September - Week 2 Update

This week’s progress isn’t half as impressive at the last, but I did manage to get quite a few games done still. For this week I’ve decided to focus mainly on my backlog, which means no free games - I’ve done a lot of those last week and I don’t really need to do them anymore. So this week has been all about directly chipping into my backlog.. and some broken promises.

I managed to finish 11 games this week, which includes two refinishes (previously 100%’d games with recently added achievements). The majority of these games aren’t necessarily hard, just a little time consuming and skill-dependent. But they’re directly in my backlog, so that’s progress! Below is my progress for this week.

Completed Games

• ADventure Lib
  

  4 hours playtime

  10 of 10 achievements

• Home is Where One Starts...
  

  5 hours playtime

  8 of 8 achievements

• Impossible Quest
  

  13 hours playtime

  4 of 4 achievements

• Planet Driller
  

  8 hours playtime

  15 of 15 achievements

• Rituals
  

  2 hours playtime

  7 of 7 achievements

• Shmadow
  

  6 hours playtime

  8 of 8 achievements

• Space Codex
  

  80 minutes playtime

  7 of 7 achievements

• Viscera Cleanup Detail: Shadow Warrior
  

  6 hours playtime

  2 of 2 achievements

• Party Hard
  

  31 hours playtime

  27 of 27 achievements

• SAMOLIOTIK
  

  9 hours playtime

  14 of 14 achievements

Let’s start off with Adventure LIB, which is quite literally the worst game on this list. The entire time I was playing the game, all I wanted to do was close and uninstall it. Like seriously, the only thing that was keeping me from doing that was that I already gotten an achievement, and I wasn’t going to let my backlog take another unfinished game. The game relies on cheap, stupid humor to keep it’s players entertained, and failed miserably. It’s ‘humor’ is literally just swapping NPC sprites with random objects that are re-generated every time you start a new game, resulting in apparently hilarious in-game objectives, such as having to fight a giant floating butter block and getting a quest to unclog the princess. It was entertaining for maybe 30 seconds before it got tiring to play because the game gets so goddamn confusing due to the shuffled sprites. Oh and the voice acting is perhaps one of the worst I’ve seen in a game, in which at one point made me genuinely wonder if it was recorded in a bathroom.

Moving on to Home is Where One Starts…, which is, thankfully, a much better game. I actually liked it quite a lot. In fact, the header of this post comes from the game. It’s a very atmospheric first-person exploration game, reminiscent of Gone Home. I can’t say much about the game without spoiling the game, but really, it was quite interesting to watch the character’s story unravel as you progress. I wouldn’t be surprised if many people found this game boring, though - it can be. There’s no fast walk option, which means you have to walk through the fairly large map at a normal walking speed.. which frankly irritated the hell out of me. I also spent at least 15 minutes looking for a stupid flask, which turns out to be somewhere in the upper right of the house, deep in the forests near the edge of the map (in case you were wondering). I wish I’d taken a screenshot to show you all where to find it. Thankfully, walking over the flask triggers a story, so you’ll know when you walk over it and (probably) won’t miss it.

Impossible Quest, the third game on my list, was a rather easy game, but god damn.. it was VERY time consuming. It’s a text based game so you just click through it, but thing is you have to do that nearly 100 times to get all the achievements - and hell, they worth less than 2 points on AStats. It probably wouldn’t be bad if the stories you have to click through is short, or even had an undo button, but noooo, a lot of the endings actually require over 10 clicks to get. That probably don’t sound too bad, until you take into account that you have to do that at least 80 times. And that’s not even counting the mistakes you’ll inevitably make along the way, forcing you to redo the steps as you descend into the dark void that is madness. Lord have mercy.

The next game on the list is Planet Driller, which si quite surprisingly a pretty decent game! It’s not exactly amazing, but it definitely was quite entertaining.. if you ignore the small glitches. It’s basically like Minecraft, but with spaceships. You use the spaceships to dig into the ground. And the biggest spaceship that I had was literally too fat to get into the ground. Which was actually probably for the best, because after forcing it in and finally succeeding, I found out that the biggest yoit spaceship is, the more likely you are to die, rendering those expensive and apparently effective fat spaceships useless. There are lava blocks scattered in the ground, and when your spaceship is four blocks wide you’re just hitting everything. I died on my fat spaceship about 8 seconds into the ground. It was amazing.

Rituals is an interesting 3D puzzle-exploration-adventure, which is actually pretty scary at first. You start in a large abandoned office with a lot of dark corners. The entire time I was in that building I was absolutely terrified by the possibility of some stupid ass ghost hiding behind a desk and jumpscaring me. Then I finally got to the lift, and as I struggled to keep a positive mind I thought, “Hey, maybe there are actually people on this floor,” and god damn it I was wrong. Things got WORSE. The lift literally takes you to some creepy forest with a creepy shack and a super creepy pitch black bear tunnel or whatever that was. I wanted to cry. I hate horror games. But things got a little better from there on. Just kidding, it didn’t. The only person I met killed himself, and I had to get some tools from a creepy empty shower room. With a lot of shower stalls. AND INTERACTABLE CURTAINS. I had to open literally every single shower stall before I even considered getting the tool because since the tool was placed on the very end of the shower stalls, I’d pick it up and see a bloody eyed ghost or whatever. This isn’t even a horro game but my mind kept going crazy with the paranoia. Bless.

On a less creepy note but not really, Shmadow is a game where you.. I don’t know, control some sort of light and then shoot some stuff in pitch darkness. Every time you get hit you’re less bright, and the map gets darker. Thankfully the game was pretty easy, and I actually enjoyed it quite a lot. There’s something very therapeutic about being the only shining light in pitch darkness, and something artistic about the light gradually growing weaker as the darkness consumes it. Mmmm.

