Acquisitions

• Titanic: Adventure Out Of Time
• Barrow Hill: The Dark Path
• Corpse Party: Book of Shadows
• A Little Lily Princess
• AMPLITUDE: A Visual Novel
• Four Last Things
• Broken Sword 4 - the Angel of Death
• Dark Fall: Lost Souls
• Dark Fall: The Journal
• Dark Fall 2: Lights Out
• The Lost Crown
• Nancy Drew: The Captive Curse
• Broken Sword 3 - the Sleeping Dragon
• Staxel
• The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker
• Yesterday

Apart from Staxel, these were my purchases during the Steam sale. The last two I got with the $5 coupon. I decided to just get a bunch of cheap, probably mostly short games this time.

All links should open in a new tab besides the category tags.

• Yooka-Laylee
  

  43.7 hours playtime

  30 of 35 achievements

• Nancy Drew: Danger on Deception Island
  

  8.9 hours playtime

  0 of 0 achievements

• The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game
  

  1.8 hours playtime

  6 of 6 achievements

• Staxel
  

  43.9 hours playtime

  10 of 23 achievements

Yooka-Laylee

Achievement Clean Up FFFFFUUUUUUU

Fits the monthly theme. I started this before I got Spyro from Humble. I decided against going for 100% in this one, as the way to get some collectibles is really frustrating. Particularly the mine kart challenges and one of the arcade minigames suck. I can't waste my time on that kind of crap when I'm not a kid anymore and have a backlog of like 800 games. The boss fights seem dragged out, especially the last one. They have multiple phases, and it sucks doing a long, easy phase repeatedly if you have trouble with a later one.

That all sounds really negative, but the game had its moments, and I was really into it my first few play sessions. You progressively unlock new abilities, allowing you to reach things in previous worlds that you couldn't get to before and keeping the gameplay fresh.

Open wide.

Nancy Drew: Danger on Deception Island

Detectives! Mystery! Murder! Educational Folklore & Mythology Literary Ties Pirates, Hacking, & the High Seas USA

This was my first time playing this Nancy Drew game (currently playing them all in order). It is set on a fictional island in the San Juan Islands in Washington State. The storyoline is that a baby orca has shown up, and everyone is mad. There's also an upcoming election for harbormaster that has become heated due to the orca issue. My biggest disappointments are that they invoked famous sea monsters and included a Scottish-themed pub and never did anything with those. Some parts of the game felt too segmented. Especailly the whale center, because you can go there and do everything at once, and then have little reason to go again. But the game has other stuff going for it: whale facts, orca, kayaking to hidden beaches and caves, learn about knots and identifying the sex of a type of crab.

You'll also use GPS to locate coordinates you find in bottled messages and learn nautical terms. This time around, they let you search the game world's internet for certain keywords you'll acquire throughout the game.

You can die, become injured, or otherwise get a gameover in Nancy Drew games (you can choose "Second Chance" from the menu to immediately get back to the point just before you f'd up, so it's no big deal). In Nancy Drew games, dying and losing are an education experience. That was particularly noticeable in this game, as you must always remember to put the helmet on before riding your bike out to the whale center/museum or the local tavern.

Safety first.

.

The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game

Detectives! Mystery! Murder! Ghosts Quirky

I'm not sure that I found this as great as others did, but it wasn't a bad thing from a dollar bundle. It's a goofy little game that isn't demanding on your time, but as a consequence there isn't much to it. Some parts/dialogue were pretty funny, especially the sloth king guy who has called in help to deal with a ghost that started haunting his island.

Howdy. I have mouthwash.

Staxel

Crafting Dress Up Halloween and Horror Kitty Cats Make Believe - Simulated Lives Next Up Player Homes Winter Won on SteamGifts

I haven't "beaten" this yet, but I figured I'd post an update of my progress so far. It's a SteamGifts win for the Playing Appreciated and Play or Pay groups.

Unfortunately, I don't have a screenshot of the first thing I built right now, which was a horrible barn. It is a small wooden box with a low roof and is very dark inside. I hammered out the top corner blocks for "style." One cow isn't able to leave, and the other cow isn't able to enter. But winter is coming, and I don't know yet if the free-roam cow will still be able to graze then.

Then I built an almost equally dreary pet store. I read that I was supposed to be able to buy pets after I built it, but I don't see that option so far. I put the animal playpen outside because I thought I'd set up a nice outdoor area with it, but now I'm wondering if it needs to be inside.

I plan to spruce up the outdoor area with the animal playpen, I swear.

I had a lot of quests to build things, so I cheated on the next one and put the Farm Fan girl's mailbox in front of a nearby abandoned farmhouse basically identical to the one I was given. Now I'm building something somewhat more abititious for someone named Oscar. I'm not fully sure what I'm doing for the roof yet as I'm not even sure how to build them correctly, although I did add "towers" (i.e., higher blocks at some sections of the outer wall) since taking this screenshot.