• Goosebumps
  

  12 hours playtime

  40 of 40 achievements

• Kingdom Tales
  

  12 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Living Legends: The Frozen Fear Collection
  

  12 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Heavy Rain
  

  24 hours playtime

  35 of 56 achievements

• 199X
  

  8 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Layers of Fear (2016)
  

  16 hours playtime

  13 of 27 achievements

Goosebumps

Detectives! Mystery! Murder! Ghosts Halloween and Horror Literary Ties Short Steam Sales USA

This seemed like a fairly weird game for its type. You can play with a controller. There were no hidden object scenes or traditional puzzles, but there are strange things you can do, such as throw items down a hole that would could you from completing the game. It was okay and actually made a lot of use of various Goosebumps books. But after a few playthroughs getting all of the achievements, I've had enough.

Kingdom Tales

Achievement Clean Up Medieval Probable Junk or Won't Like Short

Not a great game by any means, but I was in the mood for this kind of quick, easy gameplay since I could quickly beat a level here and there while working. There were some Hercules games like that that I think were better.

Living Legends: The Frozen Fear Collection

Folklore & Mythology Ghosts Literary Ties Medieval Short Winter Won on SteamGifts

A little winter in the hottest part of summer (I apparently wrote this half a year ago). This was picked for me for Pay or Play back around then.

This is two hidden object games packaged together. They're based on The Snow Queen and Snow White, and both feature an ice theme. The shared theme can make the two seem a bit samey if you play back to back, though. The first game was shorter and I thought ended abruptly. But the second felt too long. You don't really go back to old areas in either of these games.

I guess technically the second game (based on Snow White) is supposed to be better, as the "scenes" are voiced. However, the voice acting is so bad that almost makes it worse. There is a cute "mini-game" that allows you to buy upgrades for a pet's abode (after you find it). Honestly, that was the best part of either of these games. As much as I want to include a screenshot of my squirrel, it seems like a spoiler because seeing the upgrades was the main drive to play. :(

Heavy Rain

Achievement Clean Up Are We the Baddies? Detectives! Mystery! Murder! French Voice Acting Medium Steam Sales USA

After doing something I don't remember to get the broken controls to work, this was alright. Mainly, I want to know what in the hell happened to the mother? Maybe it was the endings I got, but it was like she showed up to run her mouth and was never seen again. There should have been an ending where we could frame her. On that note, I'm still working on endings, but I doubt this is one I'll ever get all of the achievements in since I don't have time or patience to sit here and perfect a bunch of button prompts.

199X

ABC List Are We the Baddies? Dystopia - The World Gone Wrong Noticeably Good Music Quirky Short

I guess this was better than I thought it would be? It's basically a walking simulator. It has some interesting music you can find. As for the story, I'm not sure I ever came to a conclusion about any thoughts on it. It's somewhat interesting and definitely an original story for a game, but it also seems like something a horny teenage boy would come up with.

Layers of Fear

ABC List Achievement Clean Up Bad Romance Cool-looking Ghosts Halloween and Horror Short

While every once in a while somethign was interesting, I really didn't like how the house changed every time you turned around. That left it with no real sense of place or setting for me. Maybe it was supposed to be like the drunk dad's experience or something, I don't know. Regardless of the reason, that format wore out its welcome for me almost as soon as I saw it going on. It just seemed like a lazy way for the developers to do whatever they wanted and expanded the game with disconnected sequences that felt endless.

Acquisitions

• Too many to list due to my long time since last posting
• Suffice it to say, my ratio isn't getting any better...

This is pretty much all the games I've beaten on Steam in the last year. I was more into emulating old stuff I missed on my Steam deck. I even played a fan translation for the first time because of that.

• Tokyo Dark
  

  28 hours playtime

  13 of 44 achievements

• CHRONO TRIGGER
  

  81 hours playtime

  7 of 13 achievements

• Driftmoon
  

  18 hours playtime

  12 of 15 achievements

• FINAL FANTASY
  

  22 hours playtime

  24 of 24 achievements

• Volcano Princess
  

  79 hours playtime

  191 of 234 achievements

• Amnesia™: Memories
  

  58 hours playtime

  24 of 26 achievements

Tokyo Dark

Achievement Clean Up Detectives! Mystery! Murder! Japan Short

I played this the longest ago of the group. I didn't care for it. I don't remember being engaged by any aspect of the story. I guess there were different endings, but it seems like I didn't have interest in going for them, which is rare for me in this type of game.

