Beaten and completed

Well, I’ve been working my ass off this year so I haven’t had much time to play nor to update, but now that I have to isolate, I had enough time to finally get some sleep and I don’t feel too tired to play video games. I played these earlier this year and I figured I’d do a quick update cause I might have another one coming soon.

I started playing The Test and The Horrorscope mini series out of curiosity, I wasn’t expecting much and to be fair, it is after all just a bunch of long quizzes. I do like that they feel unsettling at times but what I really do dislike is that there are a lot of questions that repeat themselves between the series. You get a keyword according to your answers to use in a future game made by the same developers, but all in all it’s a decent way to entertain yourself for half an hour if you’ve got nothing better to do. The Test focuses more on how you are as a person, while The Horrorscope focuses on how you would react in dangerous situations, both realistic (murder, home invasion, robbery etc) and not-so realistic (zombie apocalypse, possesion, ghosts etc).

First of all, do yourself a favor and put the original, Russian audio for She Sees Red. Even in Russian, the audio seems a bit desynced for some reason, some lines sound recorded differently from the other ones, and overall it kind of sounds like it’s been dubbed over. It’s an FMV game, which I tend to like a lot, and while it’s not perfect, I think it’s pretty decent. Unlike another similar game I played in my last update, you can actually skip through scenes you’ve seen so you can get multiple endings without much trouble. The story itself isn’t what it initially seems and you do gain more depth to it the more you play it and try different things, however I’m not neccessarily a completionist (or at least, not a die-hard one) and I didn’t feel like the repetition was worth it to get all of the achievements.

Tokyo Dark was a bit different than I was expecting, and I had some visual issues I didn’t see anyone else have or talk about; every time I’d drop in a different location, my screen would flash a bunch of times before I could do anything, which started getting annoying pretty fast, and I imagine it wouldn’t be ideal for anyone sensitive to that. You get to play as a detective and it’s another “your choices matter” type of game, but some things are inevitable no matter how well you do your job. Sometimes, it’s not straight-forward enough for you to know where to go to progress, and it wouldn’t be a bad thing normally but I’m talking about legit not knowing where to go despite going through every logical option. Again, I played through a few times for different endings and while the conclusion was satisfying to me, I can see how it could feel lackluster to some. I don’t think it was as good as I was hoping it would be, but I still don’t regret using my time to play it.

On a simpler note, Human-powered spacecraft is a nice little clicker game that takes less than an hour to complete. Cute graphics, a tiny bit of a story, and you’re done. No need to grind hundreds of hours to complete it, feels satisfying, and it’s cheap. Definitely a good time waster if you’re a filthy casual like me.

I’m playing something I’ve been waiting to play since I bought it during the summer sales, but I legit don’t know what to play next. Might jump on a couple of HOGs to keep the momentum going until I remember other good games I have waiting in my library.

Shame pile

Beaten and completed

Finished 12 Labours of Hercules VII: Fleecing the Fleece and a couple of days later the 8th part was on sale for a euro and something so I went ahead and got that too. I’m starting to think I’m lowkey addicted. They gameplay stays pretty much the same throughout the series, adding a new mechanic every now and then. I think it’s the first time I’ve actually noticed they never used thieves again? I kinda disliked them but it’s weird that it’s the only thing that never appeared again. I’m playing another game from the same publisher and developer but good god it sucks, I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish it, just makes me appreciate this series more, but it also makes me wonder how they screwed up a reskin.

A friend sent me a few HOGs recently and Path of Sin: Greed is one of them. It’s always satisfying to finish these but I can’t really remember the last time I genuinely somewhat enjoyed a story behind these.

I was trying to finish a handful of HOGs but after seeing my last few updates and most of my recently added games, I kinda want to play stuff that’s more unique, I think. I miss games like Undertale, Stories Untold, Simulacra, Emily Is Away (+Too), Oxenfree, Orwell, Who Is Mike, Her Story, Pony Island, Solitairica, Loot Hero DX, Plantera, Bad End, Danganronpa… Most of the games I have on my mind to play next are VNs, HOGs and platformers, but none of them feel that “different” to me. I feel like lately it’s harder and harder to find games like that; the next three games all had rather cool concepts that could’ve fit in there, but ultimately fell short for me.

Sorry, James is just… not fun. Was really looking forward to playing this, the aesthetic and the ideas are really cool, but the puzzles get ridiculously hard very quickly and the payoff from the story is just not worth it.

