Wow, I think that's the first golf win we've seen! Great job! Especially well done on choosing your games to cover as many categories as possible, especially with some rather tricky ones.

I was a little worried about the "balancing" of the game modes, but I'm glad to see that golf was not only doable, but the first completed bingo for this event.

Dominion was the first "deck builder" I've played, which was in person and with physical cards. It was a fun memory, so I'll always have a soft spot for the game, even if I'm not very good at it.

The aggravating thing is that the digital license expires every 5 years or so. At that point the developer of the game/app can no longer sell it, and the license is then transferred to another company that builds a new app. As a result players need to learn a completely new interface each time, and usually some features are changed or lost. Worse, they often change how expansion pack ownership works, so it's very easy to lose access to content you've bought.

Though they do at least offer the base game for free on most platforms, and that's still a lot of fun even without the expansions. And though it keeps getting copyright struck on Tabletop Simulator, there's often a new version uploaded that can be played there with friends.

Okami HD

Oh boy. This game is beautiful, and I think the beauty and gameplay might have been enough to get me to complete it, EXCEPT THAT IT MIGHT BE THE MOST ANNOYING GAME I HAVE EVER HAD THE "PLEASURE" OF PLAYING. My first session was 1 hour and 15 minutes. It was mostly cut-scene, but there were some really interesting takes on gaming in there, and I was actually looking forward to it. I expected an exposition dump at the beginning, because many story driven games have that. I assumed it would get better after I got to the "meat" of the game. My second session was 30 minutes. Not because I didn't want to play more, but because there was about 3 minutes of actual gameplay in those 30 minutes. And that little gameplay was a boring 2 stage fetch quest to do something that I had the ability to do before the quest (at least according to the game lore; I actually saw that resolution coming and attempted to complete the objective without the quest but it was scripted).

Did I mention that the text speed is incredibly slow, and about 2/3 of the dialog interactions are unskippable? So after that FUN interaction, I decided to try and find out if this game was almost done being annoying. That's when I found this reddit thread: Okami is a lovely game that does all it can to stop you from playing it. I read a bit through that thread and decided to put the game down forever and never look back. It is a beautiful game, but the experience it provides is not what I want out of a game. Sorry Okami, you might be a really cool game, but I want noting more to do with you.

Crypt of the necrodancer

This is a really well done game. I am clearly not very good at rhythm games, so I didn't end up playing this very much. I liked how well done it is. I never felt like I was being punished by the game. Every mistake felt like my fault in some way. Ill be keeping it installed and be playing it in the future.

Wizard of Legend

I don't really have a lot to say on this game. I needed something that used cards, and the enemies technically (sometimes) spawn from cards. It's a stretch, but I couldn't find anything else suitable in this role. I was hoping this would be a rougelike recreation of Magica, one of my all time favorite games, but it isn't. If you like roguelikes, I think you will love this game. I don't really need another roguelike game in my life right now, so I put it down pretty quick.

Released before you were born
✔ Quake

Thanks for making me feel old! Hope you enjoyed it!

ScourgeBringer is an interesting one. It's a roguelike with a mix of modern and retro mechanics. The gameplay is precise, and I suspect it has a high skill ceiling, yet it's also heavy on button-mashing. The game is frenetic through and through.

Essentially you are exploring a grid of rooms to clear out any baddies that spawn. And they do spawn quite a lot. Typically you need to clear each room twice before the doors will open, and then you move to the next room and repeat the process. Getting around is a bit slow at the start (or maybe I'm just slow).

The levels are procedural, so I've slotted this into the Procedural Generation category. Unfortunately, the gameplay has not really hooked me. I prefer more methodical action roguelikes such as Dead Cells or Rogue Legacy. It's entirely possible that I'm just playing it wrong, but the button clicks per minute just seem way too high on this one for me.

The game is also available on Android if you're partial to that form factor. I wanted to try it on desktop first, but I don't think it's the kind of game I could handle on mobile, so I'll give it a miss there.