Chrono Trigger

Achievement Clean Up Fun RPGs Long Medieval Noticeably Good Music Post-Apocalyptic Prehistoric Steam Sales Time Travel and Loops

This might have been the first time I actually beat Chrono Trigger. And I even went through and got several of the alternate endings, maybe even most of them. I'll probably finish going through the rest at some point since it's super easy with beefed-up characters the second time through. Filled my mom's house with cats as well.

Driftmoon

Achievement Clean Up Medium Quirky Steam Sales Time Travel and Loops

I don't really remember, but I think it was alright for some little indie RPG. I think it seemed sort of like a kids' game.

Final Fantasy I

Long Steam Sales Time Travel and Loops

As you might expect, this is like if you took a golden-era FF game and took everything down to its barest bones, including characters (generic in this game) and story (hardly recall it...). Despite that, it's still more playable than I thought it would be.

Volcano Princess

Achievement Clean Up Dress Up Make Believe - Simulated Lives Medieval Medium School Steam Sales Time Travel and Loops

First off, it needs to be said that the translation absolutely sucks. But it's a really cute game and an improvement on the much older Princess Maker. A father, Wood, has to raise a daughter on his own. You can participate in various aspects of the game, such as dungeon crawling, horse racing, acting, art, or even playing rogue detective + executioner in the back alleys. You can gain knowlege in various subjects. But you don't have time to master everything, so what you focus on determines the ending you get.

There are a lot of cute details in the game and a lot of extra art. For example, the look of some items in the daughter's room can change depending on choices you make. And the daughter can gift the father different items at various points, all of which have their own art. The look and decoration of locations, such as the restaurant, changes with the seasons. The characters all have a separate winter outfit. And every single day/turn of the game, every character says something different, and often this can spark a full discussion between the characters. So despite the translation, the effort is obvious everywhere else.

Something fun this game adds is a sort of new game+ option. Earning achievements gives you points you can use to make later playthroughs easier, or be able to do more in one playthrough. There's also a detailed collection gallery you unlock. You can walk to different rooms where you can see all the outfits you've unlocked, romance endings, career endings, and miscellaneous items as well. The way you get the endings is fun, too, because the father receives a letter from the daughter four years later (screenshot below). I noticed that in one playthrough, the letter even talked about my best horse by name.

Wood pro-opening/Favorite translation mishap

I have gotten most endings and have done most things in the game by now and could probably finish most of them up on a evil daughter/bad father run. Although you can reload saves to get endings with small requirement differences, I wish it were possible to run through the whole game quicker to clean the rest up.

The most disappointing thing is that you can see that the developer tried to do even more. There are a lot of items that look like they were intended for some kind of crafting system

Amnesia: Memories

Detectives! Mystery! Murder! Good Reads Japan Medium Steam Sales Time Travel and Loops

I guess Volcano Princess was starting to scratch some mutliple-endings/otome itch, so I played this game I got a long time ago. The time travel/loops is actually more like parallell/alternate worlds, because at the beginning of the game, you have to choose a world that determines the main route you're on. That's one thing that sometimes disappointed me while playing, because sometimes I just wanted to ditch the character whose route I was on. So I wish there had been more cross over. Both good and bad, because the final (unlockable) world hinted at other bad endings that you don't get to see.

This game really does give you different stories for each route. It's not a matter of completing the same game with each character, and there is some meta stuff that answers overarching story questions, such as in relation to Orion, some spirit boy who got stuck in the place your memories should be. Orion basically acts as a stand-in to express the things the MC could be thinking and to sum up and explain what is going on.

My favorite routes were Shin and Ikki. While the unlockable world was the true ending I guess, I didn't really feel like we end up knowing the character as well or developing much of relationship with them due to the focus on the overarching story at that point.

