SingedFrostLantern's recent activity
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Comment on Save Point: A game deal roundup for the week of June 21 in ~games
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Comment on Steam Next Fest June 2026 in ~games
SingedFrostLantern Link ParentEnd of Sunday log, somehow I managed to skim through the rest of the game demos I've downloaded. Keeping track of Maximum Thunderness: This is basically one of those horizontal shump segments that...End of Sunday log, somehow I managed to skim through the rest of the game demos I've downloaded.
Keeping track of
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Maximum Thunderness: This is basically one of those horizontal shump segments that gets tacked onto other games, except as a roguelike game. It's got the basic StS map and pick one of three upgrades, but it's also got a Saturday Morning Cartoon vibe to it and I swear the opening notes of its normal battle theme is based off of Sewer Surfin'.
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Signy & Mino: Against All Gods: It's an RPG with action commands, but the main feature is juggling the enemy by swapping back and forth between Signy and Mino as each of them land a skill for the other to follow up on and pretty much using the full arsenal to completely whale on a foe.
Haven't spent enough time, but piqued my interest
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Magical Blush: Top-down Metroidvania as a spellcaster with the UI foretelling lots of loadout customization and elemental counters/interactions. There's a surprising amount of hidden exits, though the game itself points out that the map shows all.
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Nimbit Frontier: Mon-raising, dungeon roguelite exploring, town revitalizing. Just seems interesting to me and the game makes a point that the endgoal is to release the mons after they're revived and fully raised.
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Entropy: Turn-based RPG, but the game rolls D100s in the combat log, permadeath is advertised as possible for party members besides the MC, and it looks like PS1 graphics.
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The Second Reality Room: Unspoken Truths: VN about a counselor for chuuni teens. I liked the theme, but there's also an action points per day system to get all the clues from the client, and the Translation mechanic is a fill-in-the-blank segment which felt vague because of its translation?
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Slayblade: Beyblades as a chill roguelike going around town and battling, picking up dropped cash, and blowing all that money on the shop/gacha/tournament entry fees.
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Fallosophy: One of those fall and lose all your progress games with precise controls, except the controls are just pinball flippers.
Might keep an eye on, might not
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Wiseman: No More Breakups: Seems like a short boss rush game where the main mechanic is just pressing the arrows that pop up and hitting space with the right timing, but it's just got a vibe to it.
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Moldwasher: Calm cleaning game, but with pixel art and playing as a piece of sushi whose mission is to clean the room up.
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GrassChopper: Walk right, cut grass, pick up loot, walk left, sell loot, upgrade skills, repeat. Kinda calming, kinda curious about the grass being so overgrown and actively resisting being cut down.
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Comment on Steam Next Fest June 2026 in ~games
SingedFrostLantern Link ParentEnd of Saturday log, worked my way down to 1.3GB games. Honestly, it would've been better working my way up seeing how the smaller sized games are generally (but not guaranteed to be) well...End of Saturday log, worked my way down to 1.3GB games. Honestly, it would've been better working my way up seeing how the smaller sized games are generally (but not guaranteed to be) well optimized.
Keeping track of
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BREKEKEKEX: Plays like an anime arena fighter BUT with an over-the-shoulder camera and manually aiming attacks. Still suck at fighters, but I liked how it played and the vibe of the dialogue though I got skill-checked at the 3rd fight.
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Takeover 2: Beat-em-up that feels old school and definitely took influence from Streets of Rage. Had a quick run to Stage 3, but I'm definitely interested if the demo remains.
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Sojourn Past: 2D top-down adventure with bullet hell elements and a mysterious exploring vibe to it. The main attack is a 3-hit sword combo, but there's also the stunning smartbombs and a throwing dagger to teleport to. There's a lot of hidden passages with the rewards being either doors or keys for said doors. Didn't fully finish though since autosave caught me at low health which put me in a no-hit deathloop from a lack of any nearby flowers to heal form.
Haven't spent enough time, but piqued my interest
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Witch the Showdown: It's described as a parry-heavy action game and generating mana to cast spell cards, but the vibe I get is Punch Out. Learn the enemy pattern and parry/dodge/counterattack, then build up the element meters to get buffs and unleash spell combos.
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Ringash: Stylish Action ala DMC or Bayonetta but more zoomed out and the occasional old camera angle.
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Demon Bluff: Single player social deduction game. Each card is a player role and you have to logic out who's lying while avoiding innocent kills.
Might keep an eye on, might not
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STUNTBOOST: Speedrun game, but on a finger skateboard in a big room. Turn, dive, build up speed, repeat.
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TANUKI: Pon's Summer: It's a bike-riding delivery service game but with optional(?) stunts and minigames with the town residents. The demo has a very slow start though between the initial bike tutorial and the actual post office delivering.
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Truck-kun is Supporting Me from Another World?!: Kinda like Crazy Taxi with a timer running down after starting a run and spawning on the map and packages to deliver instead of taxi service. Of course, the game is having fun laughing at the trunk-kun isekai service: Carissa was accidentally truck-kun'd, so she's demanding the driver run over more people to reincarnate into monsters for her to powerfarm so she can get back home. Yeah.
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SNAP JAW: First-Person Roguelike Fishing where quota needs to be met each day and delivered lest the ship gets eaten by some mechanical abomination. Drive the boat over oil spills to refill fuel, use the cannon to take out drones and mines, and do the QTEs to get the fish before the area runs out. Leans on the horror side with a flooded world.
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Nocturne: Rhythm RPG with notes falling down. The digital upload afterlife got corrupted and the MC has the ability to purify it while on a quest to find his brother. Combat feels passive though: scoring notes just lets the AP and HP bar generate (whereas missing a note pauses them) and the only attack bonus is counter-hitting the enemy when they're about to strike. I also felt the same problem as when I played the Everhood 2 demo where I just wanted to run from enemy encounters on the field.
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Chained Beasts: Top-down gladiator action where you're graded on variety and speed for kills to spend on the merchant later. What sticks out is how the healer offers dubious health potions that give a permanent debuff like swapping attack keys around, throwing things slightly to the left, adding slight input delay, etc.
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VHOLUME: FPS Parkour with no HUD. Did run into pathing issues where I wasn't sure which way to go, but parkour is parkour.
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Virtue and a Sledgehammer: Artsy narrative, dealing with loss game about using a sledgehammer and slamming it into mental memories and the digital robots that everyone has apparently uploaded their minds to. Despite the premise, there's still things that can't be sledgehammered apart and there's a fair bit of wandering around.
Not!Balatro
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Dicevaders: Balatro, but with 6 columns to put units and artifacts on and dice rolls to determine which column of units attacks. Spinoff of StarVaders (which I should play).
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Fame Or Folly: Balatro, but blackjack-ish in risking whether the next draw will completely piss off the audience and balancing scoring with income gain to
buy more cardshire more people. -
Pegs X Stickers: Balatro, but Peggle and buying pegs to set up the board and dealing with the occasional board hazard.
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Comment on Steam Next Fest June 2026 in ~games
SingedFrostLantern LinkEnd of Friday log. Been working my way downward in terms of game size for the sake of my harddrive (reached the 3.5GB game size zone now). Not many standouts to me, but I've also been ignoring...End of Friday log. Been working my way downward in terms of game size for the sake of my harddrive (reached the 3.5GB game size zone now). Not many standouts to me, but I've also been ignoring anything with a Gen AI disclaimer on the basis that my steam library and backlog is large enough that I can completely go along my life without playing those.
Vibing
- Kusan: City of Wolves: Like Hotline Miami gameplay-wise (top-down view, fast and bloody one-hit kills), but everyone is animal people and the protag has a powerfist, a reusable throwing knife that auto-targets the nearest enemy, and a firearm as a backup to counter gun enemies. In between missions is a shop to manage upgrades with an inventory grid-system. Definitely stylish with its soundtrack and the comic page cutscenes.
Keeping track of
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Empire in Decay: Roguelike turn-based energy-deckbuilder chess, but the units have stats, autoattacks, and special effects and spell cards. The pieces can still capture normally unless a unit is armored in which case, it either needs to be captured multiple times or have enough damage to get rid of it. Won a run with the bleed faction by having the King be specced along the "heal units and deal damage whenever a bleed card is used" and a card that doubled its bleeding effect each time it was used in that combat.