Space Codex is a game that I’ve wanted for quite a while, and I was lucky enough to win it on Steam Gifts last week! I installed and completed right away. The gameplay itself is just like Shmadow, but there are less darkness and more harmful objects flying around the map. And some suicidal enemy ships that keeps crashing into you on purpose. God damn it, I hate those. But the game was actually quite easy for the most part.

The eight game on my list, Sparkle Zero, is a Spore meets agar.io. You basically play as a bacteria that eats some.. cubes? And other bacterias, of course. You are practically the only hostile bacteria in the game though. But Jesus that took me a long while to figure out. I spent the first 30 minutes running away from a bunch of small bacterias I thought was a gigantic, hostile bacteria. But noo they’re just tiny stupid triangles, I didn’t realize it because they keep making some scary ass alien noises. I basically spent the first half of the game getting chased around by my own prey. Not like it’s my fault though, the game has literally no tutorial. Seriously. The developers even proudly wrote it on the game’s store page. “Before you play Sparkle ZERO please be aware that this game contains no tutorial. You will be left to explore the world alone, learning to climb the evolutionary ladder.” Fantastic!

Viscera Cleanup Detail: Shadow Warrior is the ninth and last game I officially finished this week. I was actually gonna use a screenshot from the game as a header for this post, but decided to go for Home is Where One Starts.. instead, because of the amount of gore in it. I figured that maybe not everyone would be comfortable seeing blood. It’s a fantastic game though, just like every other Viscera Cleanup Detail game. I spent at least 3 hours in the game, which was actually much, much longer than it should have taken. The guide I followed gave a tip that would allow me to finish it in 10 min tops, which is cheating. You enter some code and just kinda violently look at everything? I don’t know. But I did use a cheat code that basically cleans everything around your character to clean some unreachable blood stains on the walls and other odd places to ensure I get the 100% clean achievement thing. I cleaned at least 99% of the map manually though.

One of the two re-finishes on this list is Party Hard, which saw the addition of a new map and a new character about three days ago. The map is called ‘Old Castle’ and the character is some sort of Van Helsing dude? The map was pretty tough though. No useful traps and 61 guests in a big map. And guests you kill will resurrect if you don’t apply holy water to them. This game is also one of the reasons why this weekly update was posted late, because I was too busy posting a long ass super detailed guide on getting this achievement on both AStats. This is my guide, in case you need it: https://goo.gl/9s85in (AStats) and https://goo.gl/uMMgsL (Steam). Upvotes are very appreciated!

SAMOLIOTIK comes up next, as the second re-finish and also the last game on this list. It’s a neat little game that could overwhelm you, but the glitch made the extra achievement super easy. As it turns out, you can still move your ship when you pause the game, enabling you to get the necessary popups with zero risk (unless you deliberate crash yourself into enemies). Feels good to have another perfect game back!

Started Games

• Octodad: Dadliest Catch
  

  9 hours playtime

  0 of 32 achievements

• Papers, Please
  

  7 hours playtime

  13 of 13 achievements

• Dungeon of Zolthan
  

  7 hours playtime

  0 of 13 achievements

I started three new games this week, two of those I haven’t gotten any achievements in. The first of those two games is Octodad: Dadliest Catch, which was as you can imagine, a fantastic game! Also very frustrating. And boring, because it’s old and I feel like I’ve played it before. But it’s a very entertaining game, and I’m looking forward to play more of it in the future!

The second is Papers, Please, which I bought thanks to the Youtuber jacksepticeye, who I’ve been watching more and more recently. He played the game on one of his videos, and I checked it on the Steam store only to find out that it was on sale.. and you know what happens next. It’s a great game, although it feels quite taxing to play sometimes. But I like it. A lot. That one guy who keeps returning despite being rejected entry like half a dozen times is my favorite. I hope there’ll be a nice story for him in the end.

Dungeon of Zolthan is the next game on this list, and also the only one I’ve actually progressed in achievements-wise. The game itself isn’t really all that hard, but boy the achievements are. The first four achievements I focused in were the “Defeat [Boss] without getting hit” achievements, which pretty fine the most part. The achievements I need though, can be pretty hard to tackle. One of them is to complete the game with 5 or less deaths which I’m not sure if I’ll ever get. But I’ll try to get it anyway, because how bad can it be, really?

.. I’m going to regret that last sentence aren’t I.

Summary

So far this has been a pretty productive week for backlog killing! It’s such a shame that it was stained by a broken promise as I didn’t start Tropico 4 or progressed in Tales of Maj’Eyal like I originally planned and said I would. I’m obviously going to start and progress in them eventually, though I fear that it might not be soon. Life has been taking over and there are some issues that have been escalating big time and getting out of hand (ongoing legal battle), hence the lateness of this update. I actually haven’t even started or progressed in anything for this third week (18-24 Sept) as I’ve had very, very little time to actually sit down and play.

I do, however, plan to play some stuff in the last few days of this week. The majority of them will be played casually though (with little focus on the achievements), as I’m usually very exhausted these days and don’t really have the energy for achievement hunting. It’s really a shame considering how well this month was going, but gaming won’t be a top priority for some time now. Things may pick up sometimes next week, and I hope they do, but it probably won’t be enough to warrant an update so I’ll be skipping the update for Week 3 and go directly to Week 4, unless I miraculously complete a bunch of games out of the blue.