One thing I do like is that the upgrades seem pretty meaningful, which makes it feel nice when you unlock something for your next run. Those big hits in meta-progression are always one of my favourite parts about these games.

Still, the general gameplay is a bit too button-mashy for me, so I'm going to put it down here. I'm sure it does appeal to others though.

I played Trailmakers for about three hours last night. It's similar to a game I played during last year's event, Main Assembly, but with a greater focus on unlocking parts and navigating an open world (versus closed-off missions).

I'm going to cheekily put this in the "You can create your own character" category, because building vehicles (that you control) is the main point of the game.

I quite liked what I played. It starts off a little slow because you don't have any parts yet, but once you start collecting a few power cores and the tractor beam, you're able to get around a lot more rapidly and begin scaling up.

At this point I've created specialized land and sea vehicles, but haven't collected enough to start building airplanes yet. It's really interesting to come up with unique solutions to collect difficult parts - such as building a long arm on one side of your vehicle to prod the part off a pillar, and then adding weight to your other side to balance things out.

I think this is a longer-term game that I'll dip into when feeling creative rather than one to power through in an evening, so I'll have more to say in the future. So far I'm really enjoying it though!

Next I played Cook-Out, which is a VR title. Cook-out is a game all about time management, thus I've put it in the "Has a time limit" category. The gameplay is fairly simple: customers will continually submit sandwich orders, and your job is to fill them by matching the ingredients in the right amounts and order to satisfy the customer.

Supposedly this is like the game Overcooked, though I've not played that so I can't compare. It does remind me though of Ore no Ryomi, or its spiritual successor Cook, Serve, Delicious!.

Because it's a VR game, controls play a big part of it. Instead of just clicking on a pepper shaker, you are physically shaking it over the plate. You need to squeeze down the mustard with your controller grips, and toss items around in a physical space.

The game seems to be designed for multiplayer, but in singleplayer mode they introduce a robot companion that takes on the role of a second player. Instead of having access to all ingredients yourself, the robot has their own set of ingredients that you need for your orders, and they need access to your ingredients for orders they've started. You need to watch to make sure you don't get tunnel vision on your own orders while leaving customers waiting and turning unhappy.

Cook-Out is probably best-served in multiplayer, but I thought their solution with the robot was fairly clever and still gives you a good idea of what to expect with friends.

The game does feature some RPG mechanics which I felt didn't quite fit with the rest of it. You can apply a potion before a round to make certain tasks easier, and collect coins for upgrades. I didn't think the game really needed this kind of meta-progression outside of the levels, but I suppose it does add replayability for those who want to unlock everything.

The developer, Resolution Games, makes a lot of the better VR games. If I have one complaint though, it's that they always force you to accept their terms of service and privacy policy at the beginning of the game, right after you've slapped on your headset, with no way to review their contents. The links are unclickable, which means you need to manually type in the URLs just to understand what kind of tracking they use. It's very frustrating if you're one of the few people that reads these things. But that's my one complaint.

Overall I enjoyed the game, and plan to go back and play a few more rounds. My play time is still low, but something about VR games makes 30 minutes feel like an hour, so I'm willing to submit this one a little earlier than I otherwise might.

To the Moon! It's a game I've been hearing great things about for years, and though I always intended to play it, I never got around to it until this week.

I understand the hype now. I don't want to oversell it because it is a more subtle game, but Freebird Games wrote a beautiful script for this title. The story was emotional without being saccharine. It had depth, yet didn't overstay its welcome. I found it very enjoyable.

There's more I'd love to touch on regarding specific story threads, and in particular some things that went unsaid (but that I think I can connect with). However I will restrain myself from giving too much away. I will just say that the writing felt mature and considerate; believable and lived-in.

Accompanying the script was a very nice piano-based soundtrack. It used strong motifs that made the OST feel consistent, but there were variations throughout each track that suited each section of the story well. In particular, the lyrical track based on the primary theme was quite powerful for me. I'm sure I've heard some of these tracks before, maybe referenced in game design videos or just my own online listening, but it really feels like a gestalt part of the game and its story. Neither aspect would be complete if standing alone.

