July’s Stats
aka. Summer games done slow
Hello fellow assassins, how did July treat you? Here, gaming’s been good this month, both in quantity and most importantly in quality. I’ve played some really great games and it was even hard to pick a favourite. Can someone tell me since when all those good quality games release during summer? Anyway, not a complain, just something I was wondering recently. Anything good you’ve been playing recently ? I hope considering the sanitary situation and the recent natural catastrophies going on that you’re all safe and sound. Take care and keep fighting the backlog.
| Played | Finished | Completed | Backlog+ | Achievements |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 | 12 | 5 | 11 | 216 + 8 |
ABC Challenge 2.0 Progress (3/27)
Finished this month: 0
Tag Challenge #1 Progress (2/12)
Finished this month: 0Most Satisfying Finish
Most Exciting Addition
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Cozy Grove
59 hours playtime
50 of 62 achievements
-
The Silver Case 2425
5 hours playtime
no achievements
-
Pathway
18 hours playtime
47 of 75 achievements
-
Tony Hawks Pro Skater 1+2
7 hours playtime
no achievements
-
Mario's Picross 2 (GameBoy)
47 hours playtime
20 of 33 achievements
-
DemonCrawl
222 hours playtime
82 of 172 achievements
-
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
315 hours playtime
no achievements
-
Popup Dungeon
34 hours playtime
17 of 65 achievements
-
Beasts of Maravilla Island
3 hours playtime
31 of 31 achievements
-
Mitoza
35 minutes playtime
12 of 12 achievements
-
The Solitaire Conspiracy
5 hours playtime
18 of 20 achievements
-
Omno
6 hours playtime
21 of 21 achievements
-
Wanderlust: Travel Stories
9 hours playtime
12 of 12 achievements
-
Mini Motorways
10 hours playtime
32 of 67 achievements
-
Death's Door
20 hours playtime
21 of 24 achievements
-
Draft of Darkness
46 minutes playtime
1 of 35 achievements
-
The Ramp
1 minute playtime
no achievements
-
The Touryst
7 hours playtime
8 of 10 achievements
-
Wanderlust: Transsiberian
53 minutes playtime
no achievements
-
Donut County
2 hours playtime
no achievements
-
Analogue: A Hate Story
4 hours playtime
11 of 14 achievements
Pathway
18 hours playtime, 47 of 75 achievements
In an attempt to reduce that orange section of my backlog pie, I picked up Pathway again. Originally, I was very excited for it but the balance at launch (in 2019) was so awful that it was making the game extremely non fun to play. I'm happy to report that it has since been fixed. The game is really fun to play, a great mix of exploration and turn-based tactics with a huge Indiana Jones vibes. As a bonus, the devs are really nice and helpful people. I had a minor bug where the game kept running in the background after I shut it down (the playing time in this one is probably innacurate since it took a few hours before I realized). I casually asked about it on their discord and one dev contacted me in private and the team tried really hard to solve my problem.
Beasts of Maravilla Island
3 hours playtime, 31 of 31 achievements
I'm a little bit torn about this one. I really enjoyed it and it's what I wish Pokemon Snap would have been about : you walk around in a paradisiac island and take photos of lots of strange creatures and plants. My playthrough went smoothly and all was fine. But then I gifted a copy of it to polsdestrella and her playthrough was ridden with bugs and glitches, to the point that she encountered a game breaking bug towards the end and we had to edit her save file manually comparing it with mine, which after some trial and errors let her bypass that point and actually finish her game. Which wouldn't even have been possible if we didn't have an actual non buggy save file past that point. So it's hard to recommend even though I loved the game.
Mitoza
35 minutes playtime, 12 of 12 achievements
More than a game it's a toy that you interact with to see the different outcomes. Some are super weird, but I liked it. It's short and free.
The Solitaire Conspiracy
5 hours playtime, 18 of 20 achievements
Probably the best solitaire game I've ever played, and it has a story. I really loved it.
Omno
6 hours playtime, 21 of 21 achievements
One of the 3 best games I've played this month, and might end up in my end of year top. It's relatively short but it's both visually super pretty and it's a very zen overall game. It reminded me a bit of Journey, but with a cat companion, so clearly superior. And you can surf. 11/10. For those who have the gamepass it's on there too, give it a try.