Anyway, thank you so much for reading! I really, really appreciate it. See you all again soon, and happy backlog killing!

September - Week 1 Update

Hey guys! It’s me again. This week has been a very great week for backlog killing - I completed a total of 19 games, which doubles the amount of my previous personal best, 8. It’s not as impressive as it seems however, as the majority of these games are just shorter Indie games. Though, it is my goal to get the smaller ones out of the way first to minimize the size of my backlog as it was starting to grow a little uncontrollably (thanks to last month’s shopping spree) and splitting my attention.

Below is this week’s progress.

Completed Games

• A Date in the Park
  

  48 minutes playtime

  9 of 9 achievements

• Cinders
  

  14 hours playtime

  8 of 8 achievements

• Clock Simulator
  

  23 minutes playtime

  8 of 8 achievements

• Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald A Whirlwind Heist
  

  2 hours playtime

  6 of 6 achievements

• Escape This
  

  6 hours playtime

  5 of 5 achievements

• Everlasting Summer
  

  5 hours playtime

  14 of 14 achievements

• Fake Colours
  

  12 hours playtime

  7 of 7 achievements

• Freebie
  

  5 hours playtime

  5 of 5 achievements

• GabeN: The Final Decision
  

  7 hours playtime

  13 of 13 achievements

• HIS (Heroes In the Sky)
  

  54 minutes playtime

  1 of 1 achievements

• Port of Call
  

  39 minutes playtime

  7 of 7 achievements

• Radiator 2
  

  43 minutes playtime

  5 of 5 achievements

• Regeria Hope Episode 1
  

  52 minutes playtime

  8 of 8 achievements

• Road Madness
  

  11 hours playtime

  6 of 6 achievements

• simian.interface++
  

  39 minutes playtime

  8 of 8 achievements

• Space Pilgrim Episode I: Alpha Centauri
  

  5 hours playtime

  7 of 7 achievements

• SWARMRIDERS
  

  30 minutes playtime

  4 of 4 achievements

• The Bottom of the Well
  

  30 minutes playtime

  12 of 12 achievements

• Under Zero
  

  7 hours playtime

  3 of 3 achievements

I’m not exactly sure where to start, so I’ll divide this week’s batch into three categories: the free games, the paid games and the SG wins. Let us start with the first one.

The Free Games

The Free Games are games that are available on the Steam store for free. They are usually short games that are rather easy to 100%, played and completed to make up for the other games I’ve started that are literally impossible to 100% due to broken achievements (Left 4 Dead 2, Tales of Maj’Eyal, etc), and are therefore dragging my average completion rate down.

A Date in the Park is a point & click adventure game which was initially an easy highlight of the category, before getting knocked down two spots by some other games I completed later on. It’s a pretty atmospheric game with a surprisingly strong plot twist which I didn’t see coming at all until a bit later on. Also you get to name a duck, which was nice. I named mine Cody, after my best friend.

Notable quote from me during gameplay: “Wait a fucking minute.”

Dr. Langeskov is an incredibly well made and entertaining game that is also very easily this week’s game highlight, also currently my top pick for September’s monthly highlight despite being a free game. I don’t think I’ve been this entertained by a game since Borderlands 2. The story was very interesting, and the voice acting was simply outstanding. If you loved The Stanley Parable, you’ll definitely love this.

Note: If you want to play and 100% this, make sure not to open Steam overlay! It bugs the game and achievements won’t unlock.

HIS (Heroes In the Sky) took absolutely zero effort to complete. Just click a button and you’re done. Literally. I actually debated whether or not to include this in the list, but ended up deciding that I should, just to document the progress and potentially recommend this to others who are in need of an extra perfect game.

Everlasting Summer was a game that I started last week, however could not finish due to exhaustion. Despite being a visual novel, this game was actually rather challenging to complete, due to the fact that you need to finish the game about a dozen times for all of the achievements. It was very tricky, too - some paths don’t trigger unless you choose certain options (Ulyana’s, I believe). The story wasn’t shallow though, which was a plus. It had pretty dark turns here and there.. some literally.

Port of Call is an absolutely stunning game which is easily my second game highlight for this week. I was initially pessimistic about the game due to it’s ‘Horror’ tag, but as it turns out it wasn’t all that scary. The story and the gameplay, to my surprise, also turned out to be very interesting, at least for me - I’ve always been a big fan of supernatural-related subjects, especially when it brushes with the topic of afterlife, so I was easily captivated by the game.

Radiator 2 is a, um, game. It features.. suggestive things. Male things. Definitely one of the more interesting titles on the list. The achievements were pretty easy for the most part, and I actually enjoyed Stickshift a lot, mostly thanks to the hypnotic music playing in the background (‘Crybaby’ by Davey and the Chains, in case you’re wondering - it’s like a darker version of Kylie Minogue’s 00’s work). One note though, if you’re planning to play the game - do NOT blow kisses at the cop during Stickshift. I had to wait 20 hours to play again. God damn.

Regeria Hope Episode 1, also known as The Shouting Games, is a game about two attorneys fighting in a case. The game was clearly inspired by the Ace Attorney, except instead of shouting ‘Objection!’ by default, you have three shouts to choose from. I chose ‘Lies!’. It got a bit intense later on when I had a shout-off with the other attorney. It ended with the judge telling us both to shut up. I also submitted a wine glass as a potential murder weapon, which made me realize that I’d probably make a terrible lawyer.

SWARMRIDERS is a fast paced runner game where you basically have to keep running while shooting at things.. that comes from pretty much every direction. The game is easy to 100%, but only if you have the skills. It took me a few tries to get the last achievement, which was to survive for 150 seconds, I believe. I ended up surviving for 170, which I’m actually quite proud about.