Late Shift seemed pretty great, most of the acting managed to not be cringy, story was quite okay for a game, but I don’t get why they insisted so much on the idea that choices matter if they did not make at least one ending for one of the most obvious overall choices. The whole game is about getting dragged into a robbery, and you can repeatedly choose to try to escape, not comply, try to ruin it, and yet about half way through you’re just about forced by the game to go along with it anyway. Logically, you could literally just leave; I don’t care if that ending would mean getting killed, tortured or imprisoned, walking away and living a normal life, or literally whatever else. Could’ve even been a short playthrough compared to actually going through with it. But the game simply does not allow it. Romance also gets shoved down your throat, even if you don’t interact or if you actually reject this one character, for some reason the character you control still seems to care about them, and I just don’t understand it. Maybe even worst of all, there is no skip feature, so if you want to get other endings, have fun watching the common scenes over and over again, as there are somewhere around 8 different endings. Was thinking about just playing this again with friends someday, but apparently it only works if you stream through Mixer and I guess they would have to type the choices or something? Glad I checked beforehand ‘cause it’s not a 10 minute setup and I’ve given up on trying to figure it out ‘cause I highly doubt any of my friends would be willing to go through the hassle. I guess I was just expecting something closer to systems used by Jackbox Party Packs or Man of Medan… The developers said they cannot implement the skip feature because of how the game was made, but that they’d at least try to do so in their future games.

With The Window Box I simply set myself up for disaster. It’s totally my fault for believing it would be something entirely different - some sort of crazy murder house, where someone dies and everyone’s on edge or something, and the occasional Higurashi-reminescent uneasy moments out of the blue present in the game kinda fed into that. I was expecting something more surreal & dramatic, but instead the story was about something very sad and real - which is completely cool, but I really don’t remember where I got that idea from. Other than the story, I just felt like the little puzzles were a bit tedious and somewhat out of place. You get the illusion of choice, but it doesn’t really change anything, so it just feels like the choices could’ve been left out completely and really just make this pretty much a kinetic novel. Loved the art style, the story was decent, but I think there could’ve been a bit more to it.

Shame pile

Beaten and completed

As always, it’s been quite a while since my last update. I finished Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc around half a year ago, so my memory is a bit hazy, but I do remember it turned out to be one of my favorite games. It has a genuinely interesting story and unique mechanics (even though walking down the hallways made my skin crawl cause I constantly felt like I was gonna get jumped). The characters are very cliche and exaggerated (including the voice acting), but in a very weirdly endearing way that you can’t be mad at it. Without going into much detail to avoid spoiling anything (one of those games where it’s best you go in blind), it does feel difficult at times and I needed guides every once in a while, but I can’t say that it ruined the experience. For the love of anything good though, avoid the anime at all costs. I tried watching it before playing this, and I couldn’t get through the first episode, and then I tried again after playing it, in hopes that I’ll be able to stand it because I got attached to the series, only to see they literally used stuff straight from the game (visual effects & sounds), while skipping a lot of the story and not changing anything about it at all. I wouldn’t be surprised if the script was straight out copy-pasted to be honest.

I almost never play demos, but Not For Broadcast: Prologue seemed way too interesting to pass on. Love the idea of controlling the broadcast in many different ways, although I can see this getting way too difficult for me later on. The effort and love behind it is very apparent from the stories that you get to see as you’re playing, and while I’ve seen a playthrough of the paid version, it is still under early access, so I’m looking forward to see what they’ll come up with in the final version.

hyper hardcore isn’t exactly what I expected, but not in a bad way. I bought it shortly after its release and I’ve already seen a bunch of little updates, so I’m glad it’s still receiving love from the developers. I’m always looking for interesting typing games, and while I’m a little disappointed that you don’t get to type actual words, it makes up for it with a rather engaging story for its 0.79€ mark. It doesn’t take much time to finish the main story but you do get 2 item drops every 12 hours which I guess add to the story, and there are multiple endings and easter eggs here and there. Definitely worth trying despite some small hiccups.

I’ve been wanting to play Forget Me Not: My Organic Garden for the longest time! I love this type of game and again, I went in thinking it’s just a casual time management/farming game only to get impressed by the story and art style as well. It does feel kind of grindy after a while, because unlike most games in similar categories, this one has close to zero automation. No matter how far you get into the game, you’ll still have to manually water the trees and pick up the organs (yes, organs - I personally did not catch the pun in the name until I started playing it), and while it sort of makes sense because you have different quality organs which you have to water in specific ways, I’m sure there could’ve easily been found a workaround - like selecting which trees get watered, or until when, or selecting which trees you want to water/control manually etc. Still, I’ll be occasionally going back in to work on the rest of the achievements, especially since I still have to reach the true ending.

I started 12 Labours of Hercules VI: Race for Olympus a really long time ago and I was scared I’d be lost jumping back in, but it’s as easy as ever. As always, it’s not the most amazing series in the world, but it’s a good time killer in between watching a couple of YT videos. I’m almost done with the 7th installment as well, so now I’m gonna have to look for bundles for the other two sequels too.