Mini Motorways
10 hours playtime, 32 of 67 achievements
Another one of my top of the month. It's the sequel to Mini Metro, visually in the same style but with different mecanics on the same basic concept. Here you have to design the road infrastructures to link people's houses and their place of work and avoid traffic chaos. If you liked Mini Metro, you'll most likely love this too. Easy to pick up, hard to master if you wanna reach the top scores. I might be slightly addicted but is it really a problem? :sweat:
Death's Door
20 hours playtime, 21 of 24 achievements
My most satisfying finish (mostly because it was longer and more complex than the two previous ones). A beautiful and dark action-adventure game. A bit of a Zelda-like were you play as a young crow reaper who gets involved in a dark plot while just trying to do his job. I really LOVED this game and 100% it (the save file, not the achievements) in 20 hours across 5 days. I couldn't wait to see more of it and put all of my free time of those days into it. Very strong recommend for the fans of the genre. Note for the cheevo hunters : you might want to check the missable cheevos. The ones I'm missing would have been more or less easy to acquire (maybe minus one) if I had actually known they were a thing.
Wanderlust: Travel Stories
9 hours playtime, 12 of 12 achievements
Following Lengray's recommendation from last winter, I bought this (and the DLC, see below) during the summer sales. My condition was that I was gonna play it this month and not let it rot in the backlog. It was a very nice travel VN and I enjoyed the stories overall. However something in one of the stories itched me the wrong way. It was only one sentence so I guess it's not too bad but one of the protagonist describes while passing the border from France to Spain contemplating the Alps (the chain of mountain between the 2 countries is the Pyrenees, the Alps are between France and Italy for those who don't know). It bothered me in the sense that if your game is all about travel and geography, please double check your facts. And mostly because I didn't know if in the other stories there were the same kind of errors (because I'm not good at geography or familiar with the other places, so I don't know). However overall it was still very enjoyable.
Wanderlust: Transsiberian
53 minutes playtime, no achievements
The standalone DLC to the main Wanderlust game. It only follows one story but the protagonist is one of the main game character so they're kind of linked. I really liked this one too.
The Touryst
7 hours playtime, 8 of 10 achievements
It was a fun little exploration/puzzle game. I mostly played it because it was leaving the gamepass today and I was intrigued so I thought I might as well try. Cute concept but some of the sequences of plateforming were just infuriating because of the perspective.
Donut County
2 hours playtime, no achievements
Nice short game that I would describe as a reverse Katamari Damacy. You're in control of a hole in the ground and have to absorb everything around. The only critic I'd have is that the gamepass version on PC won't let you unlock the achievements for some reason (it seems to be common with Annapurna's games on the pass). Other than that, fun relaxing game.
Analogue: A Hate Story
4 hours playtime, 11 of 14 achievements
A sneaky octopus stuffed this in my backlog, and I was curious enough to take it. I guess since I wasn't really expecting anything of it, I was pleasantly surprised. It's a sci-fi VN where you unfold the story by exploring some log files in the computer of an empty space ship, trying to figure out what happened to its former inhabitants. Note that my first playthrough ended in about 10 minutes because I'm an idiot. Anywho, my actual "full" playthrough took about 3h30 and then some reloading to explore different branches of the story. I might go back to sweep the 3 cheevos I'm missing and read what I didn't discover. Nice surprise.
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Beasts of Maravilla Island
3 hours playtime
31 of 31 achievements
-
Wanderlust: Travel Stories
9 hours playtime
12 of 12 achievements
-
Wanderlust: Transsiberian
53 minutes playtime
no achievements
-
PSYCHO-PASS: Mandatory Happiness
0 minutes playtime
0 of 36 achievements
-
The Solitaire Conspiracy
5 hours playtime
18 of 20 achievements
-
Omno
6 hours playtime
21 of 21 achievements
-
Mini Motorways
10 hours playtime
32 of 67 achievements
-
Death's Door
20 hours playtime
21 of 24 achievements
-
Draft of Darkness
46 minutes playtime
1 of 35 achievements
-
The Ramp
1 minute playtime
no achievements
-
Alba: A Wildlife Adventure
0 minutes playtime
0 of 9 achievements
Monthly check
Animal Crossing ✔️
Cozy Grove ✔️
DemonCrawl ✔️
Gems of War ❌
Ah well, good enough :laughingoctopus:
A sneaky octopus stuffed this in my backlog
Sure, sure, always blaming the poor octopus for no reason.