The Bottom of the Well was very forgettable for the most part. It’s a post-apocalyptic adventure/survival visual novel.. but not really. It’s really just the main character telling a story about her dream to her friend. It’s rather boring and uninteresting. Easily one of the weaker titles on this list.

The Paid Games

The Paid Games are, per my definition, games with a price tag on the Steam store. The games will be categorized here regardless of whether or not I got them for free (Gleam giveaways) or actually paid for them.

Cinders is a very interesting visual novel based on Cinderella. Although Disney-esque fairytales are usually not my kind of thing, this game’s dark twists captivated me for quite some time. Oh and the main menu is absolutely gorgeous - every time you unlock an achievement, a new thing gets added to the main menu, which was super cool. I wish more games were like this.

Clock Simulator is almost exactly what you expect it to be. You play as a clock and click rhythmically, a click for every second. The game is surprisingly packed with content though - it’s not as one dimensional as it might seem. The game has about a dozen of game modes, which is more than you usually get when you pay for games with similar price tags ($0.99).

Escape This took about ten minutes to complete - it’s just a casual puzzle game with very little challenge whatsoever.

Freebie was a game that’s been given away multiple times both on Gleam and Steam Gifts, I believe - you’d think it’s bad, but it’s actually not that bad at all. In fact, it’s surprisingly decent. It’s lacking in content and highly repetitive, yes, but it’s pretty challenging. Personally I loved it quite a lot, although the later ‘levels’ was very hard until I learnt the rhythm of the spin.

GabeN: The Final Decision was one of the games that I actively avoided like a plague due to how bad it was - but on a second play, it wasn’t that bad. It’s still tacky and horribly made, but wasn’t half as terrible as I thought it was. Steam notes that I got the game on December 25, 2015, so it’s great to finally take out one of the older games and place it on the ‘Completed Games’ batch.

I actually just finished Road Madness an hour or two before I wrote this post, and all I can say is that it’s a very, very glitchy racing game. But that’s not always a bad thing, as I actually completed the game by losing. That’s right. When you lose, your car continues to move.. and if you wait long enough, it reaches the finish line. Eventually. And just like that, boom! Another perfect game. I don’t believe the game is possible to complete by playing normally though - it’s incredibly imbalanced and just.. bad.

Space Pilgrim Episode I: Alpha Centauri is pretty nice. It’s rather forgettable for the most part, though. But it’s one of the better games that came out of RPGMaker. There are like 3 other parts of the game, and I have them all, so I might try doing them soon.

Under Zero’s title represents the rating it deserves. Under zero. It’s that bad. I spent 40 minutes walking around a huge ass map with snow and immobile wolves, then collecting a gun that can’t seem to actually be used to anything as shooting the aforementioned wolves does absolutely NOTHING. Then there was this flashlight which was also useless because a) the game was set at bloody day and b) the snow made it so white everywhere the light had practically zero impact on the surrounding. Horrible. I’m glad this is out of my backlog, and I’m glad I never spent money for this game.

SG Wins

The games I won from SG. Obviously. Currently I’m planning to complete at least one game that I finish from SG every week, or at least work on one - not an ambitious goal, but a lot of the games there take a loooong time to finish (i.e: Mafia II).

Fake Colours is a very recent win of mine - as did everyone else’s. I mean, they gave out 100,000 copies, how could you enter and not win? But yes, it’s a very interesting puzzle game, although my brain gave up on me about 30 minutes into the gameplay. New features just kept popping up and I couldn’t keep up anymore. So I just gave up and followed a guide. But it was a pretty great game.

Another puzzle game and also another of my recent wins, simian.interface++ is a game that is reminiscent of Perfect Angle (which is another puzzle game, in case you didn’t know). Honestly, I have no complaint for the game. It’s simple, great and relatively easy, although some levels could be pretty annoying to complete. I like that they gave me bananas, though.

Started Games & Other Progress

• Relic Hunters Zero
  

  13 hours playtime

  2 of 44 achievements

• Tales of Maj'Eyal
  

  5 hours playtime

  3 of 1629 achievements

• Neon Warp
  

  5 hours playtime

  4 of 14 achievements

This week I started two new games.

The first one is Relic Hunters Zero, which I’ve actually played back in May/April, but never actually progressed in because my keyboard broke. It always came of as a pretty interesting game to me however, so I’m quite excited to start it. It’ll take a while to finish, but it’ll be worth it. Hopefully.

And I’m very proud to say that I have also officially started Tales of Maj’Eyal! The game has been installed in my laptop for a month now. I kept being afraid to start it because, you know, it’s a HUGE game. Starting it calls for a long-term dedication. 1629 achievements - I’m in for a ride. But boy, this game was SO much harder than I thought. I pretty much spent the first hour or two dying and losing my progress. It’s brutal. I’ve toned down the difficulty and I’m currently trying to survive as a dwarf berserker.. or something. I hate melee characters, but it was apparently a great choice for a beginner like me. Currently though, I’m really just using it trying to unlock the arch mage while trying to get a feel of how the game is like.

On another note, I’ve progressed in Neon Warp! It’s not a big progress at all, only two achievements - but that’s actually quite a lot, at least for me, considering how challenging I’m finding the game. Frankly I don’t know if I’m ever gonna finish the game.. but hey, you gotta start somewhere right?

