kfwyre's recent activity

  1. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 3 Discussion in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Motivated Rapid Fire Round These are all games that I played enough to count for the Backlog Burner, but not enough that I have very strong feelings on them. Blast Rush LS (played via Indie Pass)...

    Motivated Rapid Fire Round

    These are all games that I played enough to count for the Backlog Burner, but not enough that I have very strong feelings on them.

    Blast Rush LS (played via Indie Pass)

    A scrolling shooter where, instead of shooting, you can only launch bombs (note: there is also an option to turn on shooting too?). So, it's essentially aiming at a niche within a niche for its audience. It was originally a mobile game that got polished up for a full desktop release, with one exception: there's no way to exit the game from within the game. You have to force-kill it.

    Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective (played via direct installation on Steam Deck)

    Mentioning Arcane Kids earlier reminded me that I still hadn't played this and it's been sitting on my Steam Deck for years now.

    The game is essentially a high-effort shitpost that left me uncertain about how to feel about it. Bubsy 3D is infamous for being a bad game with bad controls, and this game mimics that directly. It does eventually do some things that play around with your expectations, which I liked, but I can't exactly say that I enjoyed or even really appreciated the experience, but I also think that's exactly what it's going for? It feels much more like an art think piece than an actual game.

    Elephant in the Room (played via the Humble App)

    This is another endangered game, though it feels much more like an early beta build of something rather than a full-fledged game. You're an elephant trying to escape a house without getting seen, and you can use your trunk to grab and throw things so that you can incapacitate people which lets you get by them.

    The controls are deliberately clunky. Your elephant moves very slowly. This feels like the kind of game made for humorous purposes for people to stream on Twitch, where the fun comes from watching someone clumsily work their way through things rather than executing tight gameplay. I did a few runs of this and then moved on.

    Mr Rescue (played via Flathub on Steam Deck)

    This is a cute, old-school firefighting game where you have to save people in a burning building and constantly ascend floors to look for more survivors. Controls and gameplay are dead simple and the game works perfectly on the Deck.

    I think the game is good at what it does, but it's not the exact kind of game I want. I have a soft spot for firefighting games, but in this one your goal is to save people, not fight fire. Fighting the fire is only a means to an end -- you have to carefully select which ones to put out in order to save people because you'll never be able to get everything extinguished.

    I'd much rather play a game where my goal is to put out the whole blaze itself. Having that as an alt mode or a mod for this one would be great, as the game itself is well-made and I can't really fault it on its own terms, only on mine.

    2 votes

  2. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 3 Discussion in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Woten (played via Humble App) The best way I can describe this is that it feels like a game jam graduate. You know: somebody had a neat idea that they threw together quickly, realized they had...

    Woten (played via Humble App)

    The best way I can describe this is that it feels like a game jam graduate. You know: somebody had a neat idea that they threw together quickly, realized they had something good on their hands, and then fleshed it out for a full release.

    It’s a puzzleish-platformer that feels like it would fit right in with the Game Boy Advance library.

    Levels are single screen, with the main limitation being that your little adventurer in a cute horned hat can’t jump very high. Instead, he’s reliant on other things to help him with his verticality, including his bat friend who can fly him over large obstacles.

    Initially I thought that this was going to be included in the game mechanically, letting you call on the bat (and feed him his favorite fruits) in certain circumstances, but it turns out all the bat scenes are predetermined. They’re chapter breaks, essentially.

    Instead, the game is all about using your limited movement set, the environment, and deeper-than-expected movement tech to navigate the world. It reminded me a bit of Leap Year in that regard. There were times where I was stumped on how to get a collectible and just decided to move on, only to, in a later screen, realize that there was something I could have done to get it because I uncovered a new way to do something.

    The world is linear and contiguous and doesn’t let you backtrack, so you have to either get things the first time or replay the game (even after beating it, it doesn’t have a level select option). This isn’t too big of an imposition — I think it took me maybe 2 hours to finish, and I could certainly do it faster on a second go-around.

    I’m not planning on doing a second playthrough for the Burner, but I am going to keep the game installed — partly because it’s endangered but mostly because I genuinely might go back and try for a 100% run. I got a bad ending 😭 and I’m thinking maybe there’s a better one if I get all the things.

    If you’ve got the Humble App, then I’d say this is worth a playthrough (provided you like the genre, of course). It’s a cute little hidden gem.

    3 votes

  3. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 3 Discussion in ~games

    kfwyre
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Kaamos (played via Indie Pass) This takes place in the same universe as Vartio and features the same unsettling atmosphere conveyed with well-done minimalistic pixel art. I almost picked Vartio...