I haven’t touched Gems of War since 2020, I think i’m cured of that one by now. Worry not, I have multiple replacements.
Sure, sure, always blaming the poor octopus for no reason.
:sure:
I haven’t touched Gems of War since 2020
Maybe u should celebrate by checking out what’s new in the latest updates :spess
NUH. Nuh nuh nuh.
Congrats on all of your assassinations! I had a very successful month. How was Deaths Door? It looks super cute although I don’t really play games with that style of combat, I’m interested. I’ve added Beasts of Maravilla Island and Omno to my WL though, if I see them in the future I’ll try and nab em’ for the eternal backlog of doom.
Thanks. I really loved Death’s Door, it’s up there to compete for my GOTY list. The fighting style is mostly melee/dodge/magic based, a bit like Hades on that aspect (but not the rest, it’s not a roguelike, just a more classic Zelda-esque Action adventure). It had quite a lot to explore and it was full of nice details, with a nice balance of dark and humourous for the writing.
You should really like Omno if you liked Journey.
Thank you for bringing Omno to my attetion! I will definetly check it out and probably buy it at some point.
You’re welcome, I think it’s really worth it even if it’s a shortish game. It’s really well made and super chill to play.
I added a few games to the backlog in June, and I finished all of them, except for one (Yakuza 6), in July, so it was a pretty good month for backlog-slaying. Quality-wise, I wouldn’t consider any of them as favorites, but none of them were bad.
And I didn’t know that Wanderlust is a travel VN. Transsiberian was being given away for free on GOG a couple of days ago, and I just grabbed it without knowing what it was about. XD Gonna put it on my “to play soon-ish” list.
You’re always so good with your backlog. :sweat:
Yeah Transsiberian is good on itself (the only “relation” to the main game is that the protagonist is also one of the protagonists of the other) and works perfectly fine as a standalone. It was nice to take a virtual trip especially this year.
Still claiming to have played games in July :laugh
Oh look who found back his way to the site… Are you working on your report ? :eyes:
Do we know each other?
:grumpy:
Oh wow, what a month of gaming. :O Congrats on beating so many games!
I had no issues with Beasts of Maravilla Island so it’s weird to hear about what happened. For me it was also pretty smooth.
I’m interested in playing Death’s Door but at the same time I don’t want to buy games at full price, since I should be saving money a bit. I’m glad you enjoyed it, that gives me hope that I will love it as well!
What do you think of Cozy Grove? I saw it the other day and was thinking if I should get it at some point.
The Beast of Maravilla issues seem completely aleatory in the “all or nothing” bag, like I said my experience was completely smooth too but boy was her save filed messed up.
Death’s Door is really great but I can understand now wanting the games at full price. Keep an eye for it, it’ll get discounted eventually.
I love Cozy Grove, but it’s a really slow experience (Animal Crossing style) as you can only progress a bit each day, so it’s a game on the long term. I find it chill to play a little each day.
You managed to find it fun to play again on Pathway after clearing it once? I felt like it wouldn’t bring to much new things to the table.
Death Door really sounds like a game I’ll have to check.
I hadn’t cleared it originally because of the unbalance, it wasn’t fun. But now they worked on it and it was really good. I replayed some of the maps tho during my run and the random factor was good enough that I didn’t get bored.
I hope you like Death’s Door if you get around to play it, I really enjoyed the experience.
I’m glad you liked the Wanderlust games. I never noticed the geographical error and I really should have since I grew up two hours north of the Pyrenees.
And congrats on beating all these other games.
Thanks again for the rec, despite the spotted mistake, it was a pretty relaxing VN and fits well in this year and a half without travelling. I liked the transsiberian one too, it was a bit different but it was nice nonetheless and it was cool to meet Henry again.