kfwyre's recent activity

  1. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 5(ish) Discussion in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    The “thing” in this game isn’t as big as in that other one (at least, I assume it isn’t — I haven’t actually done it yet so who knows?), but it’s still pretty cool.

    The “thing” in this game isn’t as big as in that other one (at least, I assume it isn’t — I haven’t actually done it yet so who knows?), but it’s still pretty cool.

    1 vote

  2. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 5(ish) Discussion in ~games

    kfwyre
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    DEAD LETTER DEPT. (played via Steam) Now that I’ve met my goal of filling my card with non-Steam games, I can finally play Steam ones guilt free DEAD LETTER DEPT. is somehow not in the DEAD SPACE...

    DEAD LETTER DEPT. (played via Steam)

    Now that I’ve met my goal of filling my card with non-Steam games, I can finally play Steam ones guilt free AND OVERCHARGE MY CARD TO THE MAXIMUM.

    DEAD LETTER DEPT. is somehow not in the DEAD SPACE universe (or is it?). Despite this obvious flaw, I’m happy to report that this is exactly my kind of horror game.

    It’s short, doesn’t overstay its welcome, and is almost entirely reliant on a smartly executed slow-burn buildup of dread. I can’t say that there aren’t jumpscares in the game (that there are some quick, unexpected moments), but I can say that those are exceedingly well done and don’t come across as the often schlocky, cheap spooks that the term “jumpscare” often brings to mind.

    In the game, your character’s actual job is to type up the text on letters and packages that couldn’t be identified by the postal service’s OCR algorithm. In effect, you’re solving CAPTCHAs all day to make your rent money.

    Of course, as you play, things start to get weird in that horror-game kind of way. I won’t say more specifically because discovering it for yourself is most of the fun.

    What I will say is this:

    The game really impressed me on my playthrough. I thought it was superbly executed, though I did feel it was a touch too straightforward and rote.

    I got to an ending, and the game notified me that it was one of several. Interesting! There are multiple endings. That surprised me, because the game lacks a lot of explicit choices and you’re pretty strongly railroaded.

    So I snuck a peek at a guide.

    And that’s when I found out that there’s a whole big “thing” in the game that I flat out missed. Not like, an area I didn’t go to or anything, but a significant, game-changing “thing” that I didn’t figure out in my playthrough.

    I know being vague is annoying, but I’m again trying to avoid spoilers. For anyone who’s played the game or doesn’t care about spoiling it:

    Bigtime spoilers

    I didn’t realize you could mail letters to yourself. I did the one that’s built in to the narrative, but it never occurred to me that I could do it for other letters too.

    I just dutifully always typed the text as written and got the Possession ending for it, which, well, yeah, it’s hard to argue that it should have gone any other way given that I just blindly followed the instructions. Sometimes I contemplate the severity my lawful alignment…

    It’s not that the game hides it from you or anything, by the way. In fact, it clues you into it pretty strongly, but I completely missed it. I didn’t put the pieces together. What this means is that I can now go back and play the game again with that newfound player knowledge and fundamentally change my experience (which I intend to do). That’s very cool, and again affirms that this game is really smartly designed and executed.

    I’ll put one more spoiler tag below for what I felt was the game’s biggest strength:

    Spoilers again

    The buildup of the game’s eventually suffocating, oppressive atmosphere is SO good. I don’t know that I’ve ever played a game that felt this heavy while also not being a chore to play. The game did a great job of keeping you at the keyboard, wanting to keep going, while also crushing you at the same time.

    In that way, it’s a pretty brilliant thematic fulfillment of your character’s situation where they have to keep soldiering on in their increasingly terrible job under the increasingly terrible stress of making rent and their increasingly terrible spiraling.

    One more thing: if anyone does play this, know that there is a setting that lets you save more than once. The game defaults to letting you save once and only once, meaning that you are forced to complete it in a maximum of two sittings.

    There’s a thematic reason for this, but I toggled the save option on and did it in four shorter gaming sessions instead. It also will help you out if you happen to get interrupted and have to quit out unexpectedly. Without the save toggle on, you’d have to restart the whole game (did I mention the game deletes your one save immediately after you load it?).

    So yeah, turn on the save setting to prevent future grief.

