to me (humans can’t adapt, so they destroy). The game communicates with the player quite well without relying on tutorials (that’s something games often get wrong and are either needlessly detailed or way too obtuse). Also, it’s easy to get the “speedrun” achiev! O.o
❌ DISLIKED: Lack of proper in-game settings. The transitions between areas are not exactly seemless. At one point, the game gives you instructions that are pretty much an opposite of what you actually need to do (when you get the jetpack boost for the first time). The “interview” part of the story felt pointless and out of place.

⁉️ STATUS: Completed

✔️ LIKED: Nice art, decent audio. The writing is ok, the story clearly has some sort of a vision as to where it wants to go.
❌ DISLIKED: No real menu to speak of and when you beat the game, it just quits to desktop. The combat system (while interesting) wasn’t implemented very well. The riddles were completely out of place and had nothing to do with what’s going on in the game.

⁉️ STATUS: Completed

✔️ LIKED: Mildly amusing strategy game in which you have to assemble a group of adventurers based on their preferences and then succesfully complete said adventure. Easy to 100%, which is a plus if you care about achievs.
❌ DISLIKED: There’s quite a lot of typos. The game’s somewhat reliant on RNG and the interface can be confusing at first.

⁉️ STATUS: Completed

✔️ LIKED: A turn based strategy where you are the “villain”, going against the “heroes” (though they did conquer your kingdom, so you’re just taking back what was yours). Quite short, quite easy.
❌ DISLIKED: Treasure chests seem to exist to be picked up by enemies, that’s a bit annoying. Overall, I would prefer if the gamplay was a bit slower and more “balanced”.

⁉️ STATUS: Unfinished

✔️ LIKED: A stealth game set in old-time Japan, in which you control a party of heroes. I like how each of them has different abilities and you have to make them work together to achieve their goal, all for the glory of the Shogun.
❌ DISLIKED: The gameplay is a bit too challenging for me. In every mission, there’s one part where I get stuck for a long while and that annoys me, that’s why I lost interest in the game for now. I do intend to finish it because I enjoy stealth games, but you know how that goes… Soon(tm).

⁉️ STATUS: Beaten

✔️ LIKED: A mildly amusing, relaxing (if grindy) word game. I like that, it helps me improve my english. Though I wish there were some good word games available in my language (we mostly only have the lame ones).
❌ DISLIKED: It requires quite a lot of grinding, especially towards the end before you are strong enough to tackle the dragon. I found it a bit difficult to remember which words I already used in longer games.