Same deal with yesterday - short game that could be beaten in one sitting before I travel tomorrow.

This time it took longer than 20 minutes - it actually took longer than HLTB estimates! Alba reminds me a lot of A Short Hike, but lacks some of what made that game special. The pacing here is a bit slower and off - whereas in A Short Hike it felt organic and natural, here feels a bit railroaded. It lost steam long before it was over. It was also poorly explained that some animals require triggers to appear (like the dolphin or barn owl), which made me spend a ridiculous amount of time looking for them without success.

Navigation was also a bit of a chore. A Short Hike utilizes verticality much better, with jumps, glides, and lots of ups and downs. Here, there's height, but it's never used in a creative way. For all that matters, the game could have been set on a flat plain and nothing would change. To wrap it off, I don't understand why the game felt the need to be PC so often - it contributed little to the plot or gameplay, so it just felt gratuitous.

A good game, but one I'm happy to put away and not play again, I guess.

I wanted to tackle the shortest game on my backlog, since I'm traveling the day after tomorrow and won't be back home until December, meaning I won't have time to tackle a full-length game between today and tomorrow. Well, I had this game on itch, and HLTB told me I could beat it in 22 minutes.

It took me 19 minutes, but it was a quite enjoyable third of an hour. This game reminded me a lot of Florence, but way sillier and less serious. Would I suggest someone buy it? Probably not. But if you have it or win it for free, it's a pretty cute short experience. Loved it, would play it again, filled my heart with joy :)

I did not like Crashday: Redline Edition, and I would have dropped it if it wasn't one of my PAGYWOSG games / SG Wins from one of my favorite SG Members, AtomicBlonde.

The cars handle terribly, the enemies are bullet sponges with superior ramming abilities, and I had to look for Youtube videos on how to cheese almost 1/3 of the missions, including Air Time and the one with 250k bonus combo. It's just a terrible driving game, where handling is super poor, and the missions are all haphazard, nonsensical, and there's no worldbuilding. I cannot find one redeeming quality in it.

Steam Review

Hotline Miami was among the Top 3 highest score backlog games on my list for a while, so it felt like a cool little project to tackle between playing my SG Wins and after assassinating the monster that RDR2 is. And it did not disappoint.

To be honest, I would have beaten it earlier/faster had I chose to play on K+M - the way the controls are laid on the gamepad not only makes the gameplay a bit more challenging and slower, but it also hurt my hand after an hour or so of play.

Regardless of that, it's clear to me why this game became such an indie classic. Pleasant visuals (if you don't mind the gore), neat music, and a rewarding gameplay loop where experimentation is encouraged but skill never ceases to matter. There's also a story that I don't really connected with, but the gameplay was always good. The masks are all so different and introduce a lot of replayability as well.

I've beaten the main game and I'm now at the epilogue, but I can see myself coming back to it every now and then. It's such a good game. Play it!

Steam Review

I …. don't know what to write here. I'm seriously at a loss for words. This has been such a ride. I cannot remember the last time I played a single game for so long. I think it took me 4 or 5 months really investing time into this game, and it was time extremely well spent. Finally, I can say - I get it. I get why this game is so loved. It's not perfect, but it's close to perfection in many important ways. There's no way to convey it in words, so I guess you'll just have to go and experience it yourself.

As Arthur himself would say, “We can’t change what’s done, we can only move on”.

Steam Review

Everytime I looked at my games list, I'd scratch my head since the first title that showed up had this huge circle character before the name, and I would be remembered of all the F2P games I've added to my library and that I'd probably never play. Well, I checked and this one seemed quite short, and I thought "Why not" and booted it up. I was greeted with one of the most serene and calming gaming experiences I've had in the last few months. If you like tactile puzzle games, this game is a gem, and best of all - it's free! You play it entirely with your mouse, there are no words at all in the game, the music is super enjoyable, and the difficulty ramps up nicely but never gets frustrating. I've beaten it, but this is one of these games that it's just super enjoyable to keep playing, and I plan to 100% it. PLAY IT PLAY IT PLAY IT!!!!!