    4 votes

  3. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 5(ish) Discussion in ~games

    kfwyre
    (edited )
    Link
    Three days left! I have so many games I still want to try to cram in! Can I do it? OF COURSE I CAN, THAT’S THE MOTIVATED WAY! Flow Custom bingo ✅ 25/25 ✅ Mr Rescue ✅ Heeey! Park-Boy ✅ Assault on...

    Three days left! I have so many games I still want to try to cram in!

    Can I do it?

    OF COURSE I CAN, THAT’S THE MOTIVATED WAY!

    Flow Custom bingo ✅ 25/25
    Ascent
    ✅ Mr Rescue    		 Happiness
    ✅ Heeey! Park-Boy    		 Style
    ✅ Assault on Proxima    		 Niche
    ✅ Blast Rush LS    		 Absence
    ✅ Vartio
    Resistance
    ✅ Zodiac XX    		 Contrast
    ✅ Quiet City    		 Causality
    ✅ Forgotten 23    		 Increment
    ✅ Aris Arcanum    		 Defense
    ✅ Cards and Towers
    Choice
    ✅ Crescent Bay    		 Humor
    ✅ Elephant in the Room    		 ★ Wildcard
    ✅ Keyboard Sports    		 Vision
    ✅ Rogue Mansion    		 Slow-burn
    ✅ Kaamos
    Love
    ✅ SuperTuxKart    		 Simple
    ✅ Donna: The Canine Quest    		 Tradition
    ✅ Blue Maiden    		 Order
    ✅ THOR.N    		 Unlock
    ✅ Roman Sands
    Pride
    ✅ co-open    		 Uncertainty
    ✅ Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective    		 Transformation
    ✅ Subserial Network    		 Verticality
    ✅ Woten    		 Chaos
    ✅ Pie in the Sky

    CARD OVERLOAD METER ( 1 2 - - - - - - - )

    • DEAD LETTER DEPT.
    • Dead Space Demake
    4 votes

  4. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 5(ish) Discussion in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link
    Pinging all Backlog Burner participants/conversationalists: here's the last weekly discussion topic (though it's really only for 3 days). IMPORTANT: Please put all Backlog Burner entries in this...

    Pinging all Backlog Burner participants/conversationalists: here's the last weekly discussion topic (though it's really only for 3 days).

    IMPORTANT: Please put all Backlog Burner entries in this topic before June 1st, so that I can fully count everything for our final recap topic.

    You will get one more ping from me on June 1st when the recap topic goes live. That will be your place to summarize your time with the event, gush about your favorite games, compliment others on their bingo wins, etc.

    Until then:

    • TEAMOTIVATED: THE DEADLINE IS LOOMING MAKE SURE YOU'RE MAKING IT HAPPEN GIVE 110% AND THEN GIVE 110% MORE THIS IS YOUR MOMENT

    • teamellow: So, there's nothing better than a gentle wind down, yeah?

    Notification List

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

    3 votes

  5. May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 5(ish) Discussion

    ~games Text 623 words
    Only a few days left! Post your current bingo cards. Continue updating us on your games! Quick links: Backlog Bingo Site Week 4 Discussion Week 3 Discussion Week 2 Discussion Week 1 Discussion...

    Only a few days left!

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

    Quick links:

    Week 4 Recap

    11 participants played 9 bingo cards and moved 43 games out of their backlogs!

    There were three bingo wins. Congratulations to u/CannibalisticApple, u/kfwyre, u/Wes! 🎉
    There was one betrayal. u/Wes will go on trial following the conclusion of this event

    teamellow

    TEAMOTIVATED

    Y'all are going to have to wait on the game list. I got my allergy shots today and they wreck me, so I don't have the energy to link up everything right now. I'll get to it tomorrow. Sorry!

    Week 3 Recap

    11 participants played 10 bingo cards and moved 37 games out of their backlogs!

    There was one bingo win. Congratulations to u/ShroudedScribe! 🎉

    Team mmmeeeelllllllooooowwwwwww

    Team MO! - TI! - VA! - TED!

    Game list:

    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.

    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:

    7 votes

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

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    I had no idea! That's fantastic news. Insta-wishlisted.

