Acquisitions

Kimmy
TIS-100
Dead Rising 4
Jalopy
Kerbal Space Program
Moon Hunters
The Flame in the Flood

Pep Talk

I haven't had a good month and a half or so with gaming. I've spent a lot of that time working on other things, but I also had a couple of setbacks. The first was with DreadOut. After beating a difficult scissor ghost boss I almost gave up on until I learned the "run two laps around the tiny room then wildly take a picture behind you" trick to beat the second phase of the fight. The just before beating the first half of the game, my save file was corrupted due to an old bug that had supposedly been fixed but seems to be happening again, because I fell through the floor and the game autosaved. In a game that doesn't have manual saves. I decrypted the save file and can change the player position, but I don't know appropriate coordinates to use. I started testing stuff out but it takes too long to load the game up every time. I could probably get back to where I was in a couple of hours going through again, but I'm still a little sour about it. Maybe next update.

The other "setback" is a roguelike I'm afraid to play (Dungeon of the Endless). I've almost beat the first difficulty but I'm afraid I'll die and lose my progress. Since I don't have too much pride to cheat in the name of my backlog and Playing Appreciated obligations, I'm going to try to back up my save and hope that works.

Small Town Terrors: Pilgrim's Hook

4.8 hours playtime

0 of 0 achievements
Samantha Swift and the Golden Touch

5.6 hours playtime

0 of 0 achievements
Midnight Mysteries: Salem Witch Trials

7 hours playtime

12 of 14 achievements

Small Town Terrors: Pilgrim's Hook

Colonial New England USA Won on SteamGifts

It's been a few weeks since I played this, and it was kind of a generic HOG with good graphics. The main thing I remember is that it has a Nantucket setting. One place you go is a whale museum that looks a lot like this.

Samantha Swift and the Golden Touch

Ancient World Archaeology At Least Somewhat Historic Won on SteamGifts

I appreciated the bright, cartoony graphics. I left with a better impression of this game than the first Samantha Swift game. The overarching story has to do with Midas, and it takes you to many different locations with their own look. My home state (Missouri) even managed to make an appearance, along with some of our famous outlaws: Jesse James and the Younger brothers, who led a Confederate-supporting Civil War-era gang.

Clearly drawn graphics...but maybe a little too easy.

Midnight Mysteries: Salem Witch Trials

At Least Somewhat Historic Colonial Detectives! Mystery! Murder! Ghosts Literary Ties New England USA Won on SteamGifts

A Steam Gifts win, and counts for the Monthly Challenge. Part of the reason I wanted to play this is because I'm going to Boston later this summer, so I'm playing games I have related to the area. I liked the previous Midnight Mysteries game I played (Edgar Allen Poe), and I liked this too for a HOG. The objects are a little hard to see due to graphics being a little fuzzy in HOG scenes. This game is a weird mix of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the Salem Witch Trials, Franklin Pierce, and even Lincoln's ghost shows up. I wish I had read the House of the Seven Gables before playing this, since I think several ghosts are characters from that book. I usually try to read the classics before playing a game based on one, but I thought I'd be good having read The Scarlet Letter and a handful of short stories.

Anyway, they seem to do a good job making stories around history and literature. There was a funny thing in this one about a curse a witch set on the people who killed her & their descendants. The witch said they would all die with "blood in their throats." When you found out information about a ghosts' deaths, a message comes up that says "Blood in his/her throat!" I wonder if that is in the book with the same wording. You unlock information about Hawthorne, the Witch Trials, and a Native American thing I'm still confused about after beating the game. No screenshots because I had to use a beta version with no overlay for achievements to work.

Vito

I haven’t played any of your completed games and they’re not my genre either, so I sadly cannot type up anything smart in regard to that…

But I feel you on the setbacks you mention in your first paragraph. Most of the time, losing* a savegame makes me want to quit as well…even if it’s just a couple of hours and the games fun otherwise. But it can be sooo frustrating to see a savefile being corrupted. Ugh! Poor Trilled Meow :(

‘Dungeon of the Endless’ is in my backlog too. I played for some hours a few years ago, but never got far. Looking forward to your review, maybe it’ll motivate me to finally assassinate it. And about the “save-scumming”: Just go for it: Games are there for us to have fun and sometimes that means cheating** a bit.

* btw, I always confuse ‘loose’ and ‘lose’ and I’m almost certain I got it taught wrong in school.

** As long as it doesn’t impact anyone else. Cheating in multiplayer is of course a big no-no.

Trilled Meow

I guess HOGs aren’t really my genre either, but I have a lot of them in my Steam account, including SG wins, and they’re the fastest to clear from my backlog. I’m mostly surprised that no one seems to have a save file or a fix for save files since it’s a common issue. But after I went to the trouble of figuring out how to decrypt it, I really wanted to be able to fix it on my own. :(

Trent

I hate encountering bugs in games. I know it’s a part of life, but when I hear that games are “buggy” I tend to avoid them. So even to consider game-breaking bugs or bugs that corrupt your save…well, I can’t even… You have my sympathy. And kudos to you for decrypting the save file!

As far as Dungeon of the Endless, yeah, I’m not much of a tower defense person, nor do I tend to play games with permadeath. This guy seems to have been able to make a copy of his save game, so it definitely seems possible. It also looks like the thread has some good strategy tips, if you’re interested. In single-player games, cheating is always preferable to not having any fun. For the backlog!

Thanks for the update! That’s…an impressive assortment of user tags you have here in BLAEO. :p

Trilled Meow

Well, I can at least manually make copies of my save file at the point before the issue occurs with Dreadout, now that I know an issue that was supposedly fixed still exists. So I can prevent it from forcing me to start over again. It’s mostly the scissor boss I don’t want to fight again because it was kind of nerve-racking.

And yeah, it’s a lot easier to make categories on here than in my Steam library and they’re easier to look at, so I went crazy.

Edit: And actually, Dungeon of the Endless is kind of weird for a tower defense game. Based on what I’ve experienced, you explore the floor while setting down traps to defend a crystal from the waves. On the first difficulty, I don’t really need to go back and fight anything myself. Then after you find the elevator, you run like mad with the crystal to the elevator. Basically, there seems to be little emphasis on the waves on enemies, but maybe that’s just because this is supposed to be the easiest difficulty.

JaffaCaffa

I’ve heard Dungeon of the Endless is quite unforgiving from a few friends, I guess it’s the nature of those things. If backing up your safe helps you enjoy the game more than might as well, right? Hope it works out alright. :) I’d still love to play it sometime but definitely daunting and those games just suck you into it for maaany hours.