    Kaamos (played via Indie Pass)

    This takes place in the same universe as Vartio and features the same unsettling atmosphere conveyed with well-done minimalistic pixel art.

    I almost picked Vartio for slow-burn but ended up choosing absence instead, so I'm glad that I can circle back to that square and fill it with this game. The game is almost a match 3 game, but instead of swapping tiles, you can move an entire row or column as many spaces as you want. The board is made up of different symbols based on your equipment. Match swords, and you attack. Match shields, and you block damage. As you progress in the game, you gain new equipment that changes the composition of your board. The boots you get might add more sword symbols, but take away shields.

    The resulting game is a simple, elegant mix of match 3, RPG, and roguelike. I say it's a slow-burn because the progression is very gradual. You don't suddenly find a sword that makes you super powerful, you have to slowly shift the tile allocations in your favor in pickup after pickup.

    I played through two rounds on my computer and enjoyed it, but the game is clearly a mobile game that has been ported. I like it enough though that I ended up buying it for my phone and will continue to play it there.

    There's nothing fundamentally wrong with playing it on PC, but it's clearly intended for phones first. It's got a portrait orientation, a touch-intended control scheme, and would work well with small sessions where you pick it up and put it down frequently.

    3 votes

  4. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 3 Discussion in ~games

    kfwyre
    (edited )
    Link
    I’m still repping Team Motivated, still going for that full blackout, and still trying to do it entirely with games that aren’t on Steam. Flow Custom bingo 15/25 ✅ Mr Rescue ✅ Heeey! Park-Boy ✅...

    I’m still repping Team Motivated, still going for that full blackout, and still trying to do it entirely with games that aren’t on Steam.

    Flow Custom bingo 15/25
    Ascent
    ✅ Mr Rescue    		 Happiness
    ✅ Heeey! Park-Boy    		 Style
    ✅ Assault on Proxima    		 Niche
    ✅ Blast Rush LS    		 Absence
    ✅ Vartio
    Resistance Contrast Causality Increment
    ✅ Aris Arcanum    		 Defense
    ✅ Cards and Towers
    Choice Humor
    ✅ Elephant in the Room    		 ★ Wildcard Vision Slow-burn
    ✅ Kaamos
    Love Simple
    ✅ Donna: The Canine Quest    		 Tradition
    ✅ Blue Maiden    		 Order
    ✅ THOR.N    		 Unlock
    Pride Uncertainty
    ✅ Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective    		 Transformation
    ✅ Subserial Network    		 Verticality
    ✅ Woten    		 Chaos
    2 votes

  5. Comment on Rebecca Black - Fame Is a Gun (live, 2025) in ~music

  7. Comment on Three Cheers for Tildes: App updates and feedback (May 2026) — Version 1.6 adds "Find in comments" in ~tildes

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    That link is clickable for me on version 1.5.2 for iOS.

    That link is clickable for me on version 1.5.2 for iOS.

    3 votes

  8. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 3 Discussion in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link
    Pinging all Backlog Burner participants/conversationalists: here's the new topic for the week. TEAM MOTIVATED: ALWAYS. BE. HUSTLING! Team Mellow: Keep calm and carry on. Notification List @1338...

    Pinging all Backlog Burner participants/conversationalists: here's the new topic for the week.

    TEAM MOTIVATED: ALWAYS. BE. HUSTLING!

    Team Mellow: Keep calm and carry on.

    Notification List

    @1338
    @BailerAppleby
    @Bullmaestro
    @CannibalisticApple
    @dannydotcafe
    @Durinthal
    @Eidolon
    @J-Chiptunator
    @JCPhoenix
    @kingofsnake
    @ShroudedScribe
    @sotix
    @Wes

    If you would like to be removed from/added to the list, let me know either here or by PM.

    7 votes

  9. May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 3 Discussion

    ~games Text 387 words
    Week 3 has begun! Post your current bingo cards. Continue updating us on your games! If you did not participate in Week 1 but want to start this week, that's fine! Reminder: playing bingo is...

    Week 3 has begun!

    Post your current bingo cards.
    Continue updating us on your games!

    If you did not participate in Week 1 but want to start this week, that's fine!
    Reminder: playing bingo is OPTIONAL.

    Quick links:

    Week 2 Recap

    11 participants played 9 bingo cards and moved 28 games out of their backlogs!