Acquisitions

• Tell Me Why
• Persona 4 Golden
• FINAL FANTASY XIV: Shadowbringers
• A Normal Lost Phone
• Cattails - Become a Cat!
• Disneyland Adventures
• We Were Here Together
• Automachef
• Catherine Classic
• Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair
• Generation Zero
• Zwei: The Arges Adventure
• Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection
• Overcooked! 2
• Children of Morta
• Shenmue 3
• SIMULACRA 2
• Bee Simulator
• Hammerting
• Paradise Killer
• Nancy Drew: Midnight in Salem
• Graveyard Keeper - Game of Crone
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
• The Adventures of Fei Duanmu
• SteamWorld Dig 2
• We. The RevolutionM
• Nancy Drew®: Alibi in Ashes
• Aveyond 3-3: The Lost Orb
• Aveyond 3-4: The Darkthrop Prophecy
• Aveyond 4: Shadow of the Mist
• Final Fantasy VII Remake
• Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey
• Not Tonight
• Monster Sanctuary

I beat these a while ago and am basically forcing myself to post them now so I can finish other games without feeling like I’m adding to a posting backlog. As such, they aren’t so fresh in my memory.

• Rise of the Tomb Raider
  

  64 hours playtime

  63 of 143 achievements

• Nancy Drew: Midnight in Salem
  

  18 hours playtime

  22 of 23 achievements

• We Were Here
  

  2 hours playtime

  16 of 26 achievements

Rise of the Tomb Raider

"Archaeology" and Anthropology Achievement Clean Up At Least Somewhat Historic England, My Lionheart Folklore & Mythology French Voice Acting German Voice Acting Long Russia

This is basically just a continuation of the first entry in this reboot (Tomb Raider), both in story and gameplay. It's in Russia this time, and you'll generally traverse through snowy mountains, forests, and caves along with abandoned Soviet facilities. "Tombs" (or rather ancient sites, felt more fleshed out with complex puzzles. This game actually has a hub town of sorts, but I wish it at least had a shop to make it more interactive.

Based on trailers I remembered seeing when this came out, I thought it would have more to do mental illness after what Lara experienced in Japan. That seemed interesting and a somewhat unique direction as far as game stories go, but unfortunately it had very little to do with that. One of the DLCs has a Croft Manor section. While I'm glad it's there at all, it's not the training course of the old games but is more of an adventure game or walking sim, requiring the player to find, ultimately, her parents' will (iirc) that proves her inheritance of the mansion. At the time of this game, Croft Manor is in a dilapidated state. I wish there would be some type of side game in the 3rd game that was about restoring it, but I never heard anything about it so it probably didn't happen. :(

There are a couple of cool medieval chainmail outfits in this game and a DLC story involving a famous figure in Russian folklore (Baba Yaga). It is based on the lost/legendary city of Kitezh.

Nancy Drew: Midnight in Salem

Achievement Clean Up At Least Somewhat Historic Colonial/New World Detectives! Mystery! Murder! Ghosts Halloween and Horror Literary Ties Medium New England USA Witches

I've been gradually playing all the Nancy Drew games in order, trying not to go through them too quickly. I cheated and played this one out of order, partly due to curiosity, and partly because my boss went to Salem for Halloween, and I was really excited for her and it made me want to play this.

For those who don't know, the developer, Her Interactive, went through a lot of turmoil in 2015. Half of the team was fired. Prior to this, Her released two games per year since the 90s, but it would until the end of 2019 that they released another game. This game was Midnight in Salem.

Hathorne House

As the title suggests, the game is set in Salem, Massachusetts. It's not about "solving" the witch trials, but rather solving a modern fire at the Hathorne house, a ghost, and the missing will of its recently deceased owner. Nancy has a bigger team than normal, with Dierdre (who figured in past ND game I haven't played yet) and the Hardy Boys all running around to try to clear the name of Dierdre's cousin, who is suspected of setting the fire.

It's both better and worse than I expected. I didn't mind the graphics or controls (was using a controller) and the general gameplay felt like Nancy Drew, but there was a lack of quality in the educational component. Books and materials you read have text that looks like it was written and proofread by foreigners. They laid off in-house staff for cheap outsourcing, and it shows.

We Were Here

Achievement Clean Up Detectives! Mystery! Murder! Medieval Short Winter

I played this with my boyfriend. Thankfully I seemed to be on the side that had to do most of the heavy lifting as far as figuring out the puzzles goes from the library. I'd like to do the other side at some point.