    I had no idea! That's fantastic news. Insta-wishlisted.

    2 votes

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

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    But like, the win is RIGHT THERE! HOW CAN YOU NOT?! Also your passage about the guilt of having "unplayed" time on Steam could not hit more close to home. Shortly after Steam released those...

    Let it be known far and wide that dannydotcafe never betrayed the sacred principles of Team Mellow!

    But like, the win is RIGHT THERE! HOW CAN YOU NOT?!

    Note: secretly I admire your conviction, but, as a Team Motivated diehard, I would never admit that publicly.

    Also your passage about the guilt of having "unplayed" time on Steam could not hit more close to home.

    Shortly after Steam released those (annoying) trading card drops for games and you could get actual real money out of them because they were the new hotness, I ran an idler on my account.

    In theory, it played one game at a time, waiting until the game dropped all its cards, and then moved on to the next one. Also, in theory, I only queued it up for games I had no actual intention of ever playing.

    And it worked really well. For a bit.

    But then one time I left it to run and came back to find out that not only did it not stop idling after the card drops were done, but it also wasn't running one game at a time. No, it randomly chose ~20 games and ran them concurrently. For over 20 hours.

    I used to love to sort my Steam library by total playtime as a way of looking at my most-played games the way people love their Spotify Wrapped each year. Not only could I not do this anymore because so much of the list was populated by stolen valor, but I also felt simultaneously obligated to play the games out of guilt but also not wanting to play them at all because doing so would push their playtime even FARTHER up!

    That was well over 10 years ago and I'm still bothered by it. One of these days I'll download them all, throw Steam in offline mode, and try them all out or something, just to close the door on them.

    2 votes

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

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Between the squirrels and the crabs, you've got cute animal games on lock. New bingo category list idea: animals. NOTHING BUT ANIMALS.

    Between the squirrels and the crabs, you've got cute animal games on lock.

    New bingo category list idea: animals. NOTHING BUT ANIMALS.

    1 vote

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

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Congrats on the bingo! It's perfection that it happened with a squirrel game, which looks really freaking cool. I would say I plan on playing it soon (because of course I already own it), but...

    Congrats on the bingo!

    It's perfection that it happened with a squirrel game, which looks really freaking cool.

    I would say I plan on playing it soon (because of course I already own it), but that's what I thought about Squirrel With a Gun and I STILL haven't gotten around to it. XD

    Suffice it to say that I've moved it from my backlog of thousands to a special Steam category I keep that has games that I really want to play which has...

    ...hundreds of games in it.

    Hmmmm, I really should cut those down. Maybe I could, like, I don't know, burn through them or something? 🤔

    2 votes

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

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    I absolutely adored Quern. As soon as I finished the game, I thought "I can't wait to play this again in, like, 10 years when I've forgotten mostly everything about it and can re-experience it for...

    I absolutely adored Quern. As soon as I finished the game, I thought "I can't wait to play this again in, like, 10 years when I've forgotten mostly everything about it and can re-experience it for the first(ish) time."

    I checked my GOG account, and it looks like that was 8 years ago, so a replay of this is genuinely around the corner for me!

    Like you, I found it impressive how the game consistently re-used things. I remember reading something by the devs after I had finished that said that they explicitly wanted to avoid "single-use" items to make the world feel more integrated. (I tried finding the article, but couldn't get it to turn up.)

    Also, I think it's awesome that you played it on Discord with your friends (and impressive that you did it in only three sittings!). That's a great way of turning a single-player experience into something shared. My husband and I have earmarked time for a "co-op" run of Blue Prince this summer in the same way: he wants to help with the puzzles but doesn't want to be the one playing, and I want to play it but want a second brain to help me through things!

    2 votes

  11. Comment on Audible mandating authors transition to new royalty system or lose payments in ~books

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Awww man, I can’t believe I’m late to the Libro.fm fan meetup! Glad I didn’t miss it though. I’m always happy to help promote DRM-free media.

    Awww man, I can’t believe I’m late to the Libro.fm cult recruitment fan meetup!

    Glad I didn’t miss it though. I’m always happy to help spread the sacred tenets of our sect promote DRM-free media.