A Mortician’s Tale was one of the main reasons I bought the Humble Conquer COVID-19 Bundle, but it ended up being mostly a disappointment. I saw beforehand that the reviews criticized it for constantly feeling like a tutorial, but I tend to not care as much about that as long as the story and visuals are decent. Unfortunately, the reviews were right - you get put in this flash game-like screen for every corpse you get and it’s as silly as playing browser surgery games. You have the game telling you what to do step by step, even after you’ve done the same type of work a few times already. Unfortunately, a complete waste of time.

Shame pile

Still got a bunch of these to note even though I think I haven’t opened one in a year or two. Oh well.

Beaten and completed

Oh man, it’s been very, very long since I’ve posted here. I played these shortly before & after my last post (8 months ago!) but never got around to noting them here. I kind of switched my focus from games to anime early this year, and then life happened and I didn’t have time for either, other than the occasional League match. However, this year I traveled a bit and didn’t have good internet, so, being me, I bought a new game instead of playing one of my other 2k unfinished games :) It won’t appear in this batch, but I’ll try to update as soon as I play a few more games, just gotta get through these ones first.

I’ve always seen Undertale as a “whatever” game and I never quite understood why it was so popular. I hate this type of RPGs since, well, forever, but sometime last year I started desperately looking to buy a cheaper key since I could never catch it on sale and I’m cheap as hell. Managed to snatch it during the last winter sale for probably somewhere around 4 euros and I’m glad I did because it’s one of my favorite games now! I’m sure most of the people here have played it by now, but if by some chance you haven’t, definitely try it out without looking too much into it. I never imagined I would get so emotionally invested in a game like this, and although it was hard for me at times (I play everything on easy, I’m always about the story/mechanics and higher difficulty doesn’t make me feel more “accomplished”), to the point where I ragequit the first major battle like… 6 times, it was still worth it. It was such a unique experience that I could never compare it to anything else, and I hope to find more games that make me feel like this. I also marked this only as “beaten” because I didn’t have the heart to play it ever again, although I have watched other playthroughs.

Emily is Away Too was relatively decent and it helped me find a song that, funny enough, would unintentionally make me switch focus when it comes to my favorite music genres and help me find a bunch of awesome bands later this year. While the music was great, the game was inevitably very similar to the first one, and I didn’t feel like it added a lot to the story nor to the mechanics. It’s alright, but I see no point in playing both.

Stories Untold was a very pleasant surprise! I love the way it creates its atmosphere and spooks, and I’ve yet to see any other horror game do it like this. It’s incredibly tense at times and changes games mechanics in a very compelling way, bringing some sort of Black Mirror and Stranger Things-esque elements every now and then. Definitely a game that I dreaded playing because of how uncomfortable it made me feel, but still felt compelled to do so because I needed to know what was going on.

Moving on to the slightly less interesting ones, Alicia Griffith – Lakeside Murder doesn’t have much going for it, but it’s a playable HOG. Great if you’re looking to just play something super casual without focusing too much on it, but only if you already have it in your library from somewhere. Seriously, you’re better off trying Artifex Mundi HOGs if you’re looking to buy any.

I finally finished Castle Clicker and I was really unprepared. I didn’t realize I was about to get the last achievement and it felt really abrupt after weeks of logging in daily for rewards. It’s alright, has some mechanics that other clicker games might not, but it feels kind of ugly to me still, at least the UI if not the game in its entirety. Good time waster, I guess.

Now, I know I’ve basically said “go to Artifex Mundi” for HOGs, but Time Mysteries: Inheritance is an exception. Unless you really want to play the whole series, I can’t really recommend this more than the other HOG I mentioned. I thought it felt a bit outdated and weird, and looking at the reviews, it’s apparently one of the first AM games, which makes sense. Looks old, sounds old, feels too repetitive, not really one of my favorites.

Shame pile

Again, I haven’t “played” any of these in a really, really long time but it’d bother me to not keep track of them in my posts. I can’t even remember much about these by this point and I still have like 30 left.

To be honest, I have no idea what to play next, since the sequels to the one I just played aren’t on sale and I can’t even remember what games I have in my library, but I hope I’ll find something at least half as interesting. Cheers for the read!

Beaten and completed

Haven’t updated in a long time but I have a few more games I’ve begun so I thought I might as well get it over with.

I played Abstractism before the news of it allegedly being a crypto miner broke out. Don’t know if it had the time to do any other damage but putting that aside, it’s safe to say that the game was really bad anyway. It could’ve been an all right platformer, but the controls were an absolute mess, it took me 6 minutes just to jump on a couple of ledges.

I now understand why people don’t really like YOU DON’T KNOW JACK Vol. 1 XL and all the other classic YDKJ games. As many others have mentioned, it’s US-centric so it’s pretty much impossible for non-americans to get a decent score. It’s also difficult for younger generations since the game is pretty old. While I was expecting it to be a little worse than the PS3 demo I played quite a few years ago (simply because of the time between releases), I wasn’t expecting it to be that bad. Played one full game just to be able to say I’m done with it.