I've chosen this game for the "Steam Awards nomination" category, which feels quite apt. It was nominated in both 2016 and 2017 for story-related awards.

The only thing preventing an entirely positive review is that the game engine used was rather clunky to play on. There weren't any game settings, and the whole game played letterboxed. The mouse controls were a little unreliable, and I only learned in the final act that keyboard controls had been available the whole time.

Don't let that turn you off the game though. Bad controls can kill a lot of games, but are less impactful in pure adventure games like this one. Its strengths far outshine its weaknesses, and To the Moon is still very much worth your time.

There are two more "minisodes" included with the game that I haven't played yet, as well as two full sequels, each with excellent reviews. Suffice it to say, they have been added to my backlog to fill the gap that To The Moon left. A strong consideration for the next backlog burner in November.

My next title is Mirror's Edge: Catalyst. I'd planned to put this in the "Uses a unique control scheme" category, but in hindsight the controls themselves are pretty standard and it's the physics that are unique. So instead I've put this under "Has a skill tree". Yes, apparently Catalyst does feature a skill tree.

So I loved the first Mirror's Edge, and have played through it numerous times. It's like Portal where it's a short, punchy game that offered groundbreaking gameplay when it released. It's easy to play through either game in a couple nostalgia-filled sessions.

Sequels though always grow the scope, and Catalyst is no exception. It's actually an open-world world title, and is only punchy insofar that they've increased the amount of combat from the first game. Thankfully the combat is at least somewhat integrated into the momentum mechanics, unlike the first game's inclusion of guns, but combat is still the weakest part of the series and I was disappointed to see it make a return.

Being open-world, it does feature all the usual tropes like random collectables, scattered quests, and a map GPS. There was a time that I loved open worlds but I really don't feel like I have the energy for them these days. Perhaps I waited too long before trying Catalyst.

The city does feel well-designed. There's fewer "set pieces" than the first game because it's not a tight, linear path. Instead there's many viable paths to reach your destination. I found right away that turning down the "Runner Vision" feature made a big difference. Rather than following the GPS line showing you exactly where to go, you can enable the colored highlights like in the first game that still offer some hints while letting you choose your own path.

So am I going to finish this one? Probably not. I'm happy to explore the new city for a while though, and I will play through a few more missions. The HowLongToBeat time does suggest it's only 8.5 hours for the main story, so maybe I will power through it, but I'll definitely not be collecting the 5,000 golden bananas scattered around the city.

When first launching, I had some trouble with Denuvo. Apparently EA's game servers are down, and it refused to progress past the first cutscene unless you're playing in offline mode. With no skip button I ended up having to watch that cutscene five times before finding a solution. Pretty annoying. I really do hope publishers start taking game preservation more seriously, because more and more we're going to see our games breaking from issues like this.

Complaints aside, it does feel great to be back in Mirror's Edge. The visuals, the movement, and the soundtrack are just as good as I remember. There's nothing like nailing a line through the rooftops to remind yourself that you're still alive.

Coming in with a fresh bingo, I'm submitting Blasphemous for the "You heard about it in our weekly gaming topics" category.

I thought this would be a really easy category. I was wrong. Trawling through the last dozen threads, I couldn't find any games that I already owned, hadn't played, but were on my backlog. That was until I stumbled across this little reference to Blasphemous in April.

First though, a possible confession: This is not the first time I've heard about this game. And more than that, I actually Kickstarted it back in 2017. Technically the category doesn't ask that you first heard about it on Tildes though. I've already called my lawyer and am prepared to defend this technicality to the ends of the Earth.

But really, I was actually thrilled to find this mention because Blasphemous has been sitting on my backlog for years, and I'm ready to stop feeling dumb about helping fund a game that I haven't even played yet. Apparently my name is even in the credits.

So the last time I looked at Blasphemous, it was a simple engine test with blank assets. Now it's a well-reviewed series with a sequel, and with the devs branching out into other spaces (like their VR title All On Board... which I also Kickstarted).