    3 votes

  12. Comment on Save Point: A game deal roundup for the week of May 24 in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Oof. That's a nearly 50% price hike on both. 512 GB Model: $549 -> $789 (44% increase) 1 TB Model: $649 -> $949 (46% increase) You know things are out of whack when my old used tech is somehow...

    Oof.

    That's a nearly 50% price hike on both.

    512 GB Model: $549 -> $789 (44% increase)
    1 TB Model: $649 -> $949 (46% increase)

    You know things are out of whack when my old used tech is somehow appreciating in value.

    3 votes

  13. When did you realize you were different?

    ~talk Ask (survey)
    "Different" can be interpreted in any way, in any context, for any magnitude. When did you realize you were different? What prompted it? How did you feel about it then? Has the difference changed...

    "Different" can be interpreted in any way, in any context, for any magnitude.

    When did you realize you were different?
    What prompted it?
    How did you feel about it then?
    Has the difference changed over time?
    Have your feelings changed over time?

    47 votes

  14. Comment on America’s tech-filled classrooms are facing a backlash against school-assigned devices in ~life

    kfwyre
    Link

    Just a few years ago, America’s public schools were rushing to get every child a laptop. Los Angeles middle school teacher Anna Soffer remembers it well: “The idea was that technology is the future, so we need to put tech in every child’s hands.”

    Now, the conversation has flipped. After pouring billions of dollars into laptops, tablets and learning apps, many schools are facing a digital reckoning. Classrooms have become saturated with screens, and a growing number of parents, teachers and school districts are saying it is time to scale back.

    A sweeping resolution passed last month by the Los Angeles school board requires the district to eliminate devices until second grade; set daily and weekly screen limits for all higher grades; block YouTube on school devices; and ban the use of devices at lunch and recess in elementary and middle school. The district will also audit its education technology contracts, which the teachers union says amount to $1.6 billion.

    The Los Angeles crackdown is adding momentum to calls for reform emerging around the country. In many cases, parents lobbied a few years ago for school cellphone bans, which have now become the norm. Realizing phones weren’t the only classroom distraction, they pivoted to a new target: school-issued devices.

    11 votes

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

    kfwyre
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Dead Space Demake (played via direct install via Proton on Steam Deck) I finished my Bingo card, but that doesn’t mean I need to stop playing games for the month! I still have plenty I could burn...

    Dead Space Demake (played via direct install via Proton on Steam Deck)

    I finished my Bingo card, but that doesn’t mean I need to stop playing games for the month! I still have plenty I could burn through.

    This has been sitting on my Steam Deck for a while, and it’s a fantastic little treat. It’s unfortunately not the full game, which would be awesome, but it’s the opening 30 or so minutes of Dead Space rezzed down to look and feel like it’s running on a PSOne.

    The familiar mechanics are all there: the plasma cutter that you can switch between horizontal and vertical orientations, lengthy-limbed aliens that you dismember to kill, the diegetic health bar on the back of your suit.

    The dev did a great job of simplifying the visuals while keeping the gameplay and locations familiar. I haven’t played Dead Space in probably over 15 years but I still recognized some of the spots you visit in the demo.

    The dev also spliced in FMV from the original game, as well as sound effects and voice clips, which give the demake a very premium feel.

    In fact, when the game opens with its initial cutscene, I saw the rough, uncanny character models and was like “haha, that’s great! classic demake!” until I very realized that those were actually directly from the original 2008 game which hasn’t aged as well as I thought.

    It isn’t until the cutscene ends and the gameplay starts that you’re plunged back into a screen filled with imposter 90s polygonal goodness.

    If you don’t have any fondness for Dead Space then this is easily ignorable, but if you are a fan of the game — and especially if you’re a fan of the game who also likes the extra chunky low-res 3D graphics of yester-yesteryear — then this is a fun little slice.

    Also, it ran perfectly for me on my Steam Deck. I downloaded it, added the shortcut as a non-Steam game, turned on Proton compatibility, and enjoyed hitting aliens with stasis to make their arms easier to remove.

    EDIT: I am apparently quite forgetful. I thought this game was new to me, but after posting this I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d played it before. I searched my comments for “demake” to see if I talked about it here and, sure enough, I apparently played it during the last Backlog Burner and then promptly forgot about it (possibly because I didn’t actually write about it?).