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AKIBA LOST: VN that reminded me of 428: Shibuya Scramble insofar as the live action shots and rotating between protagonists and making the right decision between them so everyone can make it through the time period (or I have a small reference pool). The demo only gets through the first time chunk (Day 1 8-12AM), so I'm admittingly putting my hope into it based on wanting something like 428 again.
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Lou's Lagoon: It's an island exploring game where the MC basically gets a vacuum cleaner to suck up supplies and then repair things with it. Pretty chill time to just clean stuff up and do sidequests for vacuum upgrades.
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Echoes of Mystralia: Isometric action roguelike with spell modifers as the powerup drops. Had a pretty good run where I had a bunch of fireballs with upgraded burn stacks tacked onto the boomerang, but I got too greedy in sacrificing HP for more modifiers which preemptively ended my run.
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Edge of Memories: 3D action RPG. Character expressions feel a little jank to me, the demo has a lot of dead walking space, and the story so far is... basic? But I do like Soul Whisperer/therapist angle and Ysoris as a character, so I'm interested in seeing the rest of the game's spirit.
Haven't spent enough time, but piqued my interest
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False Hero: Soulslike, but learned enemy skills are assigned to your loadout and there's a focus on chaining them together to keep up the stagger tempo while gaining back the MP spent. Ended after a few attempts on the last(?) boss before deciding to move on to other demos.
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Five More Minutes: Roguelike deckbuilder with cards using 4 energy types and decks based off of different retro game genres (read: Link, Leon S. Kennedy). Pretty interested in the aesthetic and there are opportunities to mix in cards from another deck type.
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WILD Tactics: XCOM, but animal people and it's hero-based with the team having people they like and dislike working with. Only 3 people on a mission though.
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PengPong: Survivorlike/Bullet Heaven, but it's toned down with the main weapon being a hockey stick that shoots out a bouncing puck and needing to wait for the puck to return to fire another shot. Won the run with a combination of crit-based, crits applying to status effects, and multiply shots with on-hit effects.
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Songs of Glimmerwick: I only went up to the flutemaker from rushing through demos, but I really did feel the urge to just slow down with this one. Hoping the demo remains after the Next Fest is done.
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The Severed Gods: Yeah this is basically in the style of Bravely Default except with a height zone system and Slay the Spire's map. Only played for a few minutes, but I guess I'm amazed at the audacity of it.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
SingedFrostLantern LinkTried 2 of this month's Humble Monthly titles, the shorter ones since there's a Next Fest next week. Overlooting It's a very, very simplistic rougelike where the only action is clicking an enemy...Tried 2 of this month's Humble Monthly titles, the shorter ones since there's a Next Fest next week.
Overlooting
It's a very, very simplistic rougelike where the only action is clicking an enemy to attack and initiate the turn. There's a take-one-of-three equipment drop after every fight with the goal of getting a set bonus and a build with enough DPS/survivability to win. That's about it though. Not much depth or ways to influence drops and the overall style is minimal. After a win with two of the characters, it just felt like a waste of time.
Indika
It's almost 50GB of space for an unoptimized 3.5 hours of walking, mild puzzles, one chase scene, and the occasional pixel minigame. Indika is a nun who is disliked because she ends up being disruptive due to either A. being possessed by the Devil and dealing with his commentary and visions, or B. struggling with her mental health and hallucinating. After being sent away on a letter delivery, she gets sidetracked with an escaped prisoner who claims to hear God's voice and is on a journey to pray to a holy artifact so his arm will heal instead of having to amputate.
I don't really understand how this game got so much reception though? There were the conversations about faith in the fish factory and the last talk between Indika and the Devil, those were alright, but the rest of the game doesn't match that quality of conversation or questioning. There isn't really much of a plot besides the A to B journey and the short length doesn't lend to much development besides showing a harsh, uncaring world throughout.
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Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Conclusion and Recap in ~games
SingedFrostLantern LinkAnother Backlog Burner, another thank you to @kfwyre and @Wes as hosts. I followed suit in clearing non-steam games which led to 2 Switch, 2 PS4, 1 Epic, and 5 GOG games. I'm glad that all of them...Another Backlog Burner, another thank you to @kfwyre and @Wes as hosts. I followed suit in clearing non-steam games which led to 2 Switch, 2 PS4, 1 Epic, and 5 GOG games. I'm glad that all of them are cleared with no drops or still-in-progress this time (okay Fata Morgana and Mario+Rabbids still have post-game content and DLC for me to go through but still!) even if some if them were quite lengthy. Not exactly conductive for the standard bingo rather than golf, but hey, motivated towards game clearing, mellow towards the bingo.
Final Card (Standard/Flow, 10/25)
Flow Standard bingo ✅ 10/25 Perspective
✅ The House in Fata MorganaFleeting
✅ PyreIdentity
✅ Stray Gods: The Roleplaying MusicalTransformation
✅ Berserk BoyThreshold
✅ Death's DoorSynthesis
✅ Mario + Rabbids Kingdom BattlePeace Familiar Resistance Connection
✅ 13 Sentinels: Aegis RimPrecision
✅ SunblazeIncrement ★ Wildcard Causality Unorthodox Duality
✅ Astrea: Six-Sided OraclesColor Silence Faith Friction Tradition
✅ Uncharted: Drake's FortuneMorality Freedom Knowledge Empathy Games Followup
Completed and Liked:
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The House in Fata Morgana: Without a doubt, the star of the games I've played this month despite being the last entry. It is so, so beautifully tragic and though seeing through the suffering can be an uncomfortable experience, the pain is worth it in the end. Right now I'm looping between Hex and Everybody's Crying from its soundtrack.
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Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles: Woooo roguelike deckbuilder with dice. I liked it and its balancing act with low max hp and healing makes things tense. Looking forward to climbing the ascensions.
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Sunblaze: Controls well, lets you plan out the entire room in advance. As far as precision platformers go, I 100%'d it and give the stamp of
I can beat thisapproval.
Completed:
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Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle: I still like it (or I just like XCOM style tactics in general). It's just in retrospect, I don't feel connected on a personal level or in the same way as when I've played the Shadowrun Returns trilogy or Troubleshooter.
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13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim: Still have to give it credit for the way it constantly has twist after twist which gives that need to see what happens next and figure it all out. I just think it lacks substance after everything is revealed and how it doesn't hold up after the fact.
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Pyre: The oddball of the Supergiant catalogue and not a requirement in experiencing their history. Still though, it's an experiment that can be worth engaging with an open mind.
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Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical: Yeah, goes into the Bioware-style ask all the questions, pick which result you want for each arc, pick from one of three responses when talking, and use the special colorful response for a little more oomph.
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Uncharted: Drake's Fortune: Playable, but definitely dated as a third-person cover shooter.
Completed out of Spite:
- Death's Door: I don't think it's bad, but having 4 HP only with no healing is eyebrow-raising as a design decision and the old crow pisses me off.
Completed and Disliked:
- Berserk Boy: Playable, but I think there's a lot of bad design decisions all happening at once.
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Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 5(ish) Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern Link ParentPerspective - The House in Fata Morgana (GOG) The House in Fata Morgana is a visual novel of tragedy. It is seeped in despair, only letting in the moments of normality and levity so as to plunge...Perspective - The House in Fata Morgana (GOG)
The House in Fata Morgana is a visual novel of tragedy. It is seeped in despair, only letting in the moments of normality and levity so as to plunge the knife a little deeper and twist further each time hope is raised only for it to plummet and smash apart. The game points to the moments of peace, how things could have ended better had the wheels of fate not kept spinning and magnifying everyone's personal flaws. The witch's curse is no doubt real, but it is also all very human.
There is love, kindness, the future.
There is betrayal, disgust, countless labels.
You awake without form or substance. The Maid is dismayed at Your lack of memory as the Master of the mansion, but she is certain that she can refresh it by showing You the tragedies of the past inhabitants in the hopes that You will recognize Yourself. She takes Your hand and leads You to a door, each one a different era, a different tale of ruin; all she asks is for You to not let go.
Each story has a man, a woman, and The White-Haired Girl as narrated by The Maid. All of them can be considered stories of love just as much as they are stories of bad circumstances and miscommunication, unfair judgement devolving into sin. The world is a cruel place and the game doesn't shy away from showing abuse and discrimination borne of gender roles, race, and social status. It is absurdly unfair, unkind, unrewarding to virtue. Hope is a scary thing that invites more pain and suffering for being vulnerable and thinking things could be better.