Steam Review

Had a blast playing Skullgirls, the oldest unplayed win on my backlog. The game is crisp, sharp, and vibrant. It looks, sounds, and plays great. It has a great vibe, and deep mechanics that can still be enjoyed by casual players, along with a lot of character variety. It's hard to not recommend this one. I definitely won't be playing it competitively anytime soon, but I enjoyed my casual play a lot!!

Steam review

Ugh I'm so frustrated! Ballistic Zen was one of the nicest surprises I've encountered recently. I had never heard of the game or have any idea what it was about, but it was bundled recently and I decided to give it a go. I ended up giving away all other games in the bundle and just kept this one. And boy, what a delight!

Ballistic Zen is a first-person platformer / parkour game. It controls basically just with the mouse - left-click to start or stop, right-click to jump. You accelerate by riding downhill or by quickly shifting between left and right. And … that's pretty much it, a whole game built upon first-person movement, which I'm a sucker for. The goal is to ride "lines", which are courses snaking through the massive, brutalist, vertical open-world. It's literally so simple yet so, so enjoyable.

The part that I hated the most is the realization that I suck at it. The first world kind of warms you up to the game. It took me a while, but eventually I was able to beat all the lines there. Then I went to the second world, and managed to beat maybe 40% of the lines. Third world, 20%, last world, none of them. I eventually made my way up the Pyramid, which is the end-game, and called it a day. Decided to pick it up again to try to clear lines I've had previously struggled with, and even though I played for a loooooooooong time, I managed to beat none of them. Which is fine because the game is still a treat and I'll be booting it up every now and then to go and have fun with it, but man, it is SO HARD to get better at it, and of course, being a niche title, there are no guides or tips and tricks for it.

Absolutely worth buying full price if you enjoy first-person parkour or platforming games with lots of wallrunning and beautifully realized movement mechanics.

Steam review

I thought I would never find a 2D Metroidvania I didn't like. But then I played Chasm.

In the most basic level, a Metroidvania has to do two things well: combat and exploration. Chasm draws a lot from the SNES Castlevania titles for combat and movement, with long wind-up times, stance locks during attacks, stun locks during jumps, and different attack reach and arcs based on the weapon. Also the "magic" system is copy paste from Castlevania, particularly Castlevania X and Super Castlevania IV. The problem is that these games are not known for their expressive combat options, or for their fluid and responsive platforming.

If you've played any modern 2D action adventure game, you'll be left scratching your head as why Chasm is so dull. Combat options are extremely limited, and you're constantly punished by enemies that hit pretty hard and stun lock you into place, even on the Normal difficulty. You'll be missing ledge grabs and wall jumps because the inputs for these moves are arcane and unresponsive. You'll be jumping on disappearing platforms, and they will fade before you had a chance to register a jump away. Moving around and fighting enemies is just not fun, and given this is the core of the game, this makes the whole experience a chore.

I could live with these flaws if difficulty was balanced or the map and level design were fun to explore, but alas, they are not. There are very few save points in the game, and they are far from each other. Re-entering a room re-spawns enemies. The first time you encounter an enemy, you'll likely lose a big chunk of health trying to learn its moves (which is harder because your own moveset and attack is sluggish), and then you'll face a challenge: go to the next room hoping it's a save point (probably it won't), or try to backtrack to the last save point but risking dying in the process? If you die, it's game over, main menu, so dying in the game is very punishing. And this system incentivizes you to grind enemies besides the save room. Seriously, a grand total of 0 people find that fun. The amount of times I had been playing for a while (like, thirty minutes) and died, only to have my progress reset, was frustratingly high. And I wasn't even playing on hard, I was just fighting the controls and the platforms instead of fighting the enemies.

To top it off, the devs seem to take a lot of pride from having a proc-gen game. But if I'm just playing the main story once, does it matter? Spoiler alert, it doesn't! Proc-gen makes sense for games with weak narrative and quick gameplay loops, like Rogue Legacy or Enter the Gungeon. Chasm tries to be a narrative-heavy game with a random dungeon that is all disjointed and makes no sense, relying on teleports to "connect" the world, and it fails. It tries to be a modern SNES Castlevania with RPG elements, but fails at that too. It tries to have puzzles, platforming, combat, an in-game economy, and it all falls through the cracks. It's a game that's not fun to play, trying to do too much and doing none of that right.

Steam review