Summary

That will be all for now! Thank you so much for reading, and I apologize for the length of this update. It was certainly a lot longer than I planned it to be. It’s been a pretty productive week for backlog killing and I’m very happy about that! I honestly don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up with the pace for next week’s progress.. probably not. 19 games is a lot. However, I do have some games I plan to start and progress in! Namely Tropico 4 and Moonstone Tavern. I have a few other titles on top of my head, but I don’t want to promise too much. I probably shouldn’t be starting new games either, but it’s hard to resist when you just got some of your wishlisted games!

I’m also planning to progress in Tales of Maj’Eyal, maybe even finish off Soul Gambler which I’ve been casting aside this week. I have over thirty games currently installed on my laptop, so I’m probably gonna need to start working on finishing them off before my desktop gets too cluttered. Anyway, that’s all for now. If you’re still reading, thank you! If you’re not, well.. I can’t blame you, really. It’s like a gigantic wall of text. Plus it’s probably kinda boring too. Maybe I’ll include a few gifs from some of my gameplay next week! If I can get a good, light recording software that is.

Anyway yes, see ya on the next update! :]

August - Week 5 + Monthly Update

Unfortunately this week wasn’t as productive as I intended it to be. Funny thing though, it actually started out fine. Within the first two days (Monday & Tuesday) I actually managed to take out 3-4 games, but then it just went horribly wrong due to real life appointments that required me to mess up my sleeping schedule which resulted in me being exhausted for the majority of the week. I couldn’t even bring myself to type myself up and post this post three days ago, hence the lateness.

Anywho, enough chit chat!

Completed Games

• Divine Slice of Life
  

  14 hours playtime

  1 of 1 achievements

• It's Spring Again
  

  4 hours playtime

  4 of 4 achievements

• Lucid9
  

  9 hours playtime

  13 of 13 achievements

• Super Duper Party Pooper
  

  9 hours playtime

  26 of 26 achievements

• Redactem
  

  73 minutes playtime

  24 of 24 achievements

• What's under your blanket !?
  

  6 hours playtime

  14 of 14 achievements

Divine Slice of Life and It’s Spring Again are two of the smaller games on this week’s Completed list, with the former being a visual novel and the latter being.. I don’t know, it was some sort of cartoon about the weather? I went to get food and when I came back all of the achievements were unlocked.

Lucid9 in the other hand, is a free of game that took me waaaaaay too long to complete. For comparison, Astats said the average time needed to 100% the game is 3,2 hours.

..I have 8.7 hours.

It’s horrible I know. The story is that when I started the game, I hadn’t slept for over 38 hours, and I was just absolutely exhausted. I expected it to be some sort of short game.. but it wasn’t. Halfway through it I just sorta dozed off in front of my laptop. Woke up a few hours later with a headache from bad sleeping position and the hardness of my wooden computer table, tried unlocking some more achievements before moving back to bed to lay down with the game still open. Dozed off some more, woke up and it was 5 something in the morning. Played some more and finally completed the game, but that was rough. Never again.

The next game on my list is Super Duper Party Pooper, which is a game about pooping on people (surprise). It’s not half as gross as you think it is, and it was actually relatively enjoyable to play. The game, was however, very different compared to it’s predecessor, There’s Poop In My Soup, which I’ve also 100%’d (and sorta enjoyed more). ‘Party Pooper’ is a rhythm-based game, ala Frederic: Evil Strikes Back. Thankfully it’s not too hardcore and I was able to complete it with not too much effort despite being tired thanks to my experience in games with similar gameplay.

Redactem was a last minute attempt at participating in last month’s Monthly Theme, the Do-Over (I did it on August 31). The game itself wasn’t that hard aside from the first level of World 3, which was pretty hardcore. I spent maybe over 30 minutes trying to pass that level before finally succeeding. But it was overall a pretty interesting game.

The last game on this list is What’s under your blanket !?, a game which I’ve been quite curious about. It’s exactly what you think it is: a cheap game about.. you know. Was it fun? Not really. Is it well made? No. Does it have more plot than some of those boobs galore anime games? Maybe. It’s an alright game if you’re into that kinda stuff, however it suffers from absolutely zero replayability. It loses it’s appeal within the first 5-10 minutes. The only plus to this game is that it’s rather easy to complete.

Progressed & Started Games

• I am Bread
  

  16 hours playtime

  9 of 35 achievements

• Everlasting Summer
  

  39 minutes playtime

  1 of 14 achievements

This week I also happened to progress on I Am Bread, which is really much harder than it looks. My progress went up 5.7% to 26% as I edge closer towards the end of the Story Mode (yes it has a story). I’m currently on the very last level (or at least I think so), but I couldn’t pass it. I violently jingled the car keys for like 15 minutes and it just wouldn’t start for whatever reason. I have no idea what I’m doing wrong. The struggle is real.

Meanwhile, I also started another game, Everlasting Summer, a visual novel which I’m guessing gonna take a while to complete. I started the game the day after I finished Lucid 9 and pretty quickly regretted my decision. I just couldn’t focus on it, and I gave up one achievement in. I’m gonna try completing it this week, hopefully I’ll succeed.

August Summary

Month	Avg. Completion Rate (%)	Perfect Games	Backlog Size	Monthly Game Spotlight
June	57%	46	N/A	Haunt the House
July	52% (-5%)	48 (+2)	326	Party Hard
August	59% (+7%)	72 (+22)	477 (+151)	The Walking Dead
September	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA

Overall August was a pretty great month for backlog killing! I managed to bump my Avg. Completion Rate back up by completing 22 games after failing miserably in July. Unfortunately, not all of the numbers are positive, as I also went on a shopping spree this month, which resulted in my backlog growing in size from 326 to 477 despite my completion in the aforementioned 22 games. Being a hoarder while trying to kill your backlog can be very counterproductive, but sometimes you just can’t resist buying new games, you know? Can’t miss out on the deals.

