February’s Stats
aka. When the backlog is fighting back.
Not only February’s been busy IRL, but some of the games I started took me waaaay longer than expected to finish, so the backlog fight took a hit this month. I have a few more games on going, but didn’t manage to finish them, by lack of time or skill (I’m seriously questionning if I’ll ever finish Okhlos). On the plus side, I played some really good games so not all was lost. What about you fellow assassins, any good surprise in the games you played this month?
| Played | Finished | Completed | Backlog+ | Achievements |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 | 8 | 4 | 10 | 207 |
Most Satisfying Finish
Most Exciting Addition (also Finished)
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The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
444 hours playtime
214 of 339 achievements
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Grow Home
11 hours playtime
26 of 26 achievements
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Faerie Solitaire
38 hours playtime
30 of 30 achievements
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Orwell
5 hours playtime
14 of 27 achievements
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Why Am I Dead At Sea
7 hours playtime
27 of 27 achievements
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Race The Sun
8 hours playtime
11 of 25 achievements
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Castle of Illusion
6 hours playtime
11 of 12 achievements
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Reigns
7 hours playtime
4 of 13 achievements
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SteamWorld Dig
18 hours playtime
20 of 24 achievements
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A Boy and His Blob
25 hours playtime
21 of 21 achievements
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Okhlos
14 hours playtime
13 of 38 achievements
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SteamWorld Heist
29 hours playtime
33 of 47 achievements
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ABZU
4 hours playtime
12 of 12 achievements
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Dead Rising 3
16 hours playtime
21 of 88 achievements
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Regency Solitaire
10 hours playtime
12 of 17 achievements
Orwell
5 hours playtime, 14 of 27 achievements
Big Brother is watching you... except you're part of Big Brother. So basically, you've been hired to spy on your fellow citizens when some terrorist attacks happen. You're in charge of discovering who dunnit and why, then report the data to your superior, all from behind your computer screen. I really enjoyed playing this and will for sure replay it to try alternative choices in the future.
Faerie Solitaire
38 hours playtime, 30 of 30 achievements
Not much to say here, it's one of those solitaire games with some extra mecanics. Not the best I've played but still an okay game. For the completionists, fair warning, one of achievements can get quite grindy unless you install the beta version.
Why Am I Dead At Sea
7 hours playtime, 27 of 27 achievements
Another great discovery of this month, thanks again to Adelion. The premise of the game is quite simple: you wake up as a ghost on a cruise boat and have to discover who you were and what happened to you. Simple right? But there is more going on on that ship than meet the eyes. Even the graphical style seems deciptively simple but when you start to look closely, a lot of attention has been put into making this game. I definitely recommend this game to anybody who's into murder mysteries :)
Castle of Illusion
6 hours playtime, 11 of 12 achievements
I have to admit that I had a big nostalgia bias going into this game, as I played the original as a kid. I was not disappointed and enjoyed this remake, even if the controls were not perfect, it only got a bit frustrating in the final boss battle. It made me wanna play Ducktales Remastered though, and wish they'd remaster Quackshot which was my favorite out of all of them.
SteamWorld Dig
18 hours playtime, 20 of 24 achievements
I had played that a long time ago, but the monthly theme made me want to replay it and get some more achievements in the process. It's quite a simple mecanic (you keep digging deeper and deeper in the mine until you reach the bottom, collect materials as you go and sell them to upgrade yourself) but after so long of not having played, the game was as enjoyable as the first time.
A Boy and His Blob
25 hours playtime, 21 of 21 achievements
In the category of "I'm nostalgic from my childhood so I'm gonna play this remake", here comes our second contender. And contrary to Castle of Illusion this was not really a good one. I think the reason I stuck to it from so long is that it was a SG win for the first half of the game, and then I was thinking I needed to finish the game because of how much I had played already. Most of the time the controls were sluggish and as much as I don't mind admitting I'm bad at plateformers, when you keep dying over and over because the controls don't respond, it gets frustrating real fast. I wouldn't recommend this game even though I use to love the original as a kid.
ABZU
3 hours playtime, 12 of 12 achievements
This game was amazing. Sure, it's short and it's basically a "swiming simulator" but it's so pretty and relaxing, I would recommend it to everyone. It falls in the category of what I call "screenshot simulator" where you can make beautiful screenshots at any random moment. Thanks again to SanderHyrax.