And yet that hope is needed. Not blind hope that things will get better on their own, but actively working towards it: communicating directly, having empathy, and having faith that things will work out in the end. It won't always end well as the game shows, there may be some stumbling, it may be one-sided love, but it's important to try, to reach your hand out and show neither you or them are alone and trust that they will reach back and accept it.
I speak very broadly of the game, I guess I'm still digesting after completing it or maybe my words just aren't sufficient. It is beautiful in its suffering. Haunting. Everyone is human, no more and no less in both good and bad. We all need empathy and someone willing to listen.
The soundtrack, particularly the vocals, also deserves mention. It well and truly elevates the game.
Modded with the Remaid of Dreams fanpatch. The installer for linux is named "FatamoruLinux-V4.0" and it admittingly took me a bit to realize I had to rename the file without the dot for it to function properly. For some reason, it added a non-steam title called Spacewar which is apparently tracking the time I played at about 19 hours?
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Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 5(ish) Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern (edited )Linknight of The 30th Day - 27 Hours Remain - SingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 10/25) Flow Standard bingo ✅ 10/25 ✅ The House in Fata Morgana ✅ Pyre ✅ Stray Gods: The Roleplaying...Midnight of TheFirst28th (29th?)30th Day-
7227 Hours Remain -SingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 10/25)
Flow Standard bingo ✅ 10/25 Perspective
✅ The House in Fata MorganaFleeting
✅ PyreIdentity
✅ Stray Gods: The Roleplaying MusicalTransformation
✅ Berserk BoyThreshold
✅ Death's DoorSynthesis
✅ Mario + Rabbids Kingdom BattlePeace Familiar Resistance Connection
✅ 13 Sentinels: Aegis RimPrecision
✅ SunblazeIncrement ★ Wildcard Causality Unorthodox Duality
✅ Astrea: Six-Sided OraclesColor Silence Faith Friction Tradition
✅ Uncharted: Drake's FortuneMorality Freedom Knowledge Empathy Synthesis - Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle (Switch)
Remember when Mario had a crossover with the Rabbids and with XCOM gameplay? Really take a moment to let that statement sink in again. And how it got a sequel. And Peach had a shotgun.
So Synthesis comes in with how there's a Rabbid named Spawny who has a device stuck to their head that combines things which leads to Rabbid versions of everything, from the Mario characters having Rabbid versions of themselves as allies to enemies like Pirabbid Plant and Rabbid Kong. Also the whole combining the two franchises with XCOM thing.
I've just completed the main campaign which took at least 25 hours according to the Switch profile, and for the sake of the remaining 3 days, I'll leave the challenges cleanup and DLC Campaign with DK til after the event's over (and after the Next Fest which is the spiritual opposite of the backlog burner). There's a total of 4 worlds with a new character joining at the midpoint of each world along with weapon tiers going up by 1 at the midpoint and end of each world. I'm not really into the base building aspect of XCOM-style games so I appreciate that it's a series of skirmishes with minor exploration and puzzles between the battles. Skill points are granted after each battle and the skill trees for each character are freely refundable so there's no fear of screwing up a build.
Some main gameplay stuff:
- Chance to hit is either 0% against full cover, 50% against partial cover, and 100% against no cover/flanked units. This does a lot to reduce the XCOM salt of 10% shots landing or 95% shots missing.
- There is a lot of mobility which is important since everyone has a free dash attack (with Rabbids getting multiple dash attacks) and flanking/getting flanked is a frequent occurance.
- Characters get unlimited movement within their tile range which for example, lets them dash attack an enemy on one side before leaping off an ally on the opposite side.
- Entering a pipe basically gives a smaller movement reset and chaining pipes is entirely possible for high mobility or hit-and-runs.
- Allies can jump off of each other to extend their range (and cleanse status effects as an upgrade) with the Mario characters getting special jump effects and incentivizing them to stay in range of allies.
- Mario characters have an Overwatch and team buff as their bonus actions while Rabbids get a barrier and enemy manipulation (sans Rabbid Peach who has a team heal instead).
- The player team is 3 characters from the 8 available. Mario is always in the party and there must be at least one Rabbid as well.
- Missions are ranked based on turns taken and if anyone was KO'd. This just provides bonus gold for upgrading everyone's weapons (and the ranking of course). The win objectives basically boil down to either defeating enough/all enemies, reaching the target zone, or escorting Toad/Toadette to the target zone.
- World bosses are generally big which makes them immune to dash attacks and status effects.
- No ammo reloads!
As can be expected for an XCOM style game, bursting down enemies as quickly and efficiently as possible to minimize the enemy action economy and get good ranks is the way to go. This is especially necessary for the Smasher enemies, which move 4 tiles and melee attack whenever they're hit with a weapon, and Buckler enemies, which have an unbreakable shield from the front, a shotgun for AoE, a team buff for guaranteed crits and status effects, and they apply Honey which roots characters in place. Both of these guys are the worst of the common enemies.
Overall yeah, this was nice to have my brain enjoy solving XCOM-style gameplay with a Mario skin. My weird complaints would be how the game doesn't really incentivize swapping around characters which gets worse with the negative of needing to pay up money to upgrade primary and secondary weapons for each new tier; at that point it's smarter to just stick with the main team you like out of the fear of not having enough for future upgrades. My other weird complaint is how the first 2 worlds have specialized cutscenes for the party since it's still small and all but guaranteed who you have. World 3 and on though, it seems like they stopped since the party has expanded too much with too many potential combinations?
Quick Character Thoughts
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Mario: Forced to use. Can be upgraded to have 2 overwatch shots and a 20-70% team power buff for the turn. Has a normal blaster and a hammer to use after jumping off an ally and stomping on an enemy.
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Rabbid Peach: Has team heals on cooldown. Basically the most normal Rabbid plus she has an explosive sentry that seeks out the designated enemy.
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Rabbid Luigi: Useless early on, but he scales later in the game when his unique higher-tier weapons have high crit rates and when he has enough skill points to make his Vamp dash attack deal high damage and heal more.
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Luigi: The sniper. Highest range, 3 overwatch shots, and a team buff that adds extra movement. He can chain 2 team jumps in a turn for extra high mobility and he also has an explosive seeking sentry.
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Rabbid Mario: CQC and MVP. Has 3 AoE dash attacks, a hammer and shotgun for close range AoE, and his bonus action draws enemies towards him for maximum damage.
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Peach: She has a free heal for Team Jumping and her bonus action lets her tank damage for her allies. Otherwise yeah, the shotgun and rubber ducky grenade for defensive AoE coverage.
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Rabbid Yoshi: Has a minigun, a super shield that can absorb up to 2 hits, the rubber ducky grenade, and a fear effect that makes enemies run away and leave cover.
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Yoshi: Also has a minigun, an AoE ground pound after team jumping, and a team buff that guarantees crits & status effects.
Early on the team was Rabbid Peach and Luigi since Rabbid Luigi wasn't good yet, followed by Rabbid Luigi and Rabbid Mario from their high dash attack damage and the sheer amount of AoE Rabbid Mario offers. Tried Peach and Rabbid Yoshi for the escort missions from Peach's healing and Rabbid Yoshi's special shield. Yoshi joins in the endgame, but the ground pound feels like it'd leave him open and the lategame crit rate is like 50% already.