Thankfully, I had good experiences in this batch too. I feel like this one is the first where I got to really enjoy a lot of good games one after another, rather than just going for whatever game is short just to have less to play. I had previously watched a full playthrough of SIMULACRA, but it was a year or two before I actually got to play it. I absolutely loved it and it’s definitely one of my favorite games, even though I always felt like I could never play anything remotely horror. I ended up trying a few more endings after playing the game naturally, but I reaaaaaaally didn’t feel like going for all the achievements. It wasn’t overly jumpscare-y and even though it made me curse out loud a few times, it never made me stop playing it. I love the whole snooping around for information in digital mediums (which is why I also loved games like Orwell and Replica), and I’d love to find more like these. It’s also making me search for more horror/horror-ish games that aren’t first-person “get out of the place” games because I find them ridiculously boring.

I also played SIMULACRA: Pipe Dreams but for some reason it’s not showing up in my BLAEO games list. I’m either unlucky or there’s an error somewhere with this game specifically, since I don’t remember having problems with any other free games showing up. But anyway, I’m too tired to check right now but I believe this was made by another team, not the original creators. While the whole interface and sounds are all exactly the same and happens in the same “universe”, it’s shorter and it takes a different approach to what’s discussed in the original. I felt like it was weaker than SIMULACRA and I tried to excuse it because I thought hey, the mechanics are the same, the environment is the same, I’m probably just bored of seeing the exact same thing, but after playing Orwell’s sequel, I realized that’s not an excuse. I appreciate the intent and I don’t think it’s an awful game, but I wouldn’t take the time to replay it and I would never recommend it over the original.

I’m pretty sure I had Oxenfree in my library for quite a while before I actually got to playing it. I even watched part of a gameplay a year or two ago and said I absolutely have to play this soon, but I was once again too lazy to actually do it. I think I got around to it when my internet stopped working properly and I couldn’t play League so I had to look for something offline. Anyway, again, this is officially one of my favorite games, even though it has its hiccups. I was pretty mad at the very beginning because walking just takes sooooooooo looooooong sometimes and the map is slightly confusing at first, and even later on if you’re in a rush it’s really easy to get places mixed up. But honestly, the story made it worth it. I loved the way it was presented and it had a few moments where just when I thought I figured out what was going on, there’d be an event or a wave of information that changed my perception completely, so it never got boring. The ending really got me, and I ended up starting a second playthrough. I love how the first playthrough brings changes to the second, and I really hope to be in the mood to finish it again in a different way.

Orwell: Ignorance is Strength was almost as great as its predecessor. Loved the old mechanics combined with the new, and the story was pretty great, but I just felt a bit more disconnected I guess? I didn’t feel like it had the same level of immersion as the first one, and I think it’s either because it might take less time to complete (not 100% sure, since I idle most of my games before playing them), or because everything in this one was connected to one person from start to finish, while in the other one I remember it being a bit more scattered. Still, a pretty great game.

SOLITUNE was more of a disappointment for me. I was already expecting it to be short and more of a narrative-based little game, but to be completely honest, it just fell flat. I really liked the art style but unfortunately I didn’t like much else.

Shame pile

Still clearing out the ones I uh… “played” a long time ago. Actually playing games takes waaay longer for me so I’ll still have them for at least 4-5 more posts, but I’m already halfway through my next update and I’m really excited because I feel like starting with this one I’m really, really enjoying what I’m playing most of the time.

I tried to set up a goal for myself to only play the games I currently have installed this year, at least until I free up some space. I failed instantly because of a couple of small games I had in a list (“Amazing games that I’m stupid for not playing yet”) and I couldn’t help myself when I remembered how bad I wanted to play them before I got them, but I also uninstalled a couple that I checked out and realized I don’t feel like playing so.. fair trade? I managed to buy way less games this year compared to the ones before - I don’t think I bought more than 5 bundles and the only individual games I bought were with steam wallet that I got from selling stuff on the market. I got GTA V on the last day of the winter sale, but I’m considering refunding it because it feels disappointing as hell, yet I’m conflicted ‘cause I kinda wanna keep it in my collection or try it some other time with a controller. I used to play exclusively on my PS3 before and had hundreds of hours in GTA IV, so I’m hoping for a similar experience to that.

Beaten and completed

This is long overdue and I still have a couple more which I’ll squeeze in the next update ;-;

I finally finished Scream Collector and it was actually easier than I thought it would be. I started off ages ago treating it like any other idle/clicker game but it’s more of an “active” idler, if it makes sense. Power-ups/items spawn every few minutes and they’re super useful, which made the second part of the game sooo easy once I started leaving it in the background and checking it every 10 minutes or so. Most of the time spent in it was in the first part, where I thought leaving it in the background alone would help a lot. It’s a cute little game and the developers are planning to expand it soon as far as I know. One of my favorite clickers so far.