I don’t think my backlog will be growing as much in September as there aren’t really anything interesting going on this month, so that’s quite nice. But I’ll have to step up my backlog killing efforts regardless, as the Halloween sale is coming in October and the growth of my library is inevitable. I’m aiming for at least 65% avg. completion rate by the end of September, hoping for a consistent way up from there on and not let July ever happy again!

P.s - I’ve finally started Tales of Maj’Eyal! I was gonna start on September 1 (to get the full month), but I was too tired to even consider it so I only got to it yesterday. I think I’ve only got 3 achievements so far? But I’m looking forward to progress more in the game!

August - Week 4 Update

Hey, it’s me again! Remember when I said I’d redeem myself in the last week of August? You probably don’t, but I actually did kinda pulled through with it. This week I’ve set a new high for myself in terms of completed games, having completed a total of eight games! Although to be fair, most of the games I completed weren’t even that impressive considering they’re just visual novels that require little to no effort and time, but they’re still a chunk out of my backlog, and improvement is always welcomed so I’ll be throwing a small celebration while I can.

Completed Games

• Abrix for kids
  

  13 hours playtime

  19 of 19 achievements

• Beach Bounce
  

  13 hours playtime

  10 of 10 achievements

• Club Life
  

  15 hours playtime

  20 of 20 achievements

• Highschool Romance
  

  9 minutes playtime

  2 of 2 achievements

• Last Days of Spring Visual Novel
  

  4 hours playtime

  9 of 9 achievements

• Over The Hills And Far Away
  

  15 hours playtime

  8 of 8 achievements

• The Adventures of Mr. Bobley
  

  10 hours playtime

  8 of 8 achievements

• The Walking Dead
  

  23 hours playtime

  48 of 48 achievements

Let’s get the visual novels out of the way first: Beach Bounce, Club Life, Highschool Romance, Over the Hills And Far Away (SG Win!) and Last Days of Spring Visual.

A lot of titles, but to be frank the only one that really impressed me was Over the Hills And Far Away. I’ll be honest - I was initially tempted to skip through it and be done with it. But my curiosity led me back to it, and I have no regrets. The story was expertly written and beautifully told, and it was actually very moving and entertaining. The novel got me interested in the wars and I’d been reading up about it ever since I completed it. If you have it collecting dust in your library, I’d like to urge you to play it soon. It’s short and requires zero efforts from you aside from clicking. Also to keep the music and sounds on, as the music/sound effects helps the game to shine even brighter.

Beach Bounce, Club Life and Highschool Romance were all far less impressive for me. I was never that big of a big fan of these “look at my boobs” kinda games, although some of them do have a great plot. I quickly skimmed through most, although Club Life did catch my attention quite a few times. Pretty appalled by Beach Bounce though.

To my surprise though, neither of the games I mentioned earlier ends up taking the prestigious “Worst Game of the Week” crown.. as it belongs to none other than Last Days of Spring Visual. Times like these you’d wish there were actually boobs jiggling around your computer screen to entertain you, because the novel is just so bloody boring. The art style is ugly and lazy, the hardest decision I encountered in the game was choosing between hot chocolate and tea.

Moving on to the better games.. Abrix for kids! It’s not even much better, but I’ll take pretty much anything over Boring Days of Spring. A SG win, Abrix for kids was actually rather entertaining, and I have very little complain about the game. Having kids as their main target audience, the game isn’t hard and the achievements were very easy to get, excluding the two or three very grindy eachievements. My favorite memory of the game was walking 5,000 steps around an empty lot.

Coming up next is the hardest title in the list, The Adventures of Mr. Bobley! Showcasing incredible physics such as kicking a cement ball 500 feet into the air, the game was mostly a repetitive mess with very little interesting moments. The horrible controls didn’t exactly help, and the fact that they tagged the game as ‘Family Friendly’ sorta baffles me considering most parents wouldn’t put their children through such torture. tl;dr It was dull, tedious and annoying.

Last but not least - The Walking Dead! It was the biggest and the best title I played this week, and I’m frankly craving for more. I can’t say much without spoiling the story, but it was an incredible game and I’m really going to try to grab the second season next sale, and the third whenever it’s released. I’d also like to give a special shoutout to Quisty who was kind enough to gift me the 400 Days DLC, and char for the heads up on the missable achievement in the DLC. You guys rock.

Started Games

• I am Bread
  

  13 hours playtime

  2 of 35 achievements

• Soul Gambler
  

  5 hours playtime

  3 of 24 achievements

While I didn’t progress in other games this week, I did start two new games.

The first one is I Am Bread. It’s a very popular game so I’m sure most of you know what the gameplay is like. It’s very entertaining, although I have to admit it is harder than I expected. I’m still getting used to controls. I don’t plan to rush through it though - I’m probably not going to start hunting for achievements until I finish the story.

The second game is Soul Gambler. I haven’t played the game much, but the story seems to be very interesting from what I’ve seen so far. The achievements are a little of a nuisance to get from what I’ve read, but I’m hoping to finish it next week. Shouldn’t be too hard, right?

Summary

Although I do think that it could’ve been a little better, overall I think it was a pretty good week for backlog killing! I’m quite happy with what I’ve achieved this week, any step to the right direction is a good step. I didn’t start Tales of Maj’Eyal as I planned and said I would however, which was a shame. I do have the game installed and ready however, so I’ll probably try to start it this week.. maybe. It’s gonna be such a big commitment for me so I’m still a little cautious about it. I’ll have to start it eventually though.