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Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 4 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern LinkSingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 8/25) Flow Standard bingo 8/25 Perspective ✅ Pyre ✅ Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical ✅ Berserk Boy ✅ Death's Door Synthesis Peace Familiar...SingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 8/25)
Flow Standard bingo 8/25 Perspective Fleeting
✅ PyreIdentity
✅ Stray Gods: The Roleplaying MusicalTransformation
✅ Berserk BoyThreshold
✅ Death's DoorSynthesis Peace Familiar Resistance Connection
✅ 13 Sentinels: Aegis RimPrecision
✅ SunblazeIncrement ★ Wildcard Causality Unorthodox Duality
✅ Astrea: Six-Sided OraclesColor Silence Faith Friction Tradition
✅ Uncharted: Drake's FortuneMorality Freedom Knowledge Empathy Identity - Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical (GOG)
Stray Gods is basically a Bioware game with just the talking bits. It's about Grace, a listless singer unsure of her Identity with the player getting to pick out her main trait at the start of the game and associated unlocked dialogue options: Charmer, the
Light Side Paragonwhet's all be fwiends uwu, Kickass, theDark Side Renegadeaggressive and confrontational, and Clever, the smart one who can connect the dots, see plot twists coming, and has more knowledge of Greek mythology. I chose Clever because duh, smarts. The start of the final act gives a second trait from which I chose Charmer, but also regret; like it does unlock the more empathetic lines which I wanted, but it also delves into generically heroic and forgiving and "It should have been me, not her!" lines. I would've told myself to go Clever + Kickass if I'd known.So the main plot is about Grace getting accused of murder after Calliope, the Last Muse who made friends with Grace just the night before, goes to her apartment and dies in Grace's arms with her godliness getting transferred over. Grace gets to find out the Greek gods are real and ready to execute her for her supposed crime before getting a stay of execution and told to prove her innocence within a week. While the main plot is about figuring out the Identity of the (incredibly obvious) killer, it's also railroaded with all the main plot points guaranteed to happen. Therefore the focus is on the Identity of the cast, old gods in a new world, with Grace learning about them and influencing them in her journey towards the truth and discovering herself.
(Minor?) Act 2 scene spoilers
Idols gradually get the memories of their predecessors which leads to Grace having a small Identity crisis when she learns that she's going to become Calliope since she'll end up with a lot more of Calliope's memories than her own. She learns about this from finding out about Aphrodite effectively killing herself and choosing a new host every 20 years since she isn't able to deal with the PTSD of getting tortured by Nazis and using the transfer process as a temporary memory wipe. Eros ends up asking Grace for help since the cycle of grief is never-ending and Aphordite isn't able to move forward. It's also funny not-funny that I've now played two games in a row about old people enforcing their trauma on the younger generation.
Overall, it was... fine? Familiar with Greek mythology by osmosis, but not a buff for it or musicals so I just vibed through the story plus it was "free" from my brother's amazon prime I think. Didn't romance anyone in the playthrough, but I would've chosen Pan since I'm a sucker for the sly, shady trickster who's hiding their helpful side.
Well there's also the cast doing a lot of double-thinking about whether Idols can be harmed by mortals. Everyone comes to the conclusion only an Idol would be able to hurt another Idol, but everyone suspects Grace because she ended up inheriting the Muse's power. However, there's also how a lot of Idols passed on their powers after dying of mundane mortal things like a car crash or getting shotgunned and the idols at large hiding from the mortal world, so it's just weird that no one points out the contradiction in-universe.
There's also the DLC story about Orpheus figuring out what to do with himself and his Identity after the events of the game, but it got a little too "ancient person marveling about the modern world" for me to really get attached.
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Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 3 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern (edited )Link ParentThreshold - Death's Door (PS4) I believe I've heard a phrase that death is the final Threshold; it is equal to all in the end and there's no turning back once the line is crossed. The game itself...Threshold - Death's Door (PS4)
I believe I've heard a phrase that death is the final Threshold; it is equal to all in the end and there's no turning back once the line is crossed. The game itself also features doors as a return to hub/fast travel network for the crow reaper protagonist, so that's a literal instance of death's door being crossed and passing through thresholds. This game also hit my "finish out of spite" threshold where I stayed up to 1AM on a workday to finish because screw those last few bosses. It took a little under 7 hours according to the save file and now I get the joy of considering this finished and not having to play again.
Death's Door is an isometric cross between a Zelda game and a Soulslike. On the Zelda side is basically running around and whacking enemies with a sword (or dagger or hammer or the umbrella joke weapon or the last weapon I never found), a new item for progression found in the midway point in a dungeon, and there being 3 dungeons for the main objective. On the Soulslike-ish side is the constant dodgerolling for i-frames, the paths to before with no map, and how landing hits restores magic charges for the ranged weaponry. What sticks out the most from this game though is how the player has 4 HP and no healing items or flasks; whatever you're doing, you can only survive up to that many hits. There are special pots scattered around which can have a seed planted into them to turn into a once-per-spawn heal, but that's of little help during the forced combat encounters or boss fights. There are heart container and magic container pieces, but I've only found 2 of each out of the 4 needed for a boost so I was stuck at the beginning HP from start to finish. As such, most of the game had me playing like a coward, hitting once or twice and then dodgerolling away, or dying enough in an encounter to just aggressively yolo for DPS and dodge around.
So the story is that you're a silent protagonist crow reaper assigned to reap specific souls. During the prologue, you're given some exposition and warned that you turn mortal and will age normally while out on an assignment up until you turn in the assigned soul. Naturally, the prologue boss fight ends with you getting knocked out and killstolen. After chasing down the perpetrator, he promptly yeets the soul through the titular Death's Door and explains he's a crow reaper who lost his assigned soul through that door and turned ancient, so he's going to force his problems on the next generation so they can solve it.
Fuck this guy in particular.
He then tells the protagonist to hunt down 3 Great Souls so they can force the door open. This leads into the theme of old immortality seekers exploiting the young so they can continue clinging to power and the reaper being the balancing force. The witch is forcing her version of immortality onto others, even to her own grandson who is trying to resist the effects. The frog king constantly claims he works for progress as he callously crushes one of his own men when greeting the protagonist and mentioning he looted his armor off a corpse. Many of the lore logs in the hub area detail how all the crow spirits hanging around the dungeons are the direct result of betrayal. The game itself says new life cannot flourish while the old stifle it.
Salt about the last 3 bosses
So the boss of the last dungeon is Betty. While the rest of the bosses have patterns and periods where they've vulnerable, Betty just attacks nonstop. Fight from the front? Betty tacks on a quick extra ground slap just because. Circlestrafe around? Betty has a very wide arm sweep attack. Dodgeroll through all of that anyways? Betty can pull out a rolling attack that punishes being too close and/or dodging too early. It was at this fight that I decided I would complete the game that session.
The boss after is that selfish old fucker who dragged the player into his mess. After the door is opened, he finds out the souls that go through Death's Door are recycled so he and the player are shit out of luck for returning their designated souls. He has a temper tantrum insanity meltdown at that point and attacks the player as his final act of being an asshole. Fuck him as a character, fuck his contact damage in a melee-oriented game.
The final boss is the boss of the reapers who imprisoned Death which basically kickstarted all of the plot and everyone saw this coming. He is just a very long boss fight in a game with 4 hp because his phases have to cycle through all the past areas. He then steals all the souls from the soul vault (where the player spent souls for upgrades) for his final form which leads to a second long boss fight. He also copies Betty's sweep attack to catch circlestrafers and the rolling attack in this stage, so that's nice too. I just wanted to sleep when finishing this up.
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Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 3 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern Link ParentTradition - Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (PS4) AKA Uncharted 1 as played on the PS4 as a part of Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection. I only kinda remember playing Uncharted 2 on my cousin's PS3...Tradition - Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (PS4)
AKA Uncharted 1 as played on the PS4 as a part of Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection. I only kinda remember playing Uncharted 2 on my cousin's PS3 and my brother has PS Plus on auto-renew and doesn't care enough to cancel it, so I figure I may as well indulge in his PS Plus collection. I suppose Nate would consider it Tradition to carry on in his ancestor's treasure hunting ways. Or I could say the game was made in a Traditional manner of the time where third-person cover shooters with convenient waist-high cover and regenerating health were all the rage and how mashing a button to open a door was peak realism. My goodness, there were even doors that required rotating the left joystick to open and the very act of shooting door locks off! Surprisingly, there were only 5 QTE moments in the game (albeit, the QTE indicator was on the bottom left corner of the screen where the interact indicator is).
Now I have to admit I got lost quite a bit. This was made before devs put color-coded ledges everywhere and as mocked as that is, it beats not knowing where to go and what can and can't be climbed on (and nowadays, everyone would be copying Breath of the Wild's climbing stamina instead). There's something to be said about looking around and figuring things out, but there's also something to be said about intuitive signposting in the level design of forests and ruins.