I also finally finished 12 Labours of Hercules 3-5 and I started the third one right after the second, which made me dread every single level because I was so tired of the same game with just new levels, but for some reason, after a short break, I started enjoying the fourth installment and the fifth made me realize I’m really going to miss this series! Still waiting for a bundle or a sale for the sequels. Would definitely recommend these for someone who likes casual games or just wants to play a level or two in between other games :)

Faerie Solitaire: Remastered feels a bit.. old? I’ve played a few solitaire-based games before and all of them seemed a lot more polished and interesting than this one. Once again, had the feeling it would never end, I just wanted to finish it so I could mark it as beaten. It’s one of the worst solitaire games I’ve played, but it’s still fully functional and somewhat enjoyable at the very beginning. I did start playing the original version after to see the difference and honestly if you think the remastered one is bad, you should see the original. If you’re reaaaaally bored or if you want a game that’s fairly easy to complete, or maybe if it’s literally the only properly working solitaire game in your library, go for it. Otherwise, there’s always Solitairica and Chef Solitaire.

Trailer Park Boys is yet another idle/clicker game that I’ve managed to finish and while this feels like one of the most (visually) polished and maintained on steam, I can’t name it as a favorite because of a few reasons. The game is split in seasons which are basically resets, and you have a bunch of buildings which change every season. Now, if I’m at season 70 something, I KNOW what I’m building. I KNOW the animation for that and I also know the animation for when you automate these buildings. Also, you have characters, which, when you upgrade, you also get an animation. That animation can be repeated for one OR every single building, depending on the character. When there are events, you also get a tutorial, even though it’s the same for every single event. The rest of the animations (for buildings & characters) repeat in the events. All of these ridiculously annoying animations are 100% unskippable. Not to mention, every now and then, they give you a “Check out this deal!” message that actually forces you to click a button to view it, which is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other than that, the events that I mentioned are pretty much impossible to finish even if you use the special currency (which you have to buy or earn very, very slowly), unless you have 100% no life and can leave an autoclicker on and also maybe check it every 10 minutes for a whole 4-7 days that the event lasts, and these events are brought weekly.. For any building or character upgrade you need a certain amount of cards and currency (another special currency that you can buy or earn, thankfully a bit easier than the other one), but a lot of times the cards are so freaking hard to get. You only get a daily and an every-2-hour loot box equivalents which don’t contain much and you need to upgrade characters in order to automate buildings and, you know.. progress. They also offer you trades every few minutes (10? 15?) but obviously you have to be in-game to see them, and a lot of times the trades are shit or they are both shit and repeating. It’s to a point where I have 1000 cards for a couple of characters and 20-30 for others where I need 50+ to upgrade, but I’m never offered to trade from the 1000+ ones. It’s complete bullshit. And the autoclick part? You wanna autoclick? Fuck you. The developers put a limit to a few clicks per second which means even if you’re a complete no-lifer like me, if you were to leave an autoclicker on it wouldn’t do jack shit. No progress for you!
I honestly didn’t even realize how much I dislike this game but everything negative is honestly coated in “but it looks good! and the developers are active! EVENTS!!!”, when in reality it’s a piss poor, annoying cash-grab.

Shame pile

Honestly, nothing to say about these either. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the same template that Achievement Clicker 2018 uses at least 3-4 times so far.

Beaten and completed

Shockingly, this update didn’t take me months for once!

I wasn’t a huge fan of Sacrament but they had a promotion if you played it, I had some extra steam wallet and it didn’t look that bad. Honestly, it doesn’t look bad, but after a little bit, the translation starts having obvious issues and in some places it doesn’t even have the correct names for the characters. Beyond the technical issues, I have no idea how many endings there are but unfortunately I found 3 or 4 that end up with the same character in different ways.. which wouldn’t be an actual issue but what IS an issue is that in at least a couple of cases, no matter how much you go against a certain character and no matter how much you reject them, you still get an ending where you live happily with them, in one way or another. I tried going even further back by going right back to the beginning, only to find out this game’s skip button skips over text you haven’t read yet, which is basically where I gave up. I mean, it’s pretty bad, but if you only want to go for one ending, you should be fine, I guess. Also, no, it didn’t take me 10 hours, I was just half-bored with it and let it run in the background and read a bit every now and then.

Who Is Mike is definitely one of my favorite free games steam has to offer. There are a lot of endings and I went to find 4-5 on my own, only to do the rest with a guide. Thankfully, this one does not skip over unread text. I loved the art and I loved the story, and I think I saw something about a possible sequel? The best thing about this game is that the reality of the game itself changes according to what you choose, so, basically, not everything that is true in one ending is true in all of them.