    Team Mellow

    Team Motivated

    All but one are listed above.

    u/Wes

    Is he still Mellow? Or did he join the Motivateds?

    He played three different games, which seems very motivated...

    ...but mellow is also a state of mind, a pace, a vibe that he rolls with.

    So the question lingers: with whom will he stand?

    Game list:

    Week 1 Recap

    Week 1 Recap

    ⚔️🛡️ Battle lines have been drawn. 🛡️⚔️

    Team Mellow

    Calm, easygoing, relaxed (<3 games played this week)

    Team Motivated

    Driven, energized, results-oriented (≥3 games played this week, or, like, only one game played but for a LONG time)

    Who will come out on top? Which team will reign supreme? What metric will we even use to determine what counts as a win? STAY TUNED.

    11 participants played 10 bingo cards and moved 24 games out of their backlogs!

    Game list:

    12 votes

  10. Comment on Save Point: A game deal roundup for the week of May 10 in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link
    Fanatical Capcom Classics Bundle - GOG Edition GOG bundles are rare, and this brings the GOG re-releases of the original Resident Evil trilogy and Dino Crisis duet to their lowest prices so far....

    Fanatical Capcom Classics Bundle - GOG Edition

    GOG bundles are rare, and this brings the GOG re-releases of the original Resident Evil trilogy and Dino Crisis duet to their lowest prices so far.

    It’s worth noting that GOG put in effort themselves to spruce up these re-releases to get them running on modern hardware.

    There are Steam releases of these as well but, quite bafflingly, they have DRM, so the GOG editions are genuinely the best ones out there on account of being DRM-free.

    5 votes

  11. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Three games in a single week? Ten full hours in just one of them? Nearly immediately filling your own self-determined goal to play PTCG2? You're starting to look the slightest bit (dare I say...

    Three games in a single week? Ten full hours in just one of them? Nearly immediately filling your own self-determined goal to play PTCG2?

    You're starting to look the slightest bit (dare I say it?)... motivated.

    2 votes

  12. Comment on Save Point: A game deal roundup for the week of May 10 in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link
    Sunderfolk and Batman: The Telltale Series are this week’s freebies on Epic. I utterly adored Sunderfolk and gushed about it at length here. It is a fantastic multiplayer game, and is good for...

    Sunderfolk and Batman: The Telltale Series are this week’s freebies on Epic.

    I utterly adored Sunderfolk and gushed about it at length here.

    Imagine if someone took the Jackbox model (one main game screen, everybody plays on their phones), subtracted out the comedy, and added in a full tabletop RPG campaign and rules. That's Sunderfolk.

    It is a fantastic multiplayer game, and is good for seasoned TTRPG players and newbies alike. The phone integration is very well done.

    I’d normally say it’s absolutely worth the money, but, given that it’s free, I’ll simply say it’s absolutely worth a look. My friends and I played it entirely remotely, streaming the screen on Discord while all playing from our phones.

    3 votes

  13. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Not that I'm encouraging anyone to buy any new games this month or anything, but this one just went on sale on Steam for 90% off.

    Not that I'm encouraging anyone to buy any new games this month or anything, but this one just went on sale on Steam for 90% off.

    2 votes

  14. Comment on Save Point: A game deal roundup for the week of May 10 in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    All bangers. This is practically a must-buy if you don't own any of them, but I assume that a lot of people already have several of these. I'll highlight Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night as a...

    All bangers.

    This is practically a must-buy if you don't own any of them, but I assume that a lot of people already have several of these.

    I'll highlight Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night as a standout (though, genuinely, they are all standouts). It's the spiritual successor to Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and is like, THE perfect game for the Steam Deck.

    I know this because I didn't actually play it on my Steam Deck. I played it before the Deck came out. I was chilling on vacation at the time, and I set my laptop in my lap and connected a gamepad to it and played it for like, 40 hours that way. If I was willing to see it all the way through to 100% completion with my janky proto-Deck setup, then I can confirm that it's definitely worth the time on an actual handheld.

    5 votes

  15. Comment on The possibly endangered games of the Humble App in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Yeah, the old one really felt like if GOG could just have every old game instead of only the ones they had the rights to. And unlike some downloads from sketchy abandonware sites, the files were...

    Yeah, the old one really felt like if GOG could just have every old game instead of only the ones they had the rights to. And unlike some downloads from sketchy abandonware sites, the files were clean. It was beautiful.

    That said, my info might have been wrong about the rolling release window. This article on the shutdown says they didn’t allow anything past 2004. So, my memory about the specifics of the embargo might be wrong. Either way, they made sure to disallow new games in part to keep their profile down but also because the site was much more about archiving gaming history than it was pure piracy.