Gameplay besides the exploration parkour is of course, cover shooting. The humble pistols are pretty much the only thing with the right mix of accuracy, power, and ammo capacity to just 3-tap bodyshot and move on; the automatics lack power, the shotguns lack range, and the one-shot weapons like the sniper rifle, grenade launcher, and deagle have fewer shots going for them. Enemies have a much higher range and accuracy than Nate and his hp will quickly go down if he's out in the open or flanked which just incentivizes campy hide in cover and wait for HP to recover before slowly sniping back gameplay. Enemies are invincible during their spawning animation and melee is outright useless when there's more than one enemy which further de-emphasizes anything aggressive. This is summed up by the only boss fight where there's 4 shotgun blasts fired at Nathan before he can stick his head out and kill the lackies, rinse and repeat until the next wave.
Overall I don't think the game aged that well gameplay-wise (but well that's also true for a lot of games from the 2000s). I do have to mention though that I like Elena being competent: she's willing to pick up a gun, she's not an escort mission, she rescues Nate early on, she's the one shooting during the jet ski segments. She does get captured for the finale as these things go, but that's a narrative fault to me rather than a character fault since Nate and Sully also have their moments of being captured and needing rescuing.
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Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 3 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern (edited )LinkSingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 7/25) Flow Standard bingo 7/25 Perspective ✅ Pyre Identity ✅ Berserk Boy ✅ Death's Door Synthesis Peace Familiar Resistance ✅ 13 Sentinels: Aegis...SingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 7/25)
Flow Standard bingo 7/25 Perspective Fleeting
✅ PyreIdentity Transformation
✅ Berserk BoyThreshold
✅ Death's DoorSynthesis Peace Familiar Resistance Connection
✅ 13 Sentinels: Aegis RimPrecision
✅ SunblazeIncrement ★ Wildcard Causality Unorthodox Duality
✅ Astrea: Six-Sided OraclesColor Silence Faith Friction Tradition
✅ Uncharted: Drake's FortuneMorality Freedom Knowledge Empathy Precision - Sunblaze (GOG)
Sunblaze is a Precision Platformer. I haven't heard of that term before, but that's what's in the game description and it's a steam tag so I'm just going to assume it means those platformers where you have to route the way to the goal and have the dexterity to execute it while dying a bunch. That would match this game! Stats for beating the game and most of the Chapter 1 Hard levels are 4:18:29.421 completion time, 919 deaths, and 55/60 collectibles. Stats for 100% completion with all the bonus levels: 8:18:17.050 completion time and 2248 deaths.
The controls are pretty much double jump, horizontal dash, and ledgegrab, but the game's most prominent feature would probably be its falling platforms. As soon as you touch one, you'll have a moment to move to have enough airtime to head to the next spot (or avoid getting crushed). These falling platforms are also spots to refresh the dash and double jump (and wait out dangerous obstacles), so considering which platform to use and which to preserve to reach the end is a pretty important aspect as well.
Not much else I can really say about the gameplay besides it testing my brain to figure out the correct path and execution and me liking it enough to 100%. My biggest complaint would probably be the last phase of the final boss being one of those "react to its attacks enough to spot the tell/pattern" bosses and the Chapter 5 Hard Levels having enemies that constantly track your position in fireball mode. The rest of the game allows you to see all the variables and plan ahead from the start of the stage, so these feel contrary to the rest of the game's design.
Story is pretty simple: Josie asked her retired superhero dad to let her use his training simulator and she ends up stuck in it. There's a few quips thrown around here and there, but it's easily skipped through if it's not your flavor of jokey (it is mine). The lightheartedness is contrasted pretty heavily by Josie leaving a blood splatter explosion whenever she dies and the big skull death counter in the corner, so I did end up turning the blood option off.
Spoilers - There was a shot of Empathy I liked though
Josie comes to realize Sparkles the AI is just as trapped as her in the simulation. It's job is to train the ultimate hero, but its logic dictates the hero can't be considered ultimate when there's still room of improvement which leads it in a non-stop cycle of creating gradually more difficult, but winnable rooms. To break the cycle, Josie convinces Sparkles that it's a realitybending AI keeping her trapped there and so challenging it while it's trying to kill her for real would make it the ultimate villain and her an ultimate hero for defeating it.
That said, the moment's a little undermined by the stinger where a robot ominously comes out of hiding in the middle of the night except the cat promptly destroys it. The end.
Total Stats in the end (+ a little time collectible hunting)
Chapter 1
10 deaths
7:59.980 TimeChapter 2
94 deaths
24:49.451Chapter 3
127 Deaths +4 for remaining collectibles
40:31.264Chapter 4
141 deaths
39:01.408Chapter 5
146 Deaths +3 for remaining collectibles
38:01.859Chapter 6
260 Deaths + 16 for remaining collectibles
1:26:59.428The Lost Levels (Postgame)
470 Deaths
1:53:52.979Chapter 1 Hard
200 deaths
25:54.589Chapter 2 Hard
104 deaths
13:27.890Chapter 3 Hard
111 deaths
22:07.841Chapter 4 Hard
227 Deaths
22:03.124Chapter 5 Hard
189 Deaths
24:18.803Chapter 6 Hard
146 Deaths
32:09.798 -
Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern Link ParentTransformation - Berserk Boy (GOG) Berserk Boy is a Megaman-inspired game; there's the basic "stop the mad scientist" plot ala Classic, the base is reminiscent of Zero, particularly with the two...Transformation - Berserk Boy (GOG)
Berserk Boy is a Megaman-inspired game; there's the basic "stop the mad scientist" plot ala Classic, the base is reminiscent of Zero, particularly with the two operators in the background of the teleport room, and there are 5
BiometalsBerserk Orbs to collect from the bosses and Transform with like ZX.The game also feels vaguely obnoxious on many fronts.
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The story, characters, and world aren't set up at all. That normally wouldn't be an issue considering the era the game is calling back to, but there's just enough uninspired dialogue inserted everywhere that I started to feel the urge to mash through dialogue and skip cutscenes which never happens to me. It feels like it's just giving up and going "yeah this is a legally distinct fangame, you know how the plot goes", but at that point it would've unironically been better to just cut out the dialogue from how low-effort it is.
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The hub is huge, but the only real functions are the upgrade shop and the mission select room, the latter of which is in a long hallway away from the spawning room. There is a map warp by opening the menu, but it would've been better to just not design that map that way? The hub has a lot of screens to house the NPCs that get rescued, but none of them have any changing dialogue which removes any reason to roam around and check up on them up until the path to the true final boss, which with no prompting, requires talking to 2 specific people. The hub also goes under attack after every boss fight for no narrative reason which forces the player to check every single room to take out a single monster by itself with no challenge. This is the definition of pointless padding.
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There are a ton of upgrades and new moves for the first lightning form which indicates it being the "main" form, but all of the options are stupidly expensive to purchase. It feels bad to see so many potential options just locked away by the need to farm if the player wants to see them.
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The controls feel a touch unresponsive to me. In any other game with insta-death pits or insta-death advancing spike walls or contact damage, I'd go "Oh I panicked" or "I rushed without looking" or "Oh I misspaced the positioning". Here it's just "Welp, walked off the platform cause the jump button didn't respond in time", "Welp, the Flame Drill's drilling and tornado lock the controls for a second, can't jump or switch forms!", "Welp these bosses sure inflict a lot of contact damage since they love to move a lot when the primary attack is dash attacking at them".
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The game advertises metroidvania aspects, but what that really means is impassible obstacles blocking the side paths the first time around until replaying the mission after getting all 5 forms. The game is also pretty bad at signaling which is the main path and which is the side path.
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The shoulder buttons cycle through the forms, but it's slow with 5 of them to scroll through. Meanwhile, the Form Menu allows for picking but pauses the gameplay and plays the transformation animation each and every time a form is selected from it.
Let's go over the transformations now:
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Lightning Justice. The 1st form and the one getting advertised. It has an 8-directional dash to bump into an enemy and tag them for the follow up attack which is pretty reminiscent of Gunvolt's tagging system. It has a lot more upgrades then the other forms, but they're all expensive so I don't know what any of the unlockable moves actually do.
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Flame Drill. The 2nd form and the Red CQC. A lot of bosses can fly though, so it can only offer its uppercut against them most of the time or the dig if you really need the extended i-frames. Its utility is all unwieldy though: The tornado dash bumps you quite a bit away from the enemy for what's supposed to be a gap-closer, the divekick dig goes diagonally when it's main purpose is to be able to dig under low spiked areas so there's a lot more self-damage from that then there should be, and as mentioned before, the drill mode and tornado lock controls for a sec after they end.