I hate Zup! 6 with a passion. I know I’m late on the hate train, but I hate this one specifically because it feels like it was more rushed than the others, because I don’t remember any of the other ones having problems with where things would fall. In this one I had a bunch of levels where I was basically at the mercy of wherever the hell the game wanted to move one piece whenever I started the level. It’s the only one in the series that made me lag behind the releases, and it took me months to come back to it. I understand that difficult puzzle games exist, but first of all the Zup! series isn’t difficult and second of all that’s.. not how you do difficulty.

I’m marking PickCrafter as beaten for now out of spite because I’m 800 hours in I’ve gotten almost all of the non-event related achievements, minus one that requires wicked luck or real life $$, and the other one mostly$$ or a lot of time. Or both. I’ll still have it open any day I have time because I’m addicted in order to make it as easy as possible to get the last achievements when their events pop up, and to also get the other two that will take me a very, very long time. Minus the issues I have with those 2 achievements, this is pretty much my favorite clicker so far. I love the simple graphics (obviously inspired by Minecraft) and the overall design of it, but my favorite thing is that the developer(s) is(/are) still active and the game gets frequent updates, not only for fixing bugs, but also for incorporating new, fun mechanics to the game. I’ve only started playing it fairly recently but I’ve already seen at least 2-3 major game-changing updates that everyone likes.

Orwell was such a pleasant surprise! I’ve been complaining (to myself mostly) how I’ve lost the ability to focus on actually finishing things (games, books, tv shows) and how nothing ever captivates me enough, and yesterday I just really wanted to start it thinking I want to open it and do a few tasks every now and then (since it seemed to be that type of game), but I ended up playing it in one go, which hasn’t happened to me in a long time. I absolutely loved everything about it and I ended up being mad at myself for some of the choices I made; I’m still wondering whether it’s worth starting over or not, because, in a way, I feel like it would ruin the magic, kind of like in Telltale games I always stick with the choices I make, no matter the consequences. Either way, it was a very immersive game that brought new things and changed its pace at perfect times to make it not repetitive and boring. I was so tired when I started playing it and I wanted to sleep so bad, but I just couldn’t take my hands off this game. I can’t wait to get the sequel as well!

How to shoot a criminal was fairly interesting, and I would only recommend it if you have patience. It’s very clearly inspired by Her Story (which I absolutely LOVED), yet it’s still bringing its own, new elements. While in Her Story the videos are from interviews/confessions at the police station, in How to shoot a criminal you search through newspapers (because the whole story is basically about a newspaper) that show you actual scenes; so, told stories vs actual events. It doesn’t really make sense, but.. let’s ignore that for the sake of the game. You also get audio-only pieces (vinyls I’m assuming? since it’s set in the 1900-somethings) and actual notes/clippings that are read-only. So while not a lot of this makes sense, the story doesn’t really either. The whole game is recorded in French and it’s translated in English just through subtitles. I don’t personally speak French, so I’m assuming a lot was lost in translation, but what made it worse is that the whole idea of the game is to search.. with.. words.. which is kind of difficult when a bunch of them are misspelled. I’m sure it could’ve been a pretty great game, but it just.. wasn’t. It’s okay. The acting is definitely poor and it’s easy to see the budget wasn’t very big, but you get used to it eventually. What is unforgivable is that if you’re not very patient to try to decipher what they were trying to say, it seems like the whole story doesn’t make a lot of sense. Stories about Hitler seem to be a big focus, especially with one of the creators/writers of the newspaper being Jewish, and yet.. it doesn’t really show. While Her Story gets away with feeling cold and somewhat vague, it feels like How to shoot a criminal’s story needed to be quite a bit more precise to make a whole lot of sense.

Shame pile

Shame pile again! I had actually wishlisted Run Away a long time ago because I was actually curious of the story but as soon as I saw it was an achievement-spam game it just turned me away from that completely. From the reviews, I see I wasn’t missing out on much.

Trivia Vault is yet another really bad series of games that could’ve easily been compiled into one bigger game. These games are ridiculously ugly and boring but I’m surprised they all seem legitimately functional.

Beaten and completed

Another long break, but I’m back again with a few short games, hoping to get into at least a couple of longer ones for the next update.

I didn’t really try with Flow: The Sliding because.. neither did the developers. It’s so forgettable that I just remember it being a casual, “play-one-round-every-now-and-then” game that would work better (or only) on mobile. Simple graphics, nothing impressive, and the achievements just want you to press all the letters on your keyboard. Uh, okay.

Glass Masquerade is definitely one of my favorite short games that I’ve played. I love puzzles and this was a brilliant way to do it; the game differentiates itself from other puzzle games with the “repair a clock” theme which also made it easy to incorporate the amazing aesthetic that it has.