Acquisitions

• Railway Empire
• The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters
• A Case of Distrust
• The Shapeshifting Detective
• Forager
• The Occupation
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Shadows of New York
• Yakuza Kiwami
• Sword Legacy: Omen
• The Letter
• Detention
• Treasure Hunter Simulator
• 911 Operator
• Frog Detective 2: The Case of the Invisible Wizard
• Shining Resonance Refrain
• The Beast Inside
• Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn

Finished these since my last post (apparently 4 months ago... :o ). All links should open in a new tab besides the list tags.

• Nancy Drew: The Creature of Kapu Cave
  

  12 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Battle Chef Brigade
  

  13 hours playtime

  13 of 25 achievements

• Grimm
  

  19 hours playtime

  no achievements

Nancy Drew: The Creature of Kapu Cave

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

As I finished this in December and I am writing in May, what I remember off the top of my head is that there weren't many locations you could go to, but there were some fairly in-depth puzzles involving entomology (and by extension, plant) research. What I really like about this series is that it isn't joking about trying to be educational and fun at the same time...so I actually learned and somehow retained the word "frass," which I guess is a more scientific term for bug poo.

That's what Nancy is up to. The Hardy Boys, meanwhile, are also in Hawaii, vacationing and undercover investigating. You get to switch between Nancy and the Hardy Boys in this game. Frank and Joe are at some weird "Immersion Excursion" resort where they make necklaces and catch fish for points they can use at the resort for things such as information about Hawaii and scuba gear.

Big Island Mike's Immersion Excursion Center

Creature of Kapu Cave is overall a decent entry in the series, and iirc it's the first that used a tropical setting.

Battle Chef Brigade

Disease Food Medium

Pretty fun match-3 puzzle game with the addition of battling monsters and collecting cooking ingredients. The ingredients you use determine the colors you have available to match as well as what the dish ultimately becomes. If the judge asks for a dish where the fire element really comes out, then you want to use ingredients that mostly add red gems, for example.

There are a bunch of different cooking tools that give different bonuses or have other functions. Often times, you have to keep track of 2-3 dishes over a round that lasts about 10 minutes.

Grimm

Are We the Baddies? Cool-looking Folklore & Mythology Literary Ties LMAO Long

Pretty boring to play more than one episode, honestly, and only gets worse when they want you to start platforming with its crappy jumping controls. It's various levels turning fairy tales (mostly from Grimm's but with random additions like A Christmas Carol and the King Midas myth), and you basically walk around turning the environment from colorful to dark, gross, and macabre.

Acquisitions

• The Room Two
• Keepsake

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

• Strawberry Vinegar
  

  11 hours playtime

  28 of 28 achievements

• The Room
  

  6 hours playtime

  5 of 5 achievements

• Rusty Lake Hotel
  

  3 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Raft
  

  13 hours playtime

  10 of 89 achievements

Strawberry Vinegar

Cool-looking Food Good Reads Japan Quirky Short

I played this for Play or Pay, but it had been something I wanted to check out for a while as I was impressed by Asphyxia, made by the same dev. And okay, the style is super cute and the food pics.

I guess that's Norwegians for you!

So, a demon appears to a girl in Japan, demands she make her food for a week, and is mistaken by everyone else for a Norwegian. The main character, Ri, has no friends and has drifted apart from her parents. She speaks more like a cynical teenager or adult (as did the characters in Asphyxia), but I feel like it works.

Apple rose tarts

The Room

Short

I feel like I would be more impressed by this if I didn't already know about the Nancy Drew games. Whie it feels more sophisticated than a HOG, there was nothing to investigate to make complex puzzles. I didn't need to make notes or anything. There were no puzzles to brood over throughout the game, as you complete them pretty much as soon as they appear. And I kind of expected a room to explore rather than pivoting around a box within a box within a box around a table. It wasn't bad, but it did seem a bit simple.

Rusty Lake Hotel

Food Lockdown Quirky Short

This had what The Room was missing. Explorable stuff, puzzles complex enough for me to write notes down, actual puzzle rooms, interest in what I'm doing/the story, etc. The story felt like a mix of And Then There Was None and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

You have to collect ingredients for dinner each night, and to get the ingredients, you need to complete puzzles in each guest's room. The game doesn't make it obvious, but you need to do those in a certain order to get all 3 stars for each meal. The order is dependent on what ingredient you find before entering each puzzle room. I had to redo the first room and most of the 2nd room because of this, though ultimately I don't think it matters.