If you’re still reading, thank you! ♥ Also thanks to Daerphen for the formatting tips.

August - Week 2 & 3 Update

I wasn’t able to update last week’s progress due to some personal issues, so I’ve decided to merge it with this week’s, which to my embarrassment, isn’t even very impressive to begin with. Hindered by aforementioned personal issues and the headache of having to continously reschedule the appointment with my dental surgeon (who wasted hours of my time by making me to go to the hospital not once, but TWICE, only to wait 30 minutes there and then be told that the appointment had been rescheduled), there wasn’t much progress at all this week.

Below is my progress for the last two weeks.

Completed Games

• CUPID - A free to play Visual Novel
  

  5 hours playtime

  67 of 67 achievements

Love is both poison and cure, both knife and remedy.

Why watch Game of Thrones when you have CUPID? Main characters drop like flies in this novel; and I absolutely loved it. Mostly because I wasn’t expecting any deaths in this novel at all. The novel is very deceiving; it looks fairly bright from the outside, but once you delve deeper into it and follow the story, it gets darker and darker up to the point where you don’t even know what you’re reading anymore.

(This game contains disturbing imagery, violence, flashing images, sudden and loud noises, mature themes, and strong sexual content.)

• Elisa: The Innkeeper - Prequel
  

  17 minutes playtime

  7 of 7 achievements

At least it has pretty backgrounds.

Not sure what else can I say about this game. The story couldn’t have been anymore bland and predictable, and the characters aren’t much better. Some of the save slot functions don’t even work. I lost interest in the first three minutes and only completed it to get the achievements.

• Mandagon
  

  46 minutes playtime

  5 of 5 achievements

A world inspired by Tibetan theology and philosophy

Mandagon is a stunning short game that is, surprisingly, free to play - and we all know finding decent, bearable free to play games on Steam is almost impossible these days. I would honestly pay for this game - hell, I would pay for that background music alone. Take my money, devs. TAKE IT.

If you have an hour or two to kill, do consider trying out this game. It’s worth it.

Started Games

• Dungeon Defenders II
  

  12 hours playtime

  2 of 15 achievements

The first game that I started this week is Dungeon Defenders II, a free to play cooperative Action Tower Defense game. I downloaded it to play with my friends, and frankly, it’s a lot of fun. I’d been on a hunt for good free to play coop games like these and I’m very glad to have found it.

• Fist of Jesus
  

  5 hours playtime

  16 of 30 achievements

Fist of Jesus is a great game I got recently. Nice graphics, entertaining gameplay, although it does get repetitive after a while and some of the achievements are unfortunately very grindy.. which means it’ll be quite a while until I finish this game completely.

• Royal Quest
  

  11 hours playtime

  20 of 253 achievements

Royal Quest is the second online game I started this week to play with friends. My friend and I couldn’t really decide on which one to play, I wanted Dungeon Defenders II and he wanted to play this game, so we compromised and decided to play both.. and we ended up liking both. So we’ll most likely be switching between these from time to time. Will I ever finish this game? Most likely not. I don’t have the time or patience to finish these kind of games anymore. But it’s a fun game for the time being, and I’m looking forward to progress as much as I could in the game.

• Surgeon Simulator
  

  61 minutes playtime

  4 of 123 achievements

Ahh, Surgeon Simulator. I don’t think I have to say anything about this game because frankly I think everyone already knows it by this point. It was pretty fun until I had to spend 30 minutes trying to open a fridge. I’m hoping to finish it eventually, but it might be a while.

Summary

That is all for now. The past two weeks have been rather disappointing in terms of achievement progress, but I plan to redeem myself in this last week of the month. There’s a good chance I’ll be starting some new games, with Tales of Maj’Eyal on top of the priority list. That’s right, the game with the most achievements on Steam. Will I ever finish it? Probably not. But I’m always up for a challange, and I’d like to see myself try. There’s a good chance that I’ll fail, but you never know.

(Also if someone could teach me how to put the embedded game boxes next to each other, that’d be great :])

August - Week 1 Update

I’ve been laying in bed sick with fever and feeling absolutely terrible for most of the week, but overall this was actually a pretty productive week in terms of achievements, albeit many of the titles I completed being easy to 100%. I finished a total of five titles and started three, while also progressing in other five. There were actually some more games I wanted to play this week but couldn’t since my fever made me unable to sit through them without feeling intense motion sickness (Skyrim, Viscera Cleanup Detail, etc).

Also my new laptop has been acting up by crashing and lagging for absolutely no reason, so a lot of games may be out of reach for a while until I figure out what exactly is causing it. Even writing this post on notepad is a challange. At the moment Windows 10 is my best guess, but I’m still not sure.

Anywho, on to the games!

Completed Games

This week, I completed five games: Echo Tokyo Intro, Highschool Possession, A Bird Story, Nyan Cat Lost In Space and Totally Unbalanced.

I have to admit I was never really a big fan of games like Echo Tokyo Intro and Highschool Possession as they are usually just boobs galore with very little to no plot, so I didn’t pay much attention to them. There were a few scenes that grabbed my attention but overall they were expendable at best. But thankfully they’re easy to 100%, which is always a plus for me.

Unfortunately I can’t say much about A Bird Story either as I got a pretty intense headache 30-45 minutes into it, so I wasnt’ able to pay attention. But from what I’ve heard the story is fantastic, so I might replay it in the future.
Nyan Cat Lost In Space was a game I’ve had my eyes on for a few weeks before I actually managed to get my hands on it, and I have to say it’s pretty fantastic if you turn off the background music. I enjoyed it thoroughly, although it did become very draining near the end as the harder achievements involve a lot of grinding. And by a lot, I mean a lot. But it was a pretty nice game overall.