You’d think I only opened Carpe Diem to get the achievement, but I actually played the whole thing. I really don’t understand how some reviews say it took them ~20 minutes and I definitely don’t understand why it has such good reviews. I wouldn’t mind the short time it takes to complete it if it was good, but it was a short, uninteresting story with a predictable ending.

I’m absolutely obsessed with clicker/idling games, but Clicker: Mining Simulator was a pain to play. It’s boring and confusing (good luck figuring out which buttons you have to press to make money), not to mention it takes a ridiculous amount of time to get the achievements that are obviously just there to up the in-game time. Do yourself a favor and just play any of the other thousand free clicker games instead.

I’ve come to enjoy the 12 Labours of Hercules series more than I expected. I’m currently playing the third one, and the only thing I don’t really like is that they have the Zup-like feeling, where every game just feels like a bigger game was cut into a bunch of little ones, in the end making every sequel just new levels. Unfortunately, as you advance through the series, the things you kinda took for granted are taken away from you, making you work harder for them, and the first example that comes to mind is the food-bushes; they’re “just there” in the first two and in the third you get a new character that has to go water a sprout, essentially taking more time in a time management game. I’m still hoping to get surprised somewhere along the way and see bigger, better changes.

Shame pile

I had an “Up next” section here before, but I almost never ended up playing the games there, which, frankly, made it more of a time wasting task.

I also have a bunch of ridiculously bad games that the developers made simply to give users a bunch of useless achievements, without the intention of actually making a good game. Or a game at all. In fact, most of them, if not all, are asset flips.

Do I dislike them? Yes.
Do I still want them? Yes.

I didn’t want to put them together with actual playable games because sometimes I don’t feel like playing anything but I’ll have these in the background so it would be ridiculous to just have an update with 6 of these, just saying “hey these suck but I got achievements; that’s all, folks!”. However, I still wanted to track them through actual posts, not only the lists on here.

So, why not a shame pile?

There’s not much to say about these, other than you’ll find games like Achievement Clicker and Bitcoin Clicker with slightly changed text (images too, if you’re lucky!) all over Steam. The Achievement Hunter series makes you feel like you actually get a playable game along with the achievements, but they’re actually just ugly, broken games that might be asset flips for all I know.

Beaten and completed

It’s been so long I almost forgot how to make these.. I’ve been feeling guilty for both not playing and not posting, but life finally decided that it officially hates me so I’ve had 0% energy to do.. pretty much anything. Then I began writing this and it’s been sitting as a draft for literal weeks even though I barely have anything to say about these games since 5/6 out of them are super short (and also free if I remember well). I just want to start finishing a bunch of these super short games to reduce my backlog and it’s the only way I can slowly reset my rhythm and get back to other ones.

Anyway, let me get into it; The Monster Inside has an interesting short story with a few choices along the way; nothing too complicated - the art style is simple and there’s not much gameplay to it, it’s just there to tell a story, but for the 10 minutes it takes to complete it, I do recommend it. However, I didn’t like The Old Tree as much because although the art style was nice (even though it’s not among my favorites), well, nothing much happened.

Pointless had an old school vibe and was a bit more my thing, but out of all of the ones in this batch, this is the one I’d say deserved to be longer. The upgrades/weapons/whatever could’ve easily been switched up a little to give it more time to complete and most importantly, better gameplay.

I kinda liked Lines Free but it’s basically a game that everyone knows under a different name. Still, it’s all right if you’re looking for a simple puzzle game. There’s also a paid version of this which I just recently bought, but I haven’t played it yet so I’m not sure if there are just different levels or if there are other extra things as well. At the time I started writing this, there were only 20 levels and 100 achievements I believe, but in the meantime they added some more and there is now an achievement with my username (which I didn’t get yet because I was too lazy to go back in ;-;), so that’s pretty cool I guess.

Luxor Evolved was hands down my favorite from this batch; I only recently started enjoying this type of game and it’s the first one I’ve finished so far. It was a great proper introduction to it for me because it has that modern/electro theme to it and it works really well. I’ll definitely try to get the whole Luxor and Zuma collections and others in the same genre (I do have Marble Duel that I have yet to finish though) but I still think it’s going to be my all-time favorite since the others all have a nature/outdoor theme to them.

I can’t say much about Killbox because it’s one of those go-play-it-without-reading-too-much-about-it games. However, if you already played it, I honestly think it wasn’t that great. I feel like it tried too hard to be deep and I get that it’s sending a message but.. meh.