Raft update #1

Crafting Pirates, Hacking, & the High Seas Player Homes Very Long

First of all, I play on Easy because I don't have time to lose my inventory if I die (although by now most of my inventory is in storage, but I kept dying of thirst, hunger, or shark before I had storage). I haven't started any story stuff yet because I am still short on some part. I just recently got the smelter and started making iron and copper ingots, so I'm probably ready to start the story next time I play. The most recent important upgrade I built is the permanent anchor, which I haven't gotten to use yet.

Current raft, permanent anchor behind me.

Everything was laid out flat for a long time, but I built a mid level with storage and smelter for now, as well as a top level that just has a rug and a bed. It also has a wrap-around balcony, so I can easily jump from it to a higher point of an island. You can see the half wall of the balcony just above the sail, while I will probably move so I can extend the balcony.

No roof yet, and I might have put the walls on backwards.

There is still some stuff I have available that I haven't used yet, like paint and a few pieces of furniture and decoration. As for the game itself, I'm having fun. I wish there were chances of rarer items in the ocean loot, because getting the same few things is kind of boring.

Totals since January 2019

1206	games	+114
56	games beaten or completed	Not sure that's great over 2 years, but I'll take it.
64%	never played	-1%
14%	unfinished	no change
7%	beaten	+1%
10%	completed	+2%
6%	won't play	-1%

Acquisitions

• Where the Water Tastes Like Wine
• The Suicide of Rachel Foster
• Hello Neighbor
• Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek
• Vampyr
• Call of Cthulhu
• Through the Darkest of Times
• Little Big Workshop
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York
• Witchtastic
• Ni no Kuni Wrath of the White Witch
• Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption
• Raft
• The Room
• Little Big Adventure - Enhanced Edition
• Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters Daybreak: Special Gigs
• Final Fantasy XV Episode Ardyn

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

• The Suicide of Rachel Foster
  

  34 hours playtime

  11 of 11 achievements

• Two Point Hospital
  

  80 hours playtime

  17 of 51 achievements

• Nancy Drew: Danger By Design
  

  12 hours playtime

  no achievements

The Suicide of Rachel Foster

Detectives! Mystery! Murder! Ghosts Quarantine Short USA West Winter Won on SteamGifts

This had promise, but ultimately it is kind of a disappointment. You have to check out your family's creepy old hotel, which is in probate. But exploration isn't really rewarded, there are only a limited number of items you can look at to get information/insight, and I feel the ending went in an unnecessary direction. I was engaged enough while playing and enjoyed some creeping moment while thinking of The Shining, but in retrospect there could have been more.

'Twas just the season.

Two Point Hospital

Achievement Clean Up Disease Make Believe - Simulated Lives Very Long

This is a hospital-building simulation game. It has a goofy take on medicine, as your patients will suffer from illnesses such as Verbal Diarrhea. Those who think they are more of a hotshot than they are might find themselves in psychiatry, being treated for Mock Star. Others just need a light bulb detached from their heads.

New features are slowly unlocked as you progress through different hospitals. It can be kind of annoying to keep building the same hospital rooms, but there is a feature to save room templates to reuse. Even this can get a bit fiddly, as some areas need air conditioning and others need heating. Eventually you can start to get outbreaks in your hospital, which leads to a kind of fun mini-game that has you looking out for infected people based on the strange physical symptoms they cause.

Nancy Drew: Danger By Design

At Least Somewhat Historic Detectives! Mystery! Murder! Educational Food France Literary Ties Medium World Wars Era

In this game, Nancy Drew goes to Paris to solve a mystery regarding a designer of plus-size clothing of all things. Although I'm a big francophile, this entry to the series is kind of boring to me. Not enough French or France stuff, I guess. One real location you can explore is the Square du Vert-Galant. You use the metro system to travel around a handful of locations in the city.

There is often some kind of historical aspect to these games, and in this one it involves secret codes used during World War II. You get a chance to decode some of these using a few different methods. You also have to buy a lot of stuff from street vendors, which can be annoying because of unskippable dialogue. There is a logic puzzle in which you have to create outfits for a client (a cameo from an earlier game) according to certain criteria. That was a good puzzle idea, although it was too easy and the clothes are as ugly as sin. We also revert back to the days of no cell phone, so you have to call a calling card number before then calling any of your American friends (namely Bess and George). Because of that, I just didn't call them.