    Them getting taken down in 2013 for hosting, among other things, FIFA ‘98, is just… really sad.

    I’m glad the spirit of the site is living on in the tracker you’re in though (and undoubtedly in others too). Game archivists are some of the most dedicated and thorough people out there. I just wish that it all didn’t have to be hidden away behind walled communities, but I don’t fault the trackers for that in the slightest.

    3 votes

  16. Comment on The possibly endangered games of the Humble App in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    That’s genuinely good to hear and a nice real-world reminder that trackers like that are some of the best places for media preservation. I used to be on a game tracker that has long since shut...

    That’s genuinely good to hear and a nice real-world reminder that trackers like that are some of the best places for media preservation.

    I used to be on a game tracker that has long since shut down, but it had an embargo period of 5 years (I think?), so you couldn’t upload newer games to the site (i.e. in 2012, you were allowed to upload games released in 2007 or before).

    I really liked that policy because it meant that the site wasn’t a place where people were just downloading the newest hotness instead of paying for it, and it instead was a very organized catalog of gaming history. Shame it got shut down. I feel like a lot of good stuff was probably lost when it did.

    11 votes

  17. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    You could have just a few scattered categories in select squares and then fill in the rest of the boxes with conveyor belts.

    You could have just a few scattered categories in select squares and then fill in the rest of the boxes with conveyor belts.

    4 votes

  18. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games

    kfwyre
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    (See that @Wes, my numbers are growing!) Welcome to the fold. Now that you mention it though, putting 35 hours into a single game in such a short amount of time is only something a highly...

    (See that @Wes, my numbers are growing!)

    Welcome to the fold.

    Now that you mention it though, putting 35 hours into a single game in such a short amount of time is only something a highly motivated individual would do, so I've retconned the topic text to place you with the appropriate team for last week too.

    This was done ENTIRELY out of a THOROUGHLY IMPARTIAL sense of fairness, by the way, and not just because it helps my numbers. ;)

    3 votes

  19. The possibly endangered games of the Humble App

    ~games Ask
    Background: While playing games for the Backlog Burner, I was surprised to learn that the Humble App (which is a "free" perk of having a Humble Choice subscription) has a few games that are...

    Background:

    While playing games for the Backlog Burner, I was surprised to learn that the Humble App (which is a "free" perk of having a Humble Choice subscription) has a few games that are actually exclusive to it.

    Part of the reason I chose to play games from the Humble App is that I don't expect it'll be around much longer. It isn't getting updates or new games added to it. Also, Humble Games, the publishing arm of Humble which released many of the games available through the app, was abruptly dissolved in 2024.

    With this in mind, I went through the entire current library for the Humble App and tried to identify games that I could not find available for purchase/download elsewhere.

    Below is a list of games that I consider to be "endangered" because they might become unplayable/lost media if (i.e. when) the Humble App does shut down or stop working.

    If you've got the Humble App, it might be worth playing some of these sooner rather than later.

    If you've got game preservation sensibilities, it might make sense to download and archive these for posterity.

    Game List:

    Here are the games that are, as best as I can tell, Humble App exclusives and in danger of being lost permanently.

    For each title below, I tried to find a decent link that gave information about the game. Many of these simply don't have a lot of online presence.

    Some of them have Steam pages linked, but in those cases, they're just placeholders and you cannot actually buy the game.

    Feel free to check my work and let me know if I missed any, or if some of these games are actually officially obtainable outside Humble and I didn't find them.

    Also let me know if I whiffed any of the links or if you find better ones for any of the games.

    25 votes

  20. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games

    kfwyre
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I don’t feel like you’re arguing at all. Quite the contrary, I’m loving the intensity of your writeups! You’re embodying the Team Motivated spirit through and through. I think the only reason I...

    I don’t feel like you’re arguing at all. Quite the contrary, I’m loving the intensity of your writeups! You’re embodying the Team Motivated spirit through and through.

    I think the only reason I have a pulse on the wider FNaF/Bendy situation is that, being a teacher, I’ll occasionally see students with related merch (folders, t-shirts, etc.). My thought is that if it’s big enough that kids are wearing it, then it’s at least reached minor-cultural-phenomenon status.

    Not that this is an endorsement of these series or anything, and I think your criticisms are entirely valid. I’m just trying to speak to the (what I think is) rather surprising reception and resonance these games have.

    2 votes