Favourites:

• Contrast
  

  5 hours playtime

  22 of 22 achievements

• INSIDE
  

  5 hours playtime

  14 of 14 achievements

• We Were Here
  

  2 hours playtime

  26 of 26 achievements

• ibb & obb
  

  8 hours playtime

  1 of 10 achievements

Runner-ups:

• Beyond Eyes
  

  3 hours playtime

  10 of 10 achievements

• Under Leaves
  

  2 hours playtime

  21 of 21 achievements

• Fearful Symmetry
  

  8 hours playtime

  23 of 28 achievements

• Emily is Away
  

  58 minutes playtime

  20 of 20 achievements

Good:

• The Monster Inside
  

  28 minutes playtime

  7 of 7 achievements

• Onirim - Solitaire Card Game
  

  3 hours playtime

  16 of 58 achievements

• Gunpoint
  

  5 hours playtime

  27 of 42 achievements

• Beautiful Japanese Scenery - Animated Jigsaws
  

  13 hours playtime

  34 of 34 achievements

• Egyptian Senet
  

  2 hours playtime

  no achievements

• PAYDAY 2
  

  99 hours playtime

  86 of 582 achievements

• Think To Die
  

  86 minutes playtime

  11 of 11 achievements

• English Country Tune
  

  13 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Cinders
  

  9 hours playtime

  8 of 8 achievements

• Freddi Fish and The Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds
  

  2 hours playtime

  no achievements

Meh / Mixed:

• Deadlight
  

  6 hours playtime

  27 of 31 achievements

• Hack 'n' Slash
  

  7 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Nidhogg
  

  3 hours playtime

  9 of 12 achievements

• Think To Die 2
  

  4 hours playtime

  18 of 23 achievements

• It's Spring Again
  

  6 minutes playtime

  4 of 4 achievements

I feel like I say this every time, but I’ve been really behind on updates (whoops).
Instead of getting overwhelmed and even further behind, just gonna do one big “Games I played over the summer” update. :D

Highly recommend all the games from my favourites/runner-ups!

Was really pleasantly surprised with Contrast. I’ve had my eye on it since it was released, but heard really mixed things and kept putting it off. The sounds/voice acting are superb, really what sets this game apart. The graphics are also so so stunning, love the whole atmosphere. There was only one carousel puzzle where the controls were really frustrating and unresponsive, but when I relogged and did the puzzle later to complete the achievements it was fine, so I think I just bugged out the game. If you like story-driven, puzzley platformers (and have a controller, I’m not sure how keyboard works out) would recommend checking out!

I absolutely adored INSIDE. I’ve played several platformers lately that were more frustrating than not or had super bland, stereotypical puzzles. This one reminded me why I love puzzle platformers so much. It had such fluid controls and wonderful puzzles, not too difficult but still made you think. The game overall felt really slick and was so atmospheric (and scary at times…those underwater creatures pls), gorgeous, clever…cannot recommend enough. I still need to play LIMBO sometime.

We Were Here is now one of my favourite free-to-play games. Wow I wasn’t expecting to love it as much as I did. It doesn’t have a lot of replayability, as going back to 100% the achievements the game was obviously MUCH easier. But that’s okay, the first experience was fantastic. It’s a co-op puzzle game where you have to talk into walkie talkies, feeding each other information on what you see. I will say that using the walkie talkies was a bit meh, as only one person can talk at a time (realistic I know). It’s just apparently my friend and I are blabber mouths and half the time couldn’t hear each other…so we switched to Skype, this way we could talk over one another without a problem and was more enjoyable/chill. It’s definitely doable how it is, but would make the puzzles that much needlessly? tougher and stressful. I’m super duper excited for We Were Here Too!

I played ibb & obb with my same friend on/off for a while and finished it last month. We both really loved it, up until the last level. There’s this one encounter that was so bogus, where you have to time these jumps but the hitbox wasn’t at all accurate. We’d be clearly a couple inches away yet it’d say we hit it, and then other times it looked like we touched but said it was fine….would randomly lag out (but only with this one particularly guy). I’m not sure if restarting the game would’ve fixed it since we’d been playing for a couple hours before that, but it was the end of the final level and we didn’t wanna restart everything. So yeah, that was certainly frustrating being stuck on that one minute section for an hour, when it really wasn’t our fault. But the rest of the game was super enjoyable and tough at times, gave me Portal 2 co-op vibes. Definitely a fun local co-op puzzle platformer! Review here if interested.

I’ve seen several other people play Under Leaves since playing, but thought I’d mention it again myself. I know there’s a bunch of people who like casual hidden object games and would definitely recommend this one! Despite the cutesy graphics it’s not super easy, I got stuck a few times. Side note: The illustrations are animated, so I could only play for about 20-30 minutes at a time before my eyes would go buggy and I’d start to feel unwell. Still really fun and relaxing, with some nice sound effects!

Biggest disappointment was by far Deadlight…boy was that frustrating. If I hadn’t won it on Steamgifts and knew it was a fairly short game, I would’ve stopped playing. The first hour was enjoyable, really loved the art style and mixed of 2/3D. Then it all started to crumble. Unfortunately it was tough to tell sometimes when you’re supposed to jump or crawl under things, due to the mixture of styles. If I got stuck I’d just start crouching, assuming there’s some area I just can’t see (which was usually the case). It was also just a bad port. The first hour or so was fine like I said, but then suddenly the cut scenes stopped working properly. It’d say the first few words with voice over and then all the sounds would stop working til the cut scene was over. Then other cut scenes you could just hear background noise but no voice over. Also it was really easy to accidentally skip the cut scenes. I would be fighting zombies when it’d suddenly trigger and me pressing left mouse button to attack would skip it annoyingly, so I’d have to search for a video on Youtube to see what I missed. The controls were also finicky for a platformer. It was fine when casually playing, as it was quite slow-paced with many checkpoints. But then there’d be speedrun style moments where you’d have to jump over these damn fences and your character just freaks out on it, going back and forth. You’d have to be really slow and meticulous, careful of not touching any other buttons (while still needing to run quickly) AGH IT WAS SO FRUSTRATING. Wall jumping was also sometimes a nightmare. And how there were a million checkpoints throughout the game, but of course during these intense scenes there would all of a sudden be no checkpoints for a few minutes worth, so you’d have to keep restarting and hoping the controls would cooperate long enough to get through it. The whole game got really old quick, I’m so sad. I’m sure it’s a bit better on xbox live, but still wouldn’t have loved it as much as I’d hoped. :/

Hack ‘n’ Slash was also a mixed bag, the difficulty was all over the place. Overall I enjoyed the art style and there were some cute creatures. The beginning had really straightforward puzzles and definitely eased you into the game. The middle section was actually super enjoyable for about an hour! Some interesting, tough puzzles that made you think without being frustrating. And then the end….where it randomly dropped you into the deep end expecting you to know programming. Which unfortunately for me, I do not. Needless to say I had to follow a guide and honestly tried to solve the puzzles myself still before reading it, but it was all so over my head and frustrating. I just don’t understand what the devs were thinking when it came to difficulty balance. I mean if their audience was supposed to be programmers, the beginning was waaay too easy and the middle puzzles weren’t even really program related puzzles…so I don’t see it really working for any type of audience really? I’m glad I finally played it as I won it years ago and lost interest. I was pleasantly surprised with the middle bit and enjoyed the beginning enough, but man the entire last half was just pointless to me unfortunately. :(