Acquisitions

• Cat Quest
• The Council
• Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair
• Graveyard Keeper - Stranger Sins
• The Last Crown: Midnight Horror
• Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom
• Zero Escape: The Nonary Games
• The Stillness of the Wind
• Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
• The Messenger
• Supraland
• Hitman 2
• MOLEK-SYNTEZ
• Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
• Felix the Reaper
• Yuppie Psycho
• EARTHLOCK
• Sigma Theory
• Don't Escape: 4 Days to Survive
• Blair Witch

All links should open in a new tab besides the list tags. I waited way too long to write about these, which I played from May to July.

• Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
  

  73 hours playtime

  38 of 38 achievements

• Midnight Mysteries 3: Devil on the Mississippi
  

  10 hours playtime

  12 of 16 achievements

• Nancy Drew: Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon
  

  13 hours playtime

  no achievements

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc

Detectives! Mystery! Murder! Good Reads Japan LMAO Quarantine School Very Long

I played this during quarantine/lockdown, and it was fitting because the characters in this game are locked down. Literally, with metal plates bolted to all the windows. It was silly fun with gameplay in the vein of Phoenix Wright. If one student kills another, you have to have a class trial to determine who did the crime. Each character is the "Ultimate" at this or that thing, traits I thought were under utilized in some of the murder solutions. The extra mode when you beat the game is long and boring after the first time, yet you have to do it multiple times just for a few extra disappointing lines of text per character.

Midnight Mysteries 3: Devil on the Mississippi

Achievement Clean Up At Least Somewhat Historic Detectives! Mystery! Murder! England, My Lionheart Ghosts Literary Ties New England Renaissance Short Time Travel and Loops USA Victorian Won on SteamGifts

Part of this hidden object game is set somewhat near me, where Mark Twain grew up in Missouri and where his Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn novels are set. You have to help his ghost, and it involves going to London and messing with Shakespeare's ghost, too. This seems to be in reference to Twain's short book called Is Shakespeare Dead?

House in which Mark Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri.

Nancy Drew: Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon

At Least Somewhat Historic Detectives! Mystery! Murder! Educational Food Ghosts Literary Ties Road Trips & Travelogues Short USA West

As Nancy Drew, you take an old steam train associated with mysterious deaths and disappearances to solve an Old West mystery. You learn about different gem stones and samplers, sort taffy, fulfill burger orders, figure out which doll is which, all while putting together some big contraption on the train that might lead to treasure...or trouble. It's up to you as Nancy Drew. You've got a trumped up cop, a bitchy romance author, a Paris Hilton wannabe, a ghost hunter, and the Hardy Boys with you.

Acquisitions

• Regions of Ruin
• Valhalla Hills
• Ticket to Ride: First Journey
• The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut
• Trüberbrook
• GRIS
• Opus Magnum
• This Is the Police 2
• Capitalism 2
• Shoppe Keep 2
• Fallout 4: Game of the Year Edition (amazingly lucky SG win)

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

• 11-11 Memories Retold
  

  25 hours playtime

  50 of 50 achievements

• Epic Battle Fantasy 4
  

  51 hours playtime

  68 of 104 achievements

• Nancy Drew: Secret of the Old Clock
  

  14 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Spyro Reignited Trilogy
  

  29 hours playtime

  36 of 105 achievements

11-11: Memories Retold

At Least Somewhat Historic Cool-looking Educational Favorites France French Voice Acting German Voice Acting Kitty Cats Noticeably Good Music O Canada Short World Wars Era

Good story-based game I played for last round's Play or Pay. Most of the game takes place in France during WWI while you alternate playing between a Canadian and German soldier. While the story is serious, there is still some light-hearted moments and cute animals, as well as a few stunning moments of fantasy that feel like they came out of a nostalgic children's story. I would definitely rank this as an example of a video game successfully reaching towards a higher art.

The only thing I could ask for is for the endings to have been more fleshed out, but that's also a sign of a good story. Some people may be put off right away by the impressionist graphic style, but I loved how the art style was used to represent an era that kind of ended with the war.