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Ice Kunai. The 3rd form and the broken-ass ninja. Its 8-directional dash attack goes through enemies and starts up another dash attack for hitting an enemy; this allows it to just shred a boss by dashing back and forth through them while having i-frames the entire time. It also has spammable kunais which take out the risk of the other forms needing to get close.
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Soaring Wind. The 4th form that snaps the platforming in half. It has a shield that reflects projectiles and a hover-flight mode that's freely controllable in the 8 directions; it uses up energy, but there's 2 cheap upgrades in the shop for increased 50% energy cap for all forms and decreased flight cost. As can be expected, all the platforming can be ignored with this form unless the game specifically sets up barriers with lightning or ice barriers that require those forms to go through.
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Mine Buster. The 5th form that is utterly useless. It has a short-range lock-on cone which fires a weak bullet when the weapon button is released. Since it's so useless, the game starts introducing intangible enemies and platforms until the weapon cone makes them tangible and doors that require firing a bullet at to destroy. These doors are pointless time-wasters since they're in the main path anyways and the enemies and platforming can be ignored just by flying past them.
You could do a lot worse for a Megaman-inspired game, but you could also do a whole lot better. I would've gotten more joy replaying the Zero series or Gravity Circuit.
Technically speaking, I'm now on Team Motivated with this entry. However, 13 Sentinels was about 35 hours while Pyre and Astrea were 10 hours each and Berserk Boy was 4. Am I more or less motivated?
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Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern Link ParentDuality - Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles (Epic Freebie) Astrea is a draw 4, dice are free but negative effects must be played, roguelike deckbuilder. Duality is present in how there are two damage...Duality - Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles (Epic Freebie)
Astrea is a draw 4, dice are free but negative effects must be played, roguelike deckbuilder. Duality is present in how there are two damage types: Purification, healing allies and lowering enemy HP, or Corruption, damaging allies and recovering enemy HP. Since the player has 3 hearts with 7 Max HP each and Corruption dice have to be played, the obvious answer is to play them on the enemy since they have way more HP right? The issue is that applying corruption to them increases their overcorruption meter which allows them to pull off their special move the moment it maxes out, even during your turn or right after they've already attacked, which can lead to overwhelming burst damage or them scaling much faster. On the flipside, the player has access to Virtues, special moves that can be used whenever the player's HP falls below a certain threshold, so the player is incentivised to have just enough defense to survive to access the full arsenal and then heal back up (and yes, it looks like being damaged then healing then self-damaging again refreshes the Virtue. The 2nd character has a build doing just that).
Dice come in 5 Variants: Starter, Safe, Balanced, Risky, and Epic.
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Starters should be the first to go at the Remove 2 Dice tiles or the shop. However, they can't be removed at the Broken Shrines which allow for trading 4 non-starter dice for a Star Blessing (aka relic).
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Safe dice have all positive sides, but are lower impact.
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Balanced dice are either 3/3 or 4/2 good/bad ratio and are middle of the road in effect.
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Risky dice are either 2/4 good/bad ratio or all sides have a good and bad effect at the same time.
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Epic dice can only be found as a boss drop, from events, or for 300 shards from the Epic Shops. Epic dice are always high-impact with only positive sides, but can't be duplicated.
Dice can have their sides turned into another effect through the shop or specific forge dice (excepting dice with unforgable faces) and all the characters have a reroll virtue bulit-in, so the riskier dice can be worth grabbing provided proper risk management. There are also opportunities to duplicate good dice, whether at the duplicate tile or paying up at the shop.
Per deckbuilder norms, a small deck is usually better for consistency and getting to the good dice faster. Since enemy encounters drop 2 dice, it's usually better to ignore the dice chest tiles in favor of money tiles (skipping a die gives 10 shards while the shard tiles give 50). The destroy 2 dice tiles and shops give the opportunity to trim out the starter dice and the broken shrines can take away 4 non-starter dice after deciding a deck's direction and course-correcting.
There's more to it of course, but the game's intuitive and I had fun. The low max hp with healing and dice rolling makes for a nice change of pace from Slay the Spire 2. I've had a win with each character (required to unlock the 6th character and then a win with him unlocks the true final boss) and 2 wins against said true final boss so I can at least say I've has a decent look at the game so far.
Character run notes
Moonie: 1st character. Won the run through stacking Doom which increases the value of Corruption dice and then converting them to Purification dice for tons of damage.
Cellarius: 2nd character. Had 3 runs:
- First run was a Waves build which does full AoE once the Waves status exceeds enemy HP. Lost against the 3rd world elite that had infinite HP, dies in 4 turns, and needs to deal damage to in order to reduce its damage. I didn't have enough normal damage or dice scaling off of Waves, so the run ended there.
- Second run won with a basic self-damage build, helped by having a boss relic that gave strength up with each hit taken.
- Third run went against the true final boss with a Waves build. This time I had more options for regular damage that scales off of Waves.
Hevelius: 3rd character. Starts off with 2 random Sentinels which normally drop from the boss or are available for purchase/upgrade at the sentinel shop for 150. In exchange, he only has 2 hearts so he can't cash them in as often at the shrines. Felt more defensive and campy, and I won through scaling up the Sentinel damage.
Austra: 4th character. Very, very RNG in having a lot of effects be random targets and/or a 50/50 between dealing Purification or Corruption. Also the only one with a dodge and crit stat. Can't say I enjoyed it being even more random.
- 1st run lost from not playing safe enough and just losing hearts due to losing the 50/50s.
- 2nd run I went for safer dice and focused on buffing up multi-hits.
Sothis: 5th character. Has a lot of mechanics including Soul Heat which builds up faster with multi-hits but resets each turn, Relief which is basically after-turn poison/healing, Affliction which is DoT Corruption that doesn't fade away, and Chanting is kinda exclusive in that it scales up, but its stacks reset if any other type of direct damage is used. My favorite so far.
- 1st run won due to getting lucky with AoE Affliction stacking and the accompanying bonus effects off it with a side of Chanting.
- 2nd run went to the true final boss with AoE Relief and more Chanting stacking.
Orion: 6th character. Imagine the Watcher if she was stance-dancing between 4 of the Defect's orbs instead. There's the damage orb, the shield orb, the Astrium orb which is a resource that automatically bursts at 10 stacks, and the Karma orb which deals 6 damage to self (out of 7 max HP) after gaining 6 Karma stacks.
- 1st run was focused on Rotating between orbs, but I didn't have enough damage mitigation against all the karma that built up extra fast from the rotations.
- 2nd run was shield-focused in the sense that some dice deal damage that multiplies based off of how much light shield stacks the enemy has.
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Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern (edited )LinkSingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 4/25) Flow Standard bingo 4/25 Perspective ✅ Pyre Identity ✅ Berserk Boy Threshold Synthesis Peace Familiar Resistance ✅ 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim...SingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 4/25)
Flow Standard bingo 4/25 Perspective Fleeting
✅ PyreIdentity Transformation
✅ Berserk BoyThreshold Synthesis Peace Familiar Resistance Connection
✅ 13 Sentinels: Aegis RimPrecision Increment ★ Wildcard Causality Unorthodox Duality
✅ Astrea: Six-Sided OraclesColor Silence Faith Friction Tradition Morality Freedom Knowledge Empathy Fleeting - Pyre (GOG)
Supergiant Games is known for quite a few titles: Bastion, Transistor (my favorite), Hades, and Hades 2 (waiting for sale). But there's the middle child (metaphorically and literally), the odd duck out, Pyre. You, as the in-game capital-R Reader, were exiled to Downside for the crime of being able to read. A band of fellow exiles, The Nightwings, found and nursed you to health before asking if you're capable of reading the Book of Rites. You are. You can follow the stars and direct the Rites as the ritual to freedom. In less flowerly terms, you're the manager of a 3v3 fantasy basketball team to win your right to be unexiled.