So to the review. I liked it! I'm a huge fan of soulslikes, and seeing all the different takes on that formula always interests me. Blasphemous includes some of the common elements such as estus-style healing, enemies respawning when resting, and a combined currency for upgrades and purchases. Some of the differences come from the death penalty, where you keep your currency but build up (aptly-named) "guilt", and the decision to split up certain interactions like upgrades across the world in a more Metroidvania-style design.

The combat feels pretty good so far, though I'm still unlocking abilities. The charge and plunge attacks add a lot of damage to your repertoire. Parries seem very rewarding which I'm always a fan of. I've felled a couple bosses so far but still have a lot of map left to explore.

The pixel art is great, if a little disturbing at times. The story meanwhile is heavy on lore and text dumps. I couldn't really tell you what's going on, except I know I need to kill the big bads.

So far I'm enjoying the game, and I think there's a good chance I'll finish it. I ought to play more metroidvanias, because I tend to enjoy them whenever I do.

I'll probably begin to slow down on my submissions from here on out, but I wouldn't discount the possibility of another bingo.

For my maybe-final entry, I'm submitting A Short Hike. I'm putting this in the "solo-dev project" category. Although the credits list help for translators and play testers, I think the important thing is the design and development was by a single author.

This was an awfully cute game. You can tell right away from the colour palette that it has a cheery, optimistic vibe. It mixes expressive pixel art with a 3D world to create an inviting place to explore.

The HowLongToBeat for this game lists only an hour and a half, but I spent two and a half hours before finally "beating" it. I spent a long while exploring the main island and surrounding regions, collecting upgrades, helping townsfolk, and hunting for secrets. Actually by the time I started the "hike", I had so much gear that I completely trivialized the whole thing. Oops.

The game features a lot of secrets to find, which always draws me in. I will forever be checking behind waterfalls or examining strange outcropping, so it's nice when a game rewards you for that kind of thing.

Outside of hunting for secrets, there's lots to do. Foot racing, motorboating, digging up coins, growing flowers, or regular old treasure hunting. And I am a sucker for any game with a fishing minigame.

The actual orientation of world confused me at first. It took a while to realize that the map was a 360 degree panorama, and moving left-right actually looped around the world. I found this a little hard to reason about when trying to line up certain flight paths, or just remember where things were relative to each other.

In some ways the game reminded me of Grow Home. They offer a similar "indie" charm (despite Grow Home being created by Ubisoft Reflections), and are focused on collecting upgrades to better ascend. This one definitely focused more on the characters and story though.

The dialogue was interesting. There's a certain style that I'm not sure how to describe. It's as if all of the characters are holding conversations using text messaging rather than speaking face-to-face, if that makes sense. I got a similar sense from Donut County when that released.

A Short Hike is a pleasant game. I'm still missing a couple things so I might even dip back in for more. It was given away free on Epic Game Store previously, as well as included in some of the itch.io mega bundles if you've picked those up. Well worth a play if you've got an hour or two.

Cuphead jumped onto my wishlist as soon as I saw its initial trailer nearly a decade ago. I have a great fondness of cartoons from the early 20th century (and it was clear its creators did as well) and I wanted to support anything that used that kind of aesthetic on principle alone, so I've owned it on Switch and Steam for years without touching it before now. Fortunately it's also a good game, though not an easy one by any means; the choice to focus on a classic run and gun experience ended up giving it the "difficult" tag on Steam and an easy pick for the related square on my card since I don't have anything in the Dark Souls franchise or the like in my library yet.

For me it scratches the same kind of itch as playing uncleared Mario Maker levels: it's a lot of fun when I want to grind at a 2D side scrolling game for a few hours, learning patterns and getting good so to speak, but I need to be in the mood for it so it's just going to be something I pluck away at from time to time.

Super Robot Wars 30 — "Has a campaign longer than 8 hours?" I had 35 hours in my save when I last touched it about a year ago. I've put another 15 hours into it in the past week and I'm still not close to completing the main story.