    No wonder the locations were familiar! 🤦‍♂️

    EDIT 2: I’m thinking that last time I didn’t actually finish the game, which is why I didn’t count it for the Backlog Burner back then. I’m pretty sure I started it up to make sure it ran and then maybe played a few minutes to make sure the controls were working, but I don’t think I went through the whole thing. So, I guess I can actually call this current playthrough my “first” one of it, which makes me feel both more and less forgetful at the same time.

    3 votes

  17. Comment on Save Point: A game deal roundup for the week of May 24 in ~games

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

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    SuperTuxKart (played via Flathub on Steam Deck) Love Why did I pick this game for that square? Because this game is a free and open source project that has been in development for over two decades...

    SuperTuxKart (played via Flathub on Steam Deck)

    Love

    Why did I pick this game for that square?

    Because this game is a free and open source project that has been in development for over two decades now. I mean, just check out this history of the project which starts with the original release of TuxKart all the way back in 2000. This game's origins are older than roughly a quarter of our userbase!

    Anyway, if a group of dedicated programmers keeping a beloved game alive and improving it over time, year after year, and doing it all for free isn't love, then I don't know what is.

    Unlike many of the other choices I've played for this event, this is the opposite of an endangered game. It's free and open source and continues to be maintained. It will live on for a long, long time. That's awesome. This is what a healthy gaming ecosystem looks like.

    Getting it up and running on the Steam Deck is dead simple -- go to desktop mode, grab the game from the Discover app, add it as a non-Steam game. Optionally: use SGDBoop in Firefox to give it pretty cover art and a banner. Boot back into game mode, then load it up and play.

    Gamewise, SuperTuxKart feels like a Dreamcast-era kart racer (again, non-derogatory). It's got an old-school appearance and feel which will definitely seem dated by modern standards but will scratch that retro itch for anyone looking for it. I've had a lot of fun with it, playing it off and on between other games. An excellent palate cleanser.

    It's got a hub world with unlockable levels, each with their own challenges. The characters are cute: each of them representing some important open source entity. I forgot all about Pidgin being a thing until I saw them in the game. You can play as KDE's gecko dragon!

    What the game lacks in modern flashiness it makes up for in heart. It feels good to play a labor of love.

    Also of note: the devs have announced that they are making a new entry in the TuxKart series: SuperTuxKart Evolution! I'm already hyped for it, though if the dev time of this game is anything to go by, I might have to wait a bit for it. XD

    Anyway, with that, I have officially completed my

    ULTRA-MOTIVATED GOAL-ORIENTED RESULTS-FOCUSED BLACKOUT BINGO

    Now I can finally boot up Sid Meier's Pirates! for CGA, which I've been putting off ever since I discovered that the Humble App had actual load-bearing games that are dangerously close to collapsing.

    4 votes

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

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Keyboard Sports (played via Humble App) WARNING! WARNING! ENDANGERED! ENDANGERED! This game has a Steam page, but if you go to the forums, there's a post from 2017 asking about the Q1 2018 release...

    Keyboard Sports (played via Humble App)

    WARNING! WARNING! ENDANGERED! ENDANGERED!

    This game has a Steam page, but if you go to the forums, there's a post from 2017 asking about the Q1 2018 release date, so I think it's safe to say that this one is going to be gone once the Humble App sunsets.

    The game is hard to explain in words but is very intuitive to pick up and play. The way it works is that whatever scene your character is in has an overlay of a full keyboard across it. You can then move your character to any area in the scene by pressing the corresponding key, anywhere from Left Ctrl to Backspace, from Right Ctrl to the Tilde!

    The game initially starts you out by having your character simply move to specific locations relatively free of obstacles or urgency before developing into a full almost WarioWare-style series of minigames. You'll have to Frogger your way across busy streets, go ice skating, pick up something from a grocery store, etc.

    The concept is elegant and well-executed. The game is bubbly and charming. The controls are deliberately awkward, but as you play you genuinely do get used to them and skill up, which is essential for the ending sequence of the game which puts you through a gauntlet.

    The game itself is quite short (maybe 30-45 minutes depending on how bad you are at the final level (it did not go well for me)). It's hard to tell if it was intended to be that small or if this is only a playable teaser.

    Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. Normally I'm not a huge fan of intentionally-awkward-control games, but this one is acessible enough that the awkwardness comes more from the novelty of the control scheme rather than anything baked into the design. I could see some speedrunners getting very good at this and absolutely smashing it, by the way. (Note to any speedrunners: this game currently has no leaderboards and thus an unclaimed World Record -- it could be yours!).

    I chose my Wildcard space for this simply because I have something else slotted for my final square: Love.

    3 votes

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

    kfwyre
    (edited )
    Link
    Alright, as part of being a Highly Motivated Participant of this month's Backlog Burner, I have now played all of these. I sorted them into three categories based on what I believe to be their...

    Alright, as part of being a Highly Motivated Participant of this month's Backlog Burner, I have now played all of these. I sorted them into three categories based on what I believe to be their broader appeal.

    "Worth a Look" are games that I consider standouts and that I think a good number of people could enjoy if they’re into the genre/style of the game. "YMMV" are ones I consider far more niche and/or flawed, but at the very least interesting. And "Pass" are ones that I think people can safely ignore without missing out on anything.

    I don't think anything here is a 10/10 must play, but if you like indie games, especially ones that are a little strange, experimental, and rough around the edges, then there's some good stuff on offer.

    If anyone has questions on any of these specifically, I’m happy to talk more about any of them.

    Worth a Look

    • Heeey! Park-Boy

    Feels like a Dreamcast/PS2 game. Lots of charm. Great soundtrack. Quite repetitive.

    • Jawns

    Playable via the web version. Cool little PvP strategy game like chess or checkers. Deserves a mobile release where it would shine.

    • Keyboard Sports

    A game about using every key on your keyboard to control your character. Very charming. Very original.

    • Rogue Mansion

    Check out the demo on Steam or wait for the full release (which seems to actually be in the works). An OG Resident Evil roguelike. Quite well-made.

    • Roman Sands

    Short, surreal VN with first-person navigation, great world design, and top-notch aesthetic and sound.

    • Woten

    Short, adorable little puzzle platformer based on making the most of a limited moveset. Very thoughtfully made.

    • Zodiac XX

    Starfox but underwater. Very cool aesthetic. Gave me motion sickness but I still recommend it.

    YMMV

    • after HOURS

    Tough to recommend or critique. A short FMV game about a person who experienced childhood abuse and suffers concomitant borderline personality disorder as an adult. Ends very abruptly.

    • Crescent Bay

    A demo/teaser for a full game that never got released. Cool investigative mechanics, but the build on offer is essentially just the tutorial.

    • Divinoids

    A more modern version of Rampage. Cool ideas, didn't love the execution. Might eventually release on Steam (the depot was just updated today!).

    • fistful of nothing

    Top-down stealth game. Might be good for those that like stealth games (I don't).

    • Operator

    Hacking sim. I found it tedious, but I can see how some people might like it if they're in the mood for a command-line game.

    • Space Routine

    Clumsy management game where you control different members of a family, sending them to different concurrent tasks and keeping on top of all of their needs. Not my thing but I see how someone could like it.

    • Spoolside

    Very cool conceptually: a 2D platformer in which you can rotate the 3D world on all of its different axes and also moving forwards and backwards moves you through time. Unfortunately, I found actually playing it to be considerably less cool.

    • THOR.N

    First-person incremental game/chore simulator that feels like the introduction to a larger game that never got developed/released.

    • Yojimbrawl

    This is a PvP party game with no computer-controlled opponents, so it's only playable with friends.

    Pass

    • A2Be

    Point and click adventure. Buggy and unsatisfying.

    • Elephant in the Room

    Clumsy 3D stealth game. Needs way more polish.

    • Lyric Sonata

    More of an "experience" than a game where you cruise through different music-inspired worlds. Might be good while high, but I found it unsatisfying sober.

    • The Groundz

    PvP dodgeball game. Cool art, but buggy to the point of being nearly unplayable.

    • Quiet City

    There's nothing fundamentally wrong with this one, it's just very short. More of a playable toy than a full game. Feels like something made for a game jam that never got expanded upon.

    3 votes