SteamWorld Heist
29 hours playtime, 33 of 47 achievements
Last but not least, I finally replayed this on PC this time (I had a first run at it last year on 3DS and loved it). Still as good and enjoyable the second time around. I'll never stop to recommend this game to anybody who love turn-based tactic games like Xcom. This time around, I noticed how good the soundtrack was (on 3DS I usually play without sound to save the battery). I also love that even though they're in the same universe, the Steamworld games are very different genre each time, I can't wait to see what they'll do in the next one. In the meanwhile, if you haven't already PLAY IT!!
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Okhlos
14 hours playtime
13 of 38 achievements
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KWAAN
0 minutes playtime
no achievements
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This Is the Police
0 minutes playtime
0 of 5 achievements
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Sproggiwood
0 minutes playtime
0 of 19 achievements
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The Stanley Parable
0 minutes playtime
0 of 10 achievements
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The Purring Quest
0 minutes playtime
0 of 23 achievements
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Double Fine Adventure!
1 minute playtime
no achievements
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Regency Solitaire
10 hours playtime
12 of 17 achievements
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ABZU
3 hours playtime
12 of 12 achievements
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Virginia
0 minutes playtime
0 of 17 achievements
Aaahhh ….. and here I hoped I would make it to the highlights T_T Well, kudos for going the extra mile and completing the game (which most likely needs a complete second walkthrough as you will have too much information on the first one). I will eagerly await your thousand giveaways for the game now ^^
I had a hard time picking only one highlight this month so i went with the one that took the most time among the nominees. It was really interesting to see all the possible outcomes. The completely missing any of the plots was the hardest one for me. The giveaways will happen, I already managed to have 2 people buy the game and play it since I played it, are you proud?
Yes, yes I am. Considering that I only get “Oh, that looks interesting, wishlisted.” all the time it is probably more than I ever achieved -_- And yea, you have to pay attention to not ask to much for that one ending. It is a bit annoying. And it leads to a horrifying end of the story. Showing the obsession he had with the case. I was glad that there were at least several relatable characters.
I totally agree, that ending was really gruesome.
And you didn’t answer, any good surprise in the games you played this month?
The main question? Hm, let me think. No, my gaming month was really boring. I played mostly Vermintide which is the type of game I fall addicted to, Wasteland 2 which I knew most of the stuff already and real life. Nothing really special.
This month will probably be some Va-11 Hall-A which may be interesting, Shadowrun which can be interesting and even more real life as there is several stuff going on right now …..
I’v heard only good things about Vallhalla, I’m excited to play it myself soon too.
Congratulations on your progress! Your backlog additions look amazing! I’m really interested in This is the Police and Virginia, I am looking forward to reading your thoughts about them :) I agree on Abzu being very relaxing and “screenshot simulator”, that’s actually a great phrase to describe it :D
I guess a good surprise I played this month would be Copoka and Grim Dawn. I knew Grim Dawn would be good but I honestly wasn’t expecting such deep and complicated character customisation. I bought Copoka cause it looked pretty and it is a beautiful looking game but it actually has a nice story although it ended quite abruptly.
<3
Thank you! I am very excited about Virginia too as it was on my wishlist, and I’m quite curious about This is the police, which I’m gonna play this month as it’s one of the games escollo picked for me in the March’s “play your SG wins” challenge, so you’ll get a report about that at the end of march at the latest ;)
Oh I hadn’t heard of Copoka but now I’m gonna check it out, you’re making it sound quite interesting, thanks for the discovery :3
Oh wow…lots to say here.
- Congrats for grinding through Faerie Solitaire. I didn’t get all of the eggs, let alone the adult forms. Fun game, though.
- 11/12 in Castle of Illusion in 6 hours? I bow to you,
SirMs. Sheep. I couldn’t even finish the last boss battle, and never even tried to go back and get the collectibles. I just suck at platformers too much. Every boss (except for Dragon) was a real fight for me. - Orwell looks cool…I’ll have to pick it up at some point.
- I’m sorry to hear that A Boy and His Blob was such a disappointment. I knew it wasn’t a game I’d 100%, but it looked fun…
- I just played ABZU this month as well….Secret Santa gift. I’m impressed that you got 100% in 3 hours. Maybe I screwed around too much meditating. ;-)
Thank you :3
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For Faerie solitaire, that’s the grinding I’m talking about. The adult forms are not that bad to get once you have the egg but the egg grinding tho… Until I went to check the steam forum of the game middle way through the grinding, and discovered there was a beta version where it adds a shop where you can buy the missing eggs. It still does take some grinding, but at least it’s not all RNG that can last for a hundred hours.