Epic Battle Fantasy 4

Dress Up Kitty Cats LMAO Long

This was also for Play or Pay. I used to play these on Kongregate. They kind of just have a silly, meta style of humor. Turn-based battles, some puzzles, fetch quests. I also feel like there are too many battles in these. Most enemies you initiate an encounter with will end up being like 3 waves of battles. I didn't do the extra Battle Mountain area because there each encounter is like 8+ waves, and it just wasn't fun or interesting enough for me to do it. I usually like turn-based battle systems, but for some reason the ones in this game/series have always been boring to me.

The skill system was also not very motivating, because I bought what I wanted as soon as I could. Then I was left with a mass of junk skills, or defensive support abilities when I just wanted the battles to end.

Nancy Drew: Secret of the Old Clock

At Least Somewhat Historic Detectives! Mystery! Murder! Literary Ties Short USA World Wars Era

Afaik, this is the only Nancy Drew game that takes place in the past (1930, to be exact). The subtitle of this game was the title of the first Nancy Drew book, which was released that year. As Nancy Drew, you stay at the Lilac Inn in Illinois at the beginning of the Great Depression.

The Lilac Inn from Nancy's blue Roadster

It's not one of my favorite Nancy Drew games. While one puzzle referred to Shakespeare, it wasn't actually educational like most other games in the series are. One of the main things about this game is driving around the roads on a world map. You can run out of gas or get a flat tire, so you have to attend to those. You can make money by delivering telegrams. You're told you get a flat rate for each letter plus tips, but HER Interactive played a funny Depression joke because no one ever tips.

The biggest takeaway is to always appease the cat before thinking of anything else.

You can call Nancy's dad, Carson Drew, in this game. I didn't take advantage of that much because we're stripped of our cellphones and have to use a pay phone, which means delivering more telegrams, which means getting more gas...

Spyro Reignited Trilogy

Favorites FFFFFUUUUUUU PoP--Long

A childhood favorite. Before I had my own copy, I used to go to the next-door neighbor's house and try to get someone to play it. I finished the first game in the trilogy with 100% completion. I remember a lot of mini-games in the other ones, so I'm not sure if I'll have the patience or time. I hated the "all in one" race-against-the-clock levels in this one enough. The rest of the game was easier than I remembered, though. I remembered a lot of levels and dragons you rescue, but I wish we could have seen comparisons to the old graphics in the game. The collectables could have unlocked items in a gallery. I know I can just look it up, but still.

Acquisitions

• OKAMI HD
• Eliza
• The Hex
• Frostpunk
• Frostpunk: The Rifts
• Night Call
• Book of Demons
• Pathfinder: Kingmaker Explorer Edition
• SHENZHEN I/O
• CryoFall
• Deiland

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

• Nancy Drew: Curse of Blackmoor Manor
  

  12 hours playtime

  0 of 0 achievements

• Doki Doki Literature Club
  

  8.3 hours playtime

  0 of 0 achievements

• Cateau
  

  1.9 hours playtime

  0 of 0 achievements

Nancy Drew: Curse of Blackmoor Manor

At Least Somewhat Historic Detectives! Mystery! Murder! Educational England, My Lionheart Literary Ties Medium

I really waited to long to post about my plays this time. This is the second time I've played this Nancy Drew game. It's the first to take place outside of the US. It's not totally clear why you're at this aristocratic English mansion, but apparently it's to solve a mystery related to a woman there who is refusing to see anyone.

I have to say, this one had you repeat some things too many times. Let's just say there's a certain parrot I wouldn't mind to see follow its master, a girl whose toy chest I would burn, a couple of doors I would jam open permanently, and a series of passages in which I would install lighting. Thankfully among the centuries of riddles found in the mansion, a more interesting puzzle involved using runes (and had me writing stuff in runes in my notebook).

Doki Doki Literature Club

Good Reads Japan Literary Ties Quirky School Short

An odd game that gets more odd about a small literature club where the members start sharing their poetry. You see the poems, so it's an interesting way to add characterization. It's free, so you may as well play it yourself.

Cateau

France Good Reads Kitty Cats Short

I mainly played this because cats and Paris. I went through more than once for different endings, so it is shorter than my time shows.