Freedom is a central theme. Everyone is fighting for their chance to be freed from a lifetime in Downside. Who deserves that freedom? Amongst the other teams? Amidst your own? The game advertises that win or lose in the Rites, the narrative goes on. Of course, to provide some narrative structure and incentive to keep winning, the team's benefactor has a Plan in mind, one that relies on your teammates being sent back to the Commonwealth with their crimes absolved. His words on freedom deserve to be quoted:
To be able to indulge one's curiosities and passions, at least the ones that cause no harm to others, without the constant threat of judgment and reprisal. Freedom means not being made a criminal for what you know, or whom you love, or what you choose to think or not to think.
Fleeting - Technically an actual spoiler, but I don't really consider it one?
After a season of playing to qualify for finals, the Liberation Rite only allows for a single teammate of the winning team to ascend. They have to be deemed worthy (read: have enough exp) and be sent out on the field for their win. It's a Fleeting feeling to train them up and then have to say goodbye, no longer able to learn more about them or use their moveset. With each win, the main cast is gradually reduced; it's a bittersweet hope to see them ascend, yet still wonder if those who remain will get their chance to leave.
Actual Spoilers
The stars are going. Each season has less and less rites before the Liberation Rite. There won't be enough left to free everyone on your own team, let alone the other ones. It is the last, fleeting chance for freedom. Everyone who remains will be trapped in Downside for the rest of their life. Choose who goes and make peace with the decision.
Having now played Pyre (or well, giving another go at it), I can see how it ended up not discussed as much as its sibling titles. Bastion and Transistor have a small core cast with the constant presence of their narrators in the protagonist's personal journey. Hades has a larger cast that Zagreus meets in his journey to break free from the underworld and find his mother, but its roguelite structure means there's always some new dialogue or story beat to follow when he's making friends with everyone. Pyre meanwhile lacks a central figure to follow or fight against due to its narrative, with the story arcs dependent on who you use and challenge. It gives an openness to the choices taken, but in doing so it cannot truly give emphasis to anyone. The gameplay is also balanced since there's a Versus mode whereas the the other games are PvE and constantly give new toys and combinations to play around with. It also doesn't help that the lore book is written in ye olde fancy english which adds another degree of friction to it all. It's just a different experience altogether in the Supergiant repertoire.
Gameplay amounts to the Rites and then the narrative choices with unknown bonuses/penalties made when traveling between the Rites. To simplify the 3v3 gameplay, only one unit on each team can move and act at a time with control (and the ball) being passed over. Each unit basically has a dash, a passive aura around them that temporarily banishes opponents, a ranged aura cast, and a jump to go over auras (which can be bodyblocked by intercepting with a jump). Possessing the ball disables the aura attacks though, so whoever's holding it has to move around the enemy, pass it to an ally, or just throw the ball on the ground so they have access to their offense. Dunking the ball into the pyre is the main way to score, but completely banishes whoever scored until the next goal, while throwing the ball requires charging it up but allows the scorer to still be active for the next round. I played on normal so I didn't have any problems with bumrushing the ball with fast units and dunking or just steadily walking forward with bulky units and using their bigger aura to steadily banish foes and clear a path. Normally I prefer M&K for these types of games, but I started on my Steam Deck (and set up Syncthingy as a save transfer between it and my computer) so I ended up using controller (and also couldn't really depend on the ranged casts without M&K).
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Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern Link ParentConnection - 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim 13 Sentinels is comprised of 98% VN Sci-Fi thriller that's about 13 Japanese highschoolers raised in 5 different time periods (1945, 1985, 2025, 2065, 2105)...Connection - 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
13 Sentinels is comprised of 98% VN Sci-Fi thriller that's about 13 Japanese highschoolers raised in 5 different time periods (1945, 1985, 2025, 2065, 2105) who end up in the "main" era of 1985, the last remaining zone unattacked by kaiju, to pilot Sentinel mechas in humanity's last stand against the swarm. Each of the 13 have their own story route which takes place in the weeks before the final fight with a drip feed of revelations as each protagonist's tale provides more details and context to the overarching saga and the sheer scope of everything. While it'd be easy to look at the different stories and call it a change of Perspective, it'd be much more fitting to see the Connection between everyone. The cast shows up in each other's stories, whether as key players or background bystanders, but not everyone is aware of the kaiju threat or even each other until the time of the final battle. To help keep track of everything, the game provides a chronological order timeline of when each scene takes place along with a glossary detailing key events relating to each person.
Connection also shows up in how everyone is motivated by love; some platonic or familial, but mostly romantic. The cast is mostly highschoolers though, so a lot of the romance amounts to them falling in love at first sight with not much reasoning into why they're in love or any further development to their bond. As such, the only couples I could take seriously were the adult couples and Ogata with Kisaragi because they actually have scenes showing where it comes from or even just hanging out at all. This isn't helped by two of the characters, Yakushiji and Shinonome, being schoolgirls who are motivated entirely by their romantic feelings and thoroughly manipulated because of it. Hijiyama isn't manipulated, but he becomes Okino's willing goon after falling in love with his girl disguise at the start of his route and having lots of gay panic moments (Hijiyama being from 1945) and Okino just teasing him back over it. I guess it's just a big case of telling instead of showing with more emphasis on the reveals rather than the character buildup.
To that end, I think I consider the game compelling, but not resonant; that I spent the weekend binging it, but have no desire to engage with the bonus levels or pick through the full timeline after the credits rolled. The game is held up by having reveal after reveal to hook the player in through the information delivered through each story, but what happens after? The conclusion is already stated at the beginning of the game: that the 13 pilots will fight the kaiju. Once all the cards are laid down, that's it. Having 13 protagonists and related side characters makes for much differing levels of focus between them which leaves a haphazard narrative once all the pazazz is taken out. Heck, two of the stories aren't even about their protagonist, but the person they're hanging around with instead. I guess I just feel unsatisfied from a character standpoint. That said, I guess the characters I liked would be Ogata (delinquent with a heart of gold underneath), Takamiya (ditto), Minami (for being proactive and fun when she thinks her story is playing out like a sci-fi movie), Kisaragi (for being outspoken and surprisingly important to everything), and Shinonome (her storyline involving her continuously waking up in the nurse's office with amnesia and trying to piece together what she knows).
I do also have to complain about the game requiring the player to keep mashing A for the characters to exhaust all their dialogue during a scene instead of just... playing all the dialogue. Ditto for having to go through all the thoughts in the thought cloud before new dialogue pops up.
The remaining 2% of the game is real-time tactics with pause when a unit is taking their turn. I highly doubt anyone's playing the game primarily for this, it's just mostly to gate the story content while going through what little gameplay there is. The levels amount to kill all kaiju (or defend the terminal for 2 minutes on non-boss missions, but all the kaiju should be dead by the 1 minute mark at the very latest) using 6 of the 13 pilots. Units are forced to rest after going on 2 missions to encourage rotating through everyone. Despite one of Vanillaware's signatures being their sprite work, the graphics here basically amount to 👾 for everything. I could say more about it, but I honestly do not feel compelled to.
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Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern (edited )LinkSingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 1/25) Flow Standard bingo 1/25 Perspective Fleeting Identity Transformation Threshold Synthesis Peace Familiar Resistance ✅ 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim...SingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 1/25)
Flow Standard bingo 1/25 Perspective Fleeting Identity Transformation Threshold Synthesis Peace Familiar Resistance Connection
✅ 13 Sentinels: Aegis RimPrecision Increment ★ Wildcard Causality Unorthodox Duality Color Silence Faith Friction Tradition Morality Freedom Knowledge Empathy Life suckerpunched me during November so I didn't have the energy to join then (and also some new games popped out during then), but back to the burner we go. I see the non-steam direction, so I'll try to pull from the hand-me-down Switch, PS4, GOG, itch, and Epic freebies.
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SingedFrostLantern LinkDeathbulge: Battle of the Bands It's a whimsical RPG that introduces its tone by having the party open doors via kicking them across the room. All the doors. There's also the thing where all the...Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands
It's a whimsical RPG that introduces its tone by having the party open doors via kicking them across the room. All the doors. There's also the thing where all the bands unknowingly sign up to fight to the death and are cursed to be able to fight and heal with music, but it's mostly humorous. It's about 10-ish hours, a bit more time for completionist grinders for the RNG beat drops and money for upgrades, with 6-ish dungeons (and a superboss in each dungeon +1 tutorial area +1 final area that doesn't really feel like a dungeon). I had fun with the game's vibes, but it definitely feels short for how customizable everyone's loadouts are and no postgame areas to really push a build's limits, though the game was apparently kickstarted which would explain that.