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I’m not a Sir but thank you :3 To be honest I don’t think I’ll ever go for the achievement I’m missing on that one though because it implies going back and finding every single diamond thingy, which I won’t have the patience for. For the other collectibles, I got them as I was playing so it was ok. The last boss battle took me more than an hour to finally pass, no kidding. The 2D version back then was easier in my memories (at least you didn’t have to run around dodging those energy balls while not falling in the holes in a 3d environment).
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Orwell is very cool if you’re not afraid of reading ;)
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For Abzu, I didn’t really rush but I didn’t spend much time meditating either, just exploring back and forth for the collectibles and enjoying the environment. It was such a nice experience.
Oh, that beta feature would make it so much more accessible. Thanks for the tip.
So sorry about the wrong pronoun!
Careful though because the prize of the eggs is exponential so what I did is that I kept grinding til I was missing only 2 or 3 eggs and then went to buy those.
No worries at all
What about you fellow assassins, any good surprise in the games you played this month?
Not at all. Almost any of games that I played this month had some disadvantages that spoiled gameplay. Or it was games that just meh in any way.
Only exception was Portal 2 co-op. But I knew it would be good, so there wasn’t any surprise at all :P
Speaking of meh games, did you end up finishing the boy and his blob?
Yeup. Next day after you. I have the same opinion as before - great arts & music, interesting main idea, crappy controls & overall gameplay speed.
Yeah I couldn’t agree more, the controls and game speed ruined the game for me. :/
A Boy and His Blob was such a disappointment for me too, I abandoned it after a few levels because I just couldn’t bring myself to stomach the controls
I know right? I only stuck with it because it was an SG win :(
Yep, screenshot simulator. XD
I totally went nuts with the screenshots. The last time I abused the printscreen key was during my last playthrough of BioShock Infinite. But that was nothing compared to ABZU. I must have taken more than a hundred screenies in a single day. Didn’t upload all of them, of course. :D
Hmm… surprises… Well, I was surprised at how addictive Fallout 4 is. Not sure if it’s good or bad. :p
Last February, it was Fallout 4 -> 4 short games when I thought I was over my addiction -> Fallout 4 again for me.
I feel you, I took tons of screenshots for ABZU and only uploaded very few of them obviously.
Haha Fallout 4 addiction is what made me join BLAEO last year, because for months previous to that, I only played Fallout 4 (like November - April). According to BLAEO I have about 354 hours in it XD
I just passed 300 hours. But I doubt that I’ll spend more hours on it than New Vegas. My playtime on Steam for New Vegas is just half of my actual playtime. The other half was played outside Steam. :p
Well, I don’t have any unplayed games that I intend to play so I guess Fallout 4 addiction isn’t bad to have. For now. XD
I also have more time played on F4 than FNV but I think it’s due to the fact I spent a lot of time in F4 playing the sims aka in building mode decorating to the extreme my settlements.
I wish the building mode was more like that in The Sims. I got bothered by the broken walls and roof of my Sanctuary house and it couldn’t be fixed so I tried building a house from scratch. After several hours of trying and failing, I said screw it! and just downloaded a mod. XD
Oh, I was using TONS of mods just for the building mode. That way I fixed my sanctuary house by patching the walls and the ceiling… The vanilla building mode was really not that good.
Impressive !
Is that true that Abzu is very needy concerning its spec ?
I recommand you The Stanley Parable, it’s a kind of weird game but I really loved it. But don’t get spoiled if possible, it’s part of the magic of this game !
Mhhh I’m not sure, because I played it on the desktop and it was very smooth, but I built my current desktop pc to run Fallout 4 smoothly so it’s not really relevant. But it was really smooth and didn’t make my graphic card whistle.
I’ve managed to not get spoiled about it and was very curious so i was happy a friend gave me his extra key. I’ll probably try it soon.
If Stanley was SG win it would be 1 of 3 games for March or probably all 3 of them =P
You mean the same way you got “suggested” Devil Daggers ? I’ll keep that in mind tho, plus the main reason I told you on the challenge thread I might not play the 3 of them this month was a time constraint, Stanley is rather short no? So I take your suggestion and play it anyway.
Too bad we don’t have some sort of ‘Play or pay’ event in BLAEO that would include our whole library, not just the SG wins, that’d be fun :/
It’s very short. Especially for 1 playthrought. But main interesting thing is to find every choice, ending and easter egg. I spend 30 hours on it only because it run during tuesday ^__^
And tbh, I quite do not understand the whole thing around Devil Daggers. Is it new Bad Rats?
I’m not sure about Devil Daggers as I don’t have it myself, but I think it’s more like the new “binding of isaac”. I’ve seen people around SG saying they are only playing this and seem quite addicted to it, whereas Bad Rats was just some horrendous game made a joke.