Totally Unbalanced is the last game on this list. It’s newly released with achievements that are ridiculously easy to 100%. It’s basically just you throwing yourself into the water repeatedly. But the game itself is actually pretty nice and I didn’t play it with the intention of 100%-ing it, in fact I didn’t even know what the achievements were. But the game was very fun, bright and overall enjoyable, so I don’t mind coming back to it in the future if they added new achievements based on your game progress.

Started Games

I started playing three new games this week: Ragnarok Clicker, Shonen Idle Z and Neon Warp.

Considering the massive size of my backlog, starting new games is probably the very last thing that I should be doing, but I couldn’t help myself. Shonen Idle Z and Ragnarok Clicker both looked very fun, and I can’t say that I was wrong because they actually are two really fun games. The latter is actually a re-skin of Clicker Heroes so it doesn’t offer anything too interesting at the moment, but the devs said they’ll add more things in the future so I’m really looking out for that.

As for Neon Warp, it actually wasn’t my intention to start it, it just sorta.. happened? I had no plans to actually start it but the game looked quite pretty so I couldn’t help myself and downloaded it. And before I knew it an achievement popped up, and well.. there it goes. I really should pay more attention to the achievements before I touch anything.

Shonen Idle Z starts off with a strong 31.8% achievement completion, while Ragnarok Clicker debuts with an even stronger 40% completion. Things are however looking less impressive for Neon Warp, which starts with a mere 14%, a number which will most likely not change for a while as I don’t intend on coming back to it anytime soon as I have games with higher priorities to complete.

Other Progress

In addition to completing five games, I also managed to further my progress in another five. These games are Clicker Heroes, Tap Tap Infinity, DuckTales, POSTAL and The Walking Dead.

By now you’ve probably already guessed that I’m a big fan of idle clicker games, hence my progress in Tap Tap Infinity and Clicker Heroes. I actually started playing them late last year, but then left them and only came back to them very recently. Tap Tap Infinity receives a 4% increase in the completion rate (total 59%), while *Clicker Heroes enjoys a smaller 1.8% increase (total 47.7%).

(Note: I’m most likely not going to mention these games (and also other idle/clicker games) in future progress updates unless I actually complete them as I feel they’re not very relevant, but I thought it’d be nice to introduce my slight obsession with these type of games so when I do complete them they don’t feel to sudden or out of the blue.)

DuckTales, gifted to me by the lovely CowOfDarkness, logs in an extra 10% in completion rate this week (total 35%). Despite loving the game and the Donald Duck franchise though, I’m still not too sure if I can ever finish this game considering one of the achievements require me to beat the game on Extreme difficulty. But we’ll see.

POSTAL is perahaps this week’s highlight in terms of achievement progress, adding 59.2% to it’s completion rate (total 85.2%). I did a lot of grinding for it this week, and I only have 4 more achievements to go. The bad news though, these 4 achievements will involve a lot of grinding. Fire 1,000,000 bullets? Complete the game having only killed hostiles? Oh hell no. We’ll see.

Last but not least is a SG win, The Walking Dead. The completion of the fourth chapter brings an extra 16.6% to it’s completion rate (total: 66.7%). It’s taking me so long to progress in this game, not because it’s bad, but because it’s very emotionally draining and demanding (in the best way possible). I want to 100% it as soon as possible, although I don’t think it’s very possible considering I still don’t have the 400 Days DLC. I’ll grab it the next time it goes on sale.

Summary

That’d be all for now. This is the weekly update I ever posted on this site, and I think I’m off to a pretty great start. Not too sure if I’ll be able to keep it up next week though. I have an oral surgery coming up for my wisdom tooth (which I’m quite scared about) so there’s a chance I’ll be too medicated to even progress in anything.

(Also I don’t know if anyone is still reading by this point, but if someone could help me with the post formatting that would be fantastic! I can’t figure out how to make it so the games appear on site as boxes with their achievements below them. I read the post about Inspect element but I couldn’t find anything. Also if there’s any other neat formatting tips I should know to make my post more presentable, that’d be great too!)

Thanks for reading!

(EDIT: Oops, that took a.. lot more space than I expected it to. Sorry about that, I’ll work on making my future updates shorter. I just love writing.)

Monthly Update - July

Alright, so.. I actually planned to start this at the beginning of this month, but my laptop unexpectedly broke down and I didn’t have enough money to fix it, so I was basically rendered useless for most of the month. As a result, my backlog progress suffered greatly, with very little to almost no progress throughout the month.

It also didn’t help that I unleashed my inner hoarder in full force during the summer sale, and also my birthday - both which brought a tsunami of new games into my backlog. The number of games I own rose from 478 to 685 - that’s a staggering 207 new games. It’s gonna be really hard to keep up, but I love a challenge so I actually don’t mind it that much.

Now, onto the stats.

---

Stats

Avg. Game Completion Rate: 52% (-5%)
Total Backlog Games: 326
Completed Games: 52%

---

The stats section is tiny and minimized due to the lack of progress this month. I only completed two games, My Name Is Mayo and Party Hard, the latter which I got for my birthday and enjoyed so much it’s still installed on my laptop even after I completed it. I’ve also been starting some new games this past week (which explains the drop in the Avg. Game Completion Rate), while also making a little progress on some of the games I’d left unfinished.

That’s all for now. Here’s to a better backlog killing month!
Don’t disappoint me, August.