I usually have some games under “up next” in my posts but I’d rather push this update through than go into detail because that’ll just take my lazy, unmotivated ass more time to put this up :/

Beaten and completed

It feels like I finished We Were Here quite a while ago, and I think I actually finished it before my last post but must’ve forgotten about it. I was going to play it with the roles reversed as well, but I’m a bit too lazy for that D: Word of advice: play this with someone who is at least somewhat observant. Whether you’re the explorer or the librarian, you will have to find a way out of the castle, and even if you do look at everything, if the other person doesn’t, it’s gonna be hard as fuck. One playthrough should take about an hour or two. We spent four. Choose wisely. There is at least one puzzle where both of you have to be quick, and, being the explorer, I died about 20 times simply because my librarian insisted giving me very, very detailed descriptions of what I should do every single time, including which way to face, where to stay, explaining things about the place, and it was unfortunately really annoying (it was the chess bit for the ones who’ve played it - I really don’t need you to explain how chess works every time we restart the puzzle, thanks). The game itself is amazing, and the way you need your partner is very different compared to other co-op games; it really puts you in your character’s situation and I recommend it wholeheartedly, but if you’re an impatient person, please, for the love of everything that’s good in this world, play with someone observant. </rant>

I finally got all the achievements for Gems of War and it is officially one of my favorite games ever; it’s basically a match three game, but for matching gems, you get mana for your troops. Why troops? Because you’re matching gems to battle! I absolutely love games that turn casual games into something competitive (just like I mostly loved Solitairica) and this one has a lot of things going on. I got my final achievement 52 hours in, but I did some extra stuff for which I didn’t get any xp, and the last achievement was level related. As it has multiplayer, hundreds of troops, guilds, quests, and events every week, with 120+ hours in I haven’t been able to actually even get all the basic stuff (basically kingdoms) to their max levels yet, because I also wanted to focus on all the other things. It’s pretty much the kind of game where you can always do more and I haven’t been this into a mp game since League of Legends. The worst part is that compared to League, I’m stacking up hours much quicker because you can just go in and finish a battle in 2-3 minutes or sometimes even less.

Loading Screen Simulator is a time-waster and I love time-wasters. It was pretty simple and pretty dumb, but if you enjoy clicker games you might find this entertaining for a few minutes.

For July’s monthly theme, I joined with Gems of War, but finished 10 hours early (was at about 42 hours, got the last achievement at 52) so I had to choose another one, and I’ve said multiple times that I very much dreaded starting Telltale’s Game of Thrones, but I only had a handful of games to choose from. I absolutely love Telltale games - I even had this from the previous TT bundle, and I played all of them except for this one and Jurassic Park. Now, none of their games are based on books/tv shows/comic books/other games that I personally enjoy, but I don’t tipically like historic games. I went in expecting to really hate it, and I ended up crying after the very first episode. Thanks for that. I felt like out of all the TT games I’ve played so far, this one had some of the most difficult choices and it really sucked how I ended up getting attached to all the main characters. I’m also considering watching the show now simply because I love suffering and because I fell for Jon Snow. Thanks for that too.

After I finished GoT, the new bundle came out, and I managed to convince my dad to get it for me, because I only needed the third tier and honestly I don’t even have $15 in my account. I don’t actually remember why I wanted the Batman one so bad, as I’ve literally never liked superheroes, but, again, thanks to Telltale, I might reconsider. Unfortunately, the game still has issues (for me it was mostly lagging - even though I can run much more requiring games) and I went through 2 or 3 crashes but thankfully they were all either after finishing an episode or before beginning another. I’m kind of sad that most of their other games were about 10-14 hours long but this one was just 8; TWD: Michonne made sense because it had only 3 episodes. However, I never consider these huge problems - it takes a lot for me to actually dislike a game and say it isn’t worth playing at all, and except for what I’ve said, I have no other complaints. I have to say I really liked how this one had more mechanics than usual, like the “crime-solving” scenes, or choosing how you want to attack someone, extra keys to press in fights in order to make it more difficult.. It was more action-packed than their usual games, and I think it fit the overall theme and story perfectly.

V or OLDTV as it’s known now, is a simple yet interesting game that starts from the stroop effect and goes on to make it even more complicated. I don’t feel like I could say a lot about this game, but it’s strangely compelling. I’ve kind of beaten the game, I think? I am going to try to get most of the other achievements though.

Up next

I should really be getting back to the games I’ve been challenged to play for this month’s Challenge Me, but unfortunately I was reminded how much I love TT games so I’m probably going to finish their Minecraft and Jurassic Park first.

I’ve already begun Ether One and altough it is interesting, it seems that the places I have to go to will be getting larger and I’m not really into huge open worlds right now. I do plan finishing it as soon as I finish the other two if not earlier, as long as it doesn’t get too complicated.

The other three are also from the challenge, and I kind of dread playing point and click games lately, but I’ve heard a lot of praise for Grim Fandango so maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised? Perils of Man is also a point and click game, but I haven’t heard much about this one.

This is the second time ABZU shows up in my updates and I feel absolutely guilty about not playing this one, since not only it is very praised and looks amazing, but I also won it on SG with the intention of playing it asap and never actually doing it. It looks like the kind of game that I wouldn’t put down once I started playing it, so honestly I don’t understand myself at all.