The game does that initiative thing where characters with higher speed takes turns faster, but it does a few neat things with it.
- The initiative meter for each team is divided into 4 slots for status effects that apply when the character goes through it with each slot getting overridden with whatever buff or debuff was applied last. Of course, some classes work off of applying or benefiting from self-debuffs plus some skills allow for inverting a status effect.
- As a consequence of the above though, pets feel kinda awkward since they use up one of the slots to summon them and they disappear if their slot gets replaced. Status effects usually apply 2 or 4 slots at a time so it creates an odd amount of applied slots to avoid replacing the pet. Only 1 pet can be summoned at a time too which negates a lot of its appeal as much as I liked the spider summon.
- Whoever's the active member applies their speed and tanks all the single-target damage while the other party members gain increased hype regen. This actually led to moments where I just basic attacked because I had too much speed and not enough hype to use any skills.
Then there's the customization aspect:
- Consumable item types are collected and only have a stockpile cost to use them. A single battle provides enough funds to refresh the whole stockpile, so this game's very friendly about item usage.
- Each character has a beat slot (the basic attack that enemies drop), 3 skill slots with the first slot determining the character class and statline and half hype cost for that class' skills, and 1 accessory slot (2 after buying the slot expansion in the second town).
- Builds really depend on finding/purchasing whatever skills/accessories are available, but I ended up having Faye as a Headbanger for Noise damage and speed, Ian as a Distorter for Melody damage and debuffs, and Briff using the Sampler class to use beats to cover up the remaining gaps, specifically equipping him with the chance of multi-hit attack from the ghost legend, an accessory that gives a chance to AoE heal with each action, and the remaining beats to provide haste and shield the status effects to prevent them getting overridden.
I thought the ultimate class mods were a bit of a noob trap though since their skill costs 66% max hype to use which in turn requires having a dedicated hype battery to justify bringing them along.
Outriders
A third-person cover-optional looter shooter with 4 classes, 3 active skill slots during combat, and a skill tree that branches between gun power, skill power, or survivability. The storyline and all the sidequests are pretty much about humans being bastards, enough that Earth was destroyed and abandoned in the prologue lore before humanity found a new planet and screwed that up too. I'm on apocalypse tier 12 with my main being a pyro with enough skill leech to tank and heal to full instantly as long as any enemy is on fire plus a huge damaging laser on a 7 second cooldown. By all means though, I don't know how I got 39 hours or 2 more alts of the other classes that finished the campaign. FOMO of how the different classes play? The campaign being easy to mindlessly speedrun as a podcast game with the loot/difficulty tier tured down for the alts? The dopamine of extracting mods and resources from postgame expeditions while playing an unkillable phoenix? The game simply running well enough and gotten cheaply from a bundle? A mix of not playing a cover shooter or looter shooter in a while? All of the above?
That said, it's also an always online game with no pause. Whatever gear I get is probably gone and pointless once the plug gets pulled on the servers. This is one reason I don't gacha.
- The initiative meter for each team is divided into 4 slots for status effects that apply when the character goes through it with each slot getting overridden with whatever buff or debuff was applied last. Of course, some classes work off of applying or benefiting from self-debuffs plus some skills allow for inverting a status effect.
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SingedFrostLantern LinkKulebra and the Souls of Limbo The epilogue chapter for this game released this week! Previously it had the indie game sin of basically ending on Act 1 and things feeling unresolved when the...Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo
The epilogue chapter for this game released this week! Previously it had the indie game sin of basically ending on Act 1 and things feeling unresolved when the credits rolled. Now it ties up some of the loose ends in a grander resolution, though it falters by having the major action take place before the lower-stakes action which abruptly fizzles out with the side character gaining her character development to face the future, followed by the realization that that's all after being sent back to the world with no other objectives. There were a few more new sidequests too, so it added about 2-ish hours to the 9-ish hour base game.
I guess for context, the game is about a silent protagonist skeletal snake going throughout limbo and helping souls out which leads to them moving on. The closest gameplay comparison I can come up with is a mix of Paper Mario (without the RPG combat, but more stealth/running away segments and pop quizes for the bosses) in so far as overworld controls and chapter structure, and Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask for there being a Day/Dusk/Night cycle "timeloop" (the souls resetting their memories after a day unless something with a big impact makes them remember) and a notebook to keep track of people/objectives/sidequests. I got this for $4 from the Humble store, so I can't really complain, but I also hadn't really thought about it at all after finishing it until the steam news section displayed the update. It's not bad, I was sold from the Next Fest demo it had, but I guess I consider it more like something to fill a free afternoon after playing through it.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate
A Hades-like, but turtles. I didn't have a good impression from the Next Fest demo it had, but the game went <$5 in a recent sale so I picked it up. It is exactly as grind-heavy as I expected: tons of meta-currency needed for every little thing like basic stats with multiple levels for them to purchase and bullet sponge bosses which require said upgrades. I lucked out my first run by getting a legendary duo that restores HP on basic attacks with Mikey which basically enabled face-tanking. After that point though, it just feels like a slough to get through. Multi-hits and stage hazards just instantly shred through the turtles' hp (I sincerely hope this isn't a case of high FPS increasing damage ticks because there isn't a frame rate option nor do I know how to 3rd party that for Bazzite). Since hard mode Karai has tons of area poison, my current runs are ending there and I get about 500 Dragon Coins and 350 Dreamer Coins a run to spend before jumping back into the fray. I suppose the smart thing to do is not take the boss challenges or the Pact of Punishment-equivalent portals that appear during the run, but they're also required for higher tiers on the skill tree. It is TMNT though, so for now, I'm still putting this as my mindless podcast game in the hopes that there'll be something worthwhile after the grind.
Mikey feels the best to play, though I'm also partial to Don for his i-frames tool and range despite most online comments considering him the worst on the tiers.
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SingedFrostLantern Link ParentIf you're interested in more AA-style games, I highly recommend of the Devil. It takes place in a cyberpunk world (actual cyberpunk, not just window dressing) and Morgan is quite... unique as a...If you're interested in more AA-style games, I highly recommend of the Devil. It takes place in a cyberpunk world (actual cyberpunk, not just window dressing) and Morgan is quite... unique as a protagonist within the genre. It's very stylish and rife with casino imagery within the rebuttal UI as Morgan loves to gamble. Episode 0 is the free demo and it's an episodic game with 2 of 5 full scale cases released so far.
Other AA-style games I've played
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Murders on the Yangtze River: 1900s China with the overarching story being about Shen trying to find the full truth behind his brother's death. There's a "it's clearly translated" quality to it, but I do remember liking it. The game is pretty conscious of letting the player succeed by offering a 2-hint system (the hint and then giving the answer with no judgement), and each chapter has a gimmick pop up, though anything too far from the main mechanics is freely skippable.
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Aviary Attorney: 1840s France with animal people. Aside from that, it's other draw is that investigations are time-limited which makes it possible to not have the decisive evidence needed for trial. Win or lose, the story continues on and there's 3 separate finales depending on how the second to last case ended. I haven't played this since 2018 apparently so I don't quite remember it, but I do have it marked in my library as "would recommend".
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Nina Aquila: Legal Eagle: Made in RPGMaker. It's lower budget as expected because of that, but it tries to make up for it in being very anime and earnest about it, and each chapter aside from the tutorial case has its own unique minigame. I've posted about it before, but my main conclusion is to play at a deep discount/if you already own it from a bundle. Having played Case 4 since then, I don't quite recommend that particular one because the main duo spend the case angry at each other because plot drama, the beat-em-up minigame in this one being iffy, and the general vibe that there really isn't a finish line for the overarching story in sight.
It's interesting for me to see someone else' opinion of Tyrion Cuthbert. Personally I thought the original cases before the story rewrite/rework were better (posted my own thoughts before), but it is hard to find another AA-game of its quality regardless.
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CARRION and Cruelty Squad are both at all time lows of $2. Carrion is that reverse horror game about playing as a fleshy sci-fi monster and picking people off. Cruelty Squad is that immersive sim that looks terrible but also has 19k steam reviews of Overwhelmingly Positive. I'm planning to pick up both.