Acquisitions

• Nothing...? But only because I haven't had the heart to go through a Humble Monthly I accidentally bought a couple of months ago.

All links should open in a new tab besides the category tags. I might add that I've finished categorizing my unfinished games by length, and in the process I found around 20 games to delete (looked like crap or abandoned and not even any trading cards).

• Mountain
  

  8.4 hours playtime

  21 of 31 achievements

• Dark Fall: The Journal
  

  15.1 hours playtime

  0 of 0 achievements

• Rock of Ages
  

  6.8 hours playtime

  9 of 19 achievements

• Staxel
  

  43.9 hours playtime

  10 of 23 achievements

Mountain

Quirky Short

This isn't really a game, so there's not much to say. I played it because I was categorizing my games by length and figured I'd let it run while doing that and reading Le comte de Monte-Cristo. I have more to say about what I was doing while the game ran than the "game" itself. So, I categorized all my unfinished games over like a 3-day grind. I rediscovered a lot of stuff I've already forgotten, much like the objects on my mountain. I've also been reading, as I said, Le comte de Monte-Cristo in the original French for the year-long reddit read along.

Dark Fall 1: The Journal

At Least Somewhat Historic Detectives! Mystery! Murder! England, My Lionheart Ghosts Halloween and Horror Short World Wars Era

I recommend this to anyone who likes point and clicks and ghosts. It's sad to think this game from 2002 with the crappiest save system ever felt innovative, but it did. You go to a hotel and old station in a town in Dorset, England after getting a strange message from your brother. It is reputed to be haunted and is associated with several disappearances. Like any point and click, you'll explore the area. You'll also be able to make use of ghost-hunting equipment, as well as sound files, images, etc. that have been captured.

It felt more like a Nancy Drew game to me than most other point and clicks, which is a good thing. But what I really liked was the inclusion of ways to communicate with ghosts. You can type out questions to ask via a ouija board, and the ghost will move the planchette around in response. You can even speak to some more directly, still by typing out questions or responses to them. While most of the game was spent doing other things, I thought that felt really immersive, and I'm interested to see if they develop that more in later games. They will mostly only respond to relevant topics, but I was able to ask some things that weren't directly relevant ("What year is it?" "How old are you?").

"Are you dead?" "Yes."

There are a couple of annoyances: low resolution and the save system. Saving and loading brings the Windows file system up. You are literally naming and saving a text file in whatever place you choose. The problem is that your screen will likely be too huge to view the files. I was relying on pressing the enter key to save since I couldn't see the button and seeing the file name as a contextual suggestion after I started typing it. I'm on Windows 7. It has no Steam overly integration, either, while I'm at it being critical, so I had to manually save the screenshots under these crappy conditions.

Rock of Ages

Ancient World (Greece, Rome, Persia, etc.) At Least Somewhat Historic Cool-looking Folklore & Mythology LMAO Medieval Quirky Renaissance Short

I usually don't like puzzle games or anything that is divided into repetitive levels very much. Nor have I ever had much desire to play anoter tower defense game after playing one. But for some reason Rock of Ages was fun, even though it was basically a puzzle game with elements similar to tower defense. On the contrary, this was fun, quirky, and just the right length. Thanks to one of my Play or Pay pickers for recommending it.

You're Sisyphus, rolling it out against various historical figures through time. The idea is to roll a ball and hit your opponent's door/gate at the end of the path with as much force as possible. That means you need to be going quickly and to have taken as little damage as possible on the way down. You get a bit of time in between rolls to set up obstacles for your opponent, aimed at slowing them down and destroying their ball. The game's tone is in the same vein as the Lego games or Stacking--silly, physical humor.

Staxel

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

3rd Staxel update (see 1 & 2 if interested).

I'm working on a house for a new resident (she already moved in--it doesn't require a complete roof) based on the fairy castle from the Spring event. That was motivated, in part, by the source of free furniture from the event castle.

The last screenshot shows something I started building as a loft, but to be honest it kind of sucks like that because you can barely see below. I'm thinking of just roofing off the exposed part of the lower floor and keeping this "loft"as an outdoor (windowless) window.

That's about it. I've started digging out a spot for the foundation of the next person's house. I believe/hope this is the person who will finally sell me chocolate chip cookies so I can finish the quest to get a different person to join the town.