The franchise is essentially Kingdom Hearts for mecha anime and it plays out as a turn-based tactical strategy game, with more than a dozen different anime series involved with this game alone. This particular entry from 2021 celebrates the 30th anniversary of the franchise but it's the first to be released in the west; I wouldn't be surprised if they wanted to earlier but ran into licensing issues with all the different series that they include (Macross in particular which isn't present in this one), though I imagine it's just as likely they didn't think there would be as much of an audience for it.

The latter's true regardless, this is the kind of game where it's total fanservice if you've seen the anime included and almost impenetrable if you haven't. I've only watched about half of the entries and for some of the ones I haven't I just bounce off their plots because I'm not all that interested in them, but for the ones I have it's a lot of fun to see crossover conversations between characters. For example, McGillis (Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans) wants to take lessons from Lelouch (Code Geass) and Char (Mobile Suit Gundam) for reasons that make sense if you've seen all three but you can only somewhat infer if you haven't. It's fun to watch Ernie (Knight's & Magic and yes that's the correct punctuation in the title and it bothers me) team up with the girls from Magic Knight Rayearth as a group of people who went from Japan to fantasy worlds with magic.

For every protagonist in this game it also feels like they have their antagonists around, so there isn't one main plot but rather more than half a dozen with different villain team-ups happening as well. Somehow the writing fits all of this into one world where things don't necessarily make sense compared to the canon of their original series but you just roll with it.

Plot aside, I think there's a decent amount of tactical depth to the game but I'm also playing it relatively easy rather than taking it as a challenge on higher difficulty levels. Pilots and mecha both have their own stats and abilities and can be switched around if you so desire, but so far I've mostly been sticking with the original pairings and rolling across maps that way.

Is it a good game if you aren't intimately familiar with a dozen different mecha series? Eh... probably not. Am I going to continue having fun sending Chirico in his 4m tall Scopedog to take down super robots more than ten times larger? Absolutely.

A few years ago I played Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King, a 2D action-adventure game heavily inspired by The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past which is one of my all-time favorites. I quite enjoyed it and last year discovered that the sequel, Blossom Tales II: The Minotaur Prince, had come out so I picked that up too but didn't immediately play it. This is a perfect candidate for a game that "has both combat and puzzles" so I played through it over the past few days.

While the sequel doesn't have much of a direct story tie-in to the first game, they're both framed as stories being told to a couple of kids by their grandfather with him providing narration and the kids occasionally interjecting. They also offer choices that don't affect the overall story but are there for flavor, like what enemy you might encounter in a fight or which musical instrument you pick up. If you die in combat that might be cited as grandpa getting distracted for a moment before resuming the story or him trying to trick the kids before telling them what really happened. It's all cute and a great setup for a kid-friendly adventure story.

It's also generous with quality of life improvements compared to A Link to the Past, like the grandpa reminding you what your next objective is when you load a save and the fast travel system being available early on. There's minimal backtracking in dungeons with a lot of shortcuts available once you've advanced through rooms and the dungeon layouts are straightforward enough that it's usually fairly obvious where you need to go next. Health refills are plentiful outside of boss battles if you're low and even dying just resets the room so being bad at combat doesn't have much of a downside until you get stuck on a boss for a few tries.

The first time I came across a new type of puzzle it might have taken me a few minutes to figure out what the objective was and how to properly interact with it, but once that's down there was nothing terribly difficult and the introductory puzzle of its kind was always pretty simple which is good to ease you in. They're mostly standard types of things that I've seen in 2D Pokémon and Zelda like block pushing and a couple of variations on walking a path in a specific pattern.

I was able to breeze through the story in ~6.5 hours and I'm quite happy with that, I wanted something like A Link to the Past with a little novelty to it and that's exactly what I got. There are a lot of optional bits that I skipped out on so I think a completionist time would be closer to double that, though some of them seemed rather tedious like a lot of back-and-forth for mail delivery.

Storyteller is a puzzle game that was "already installed" on my Steam Deck so a quick check for that square. It has a dynamic comic style where you build out a scene over multiple panels with a setting and characters in each to solve each puzzle, e.g. one objective could be "the murderer is haunted by their victim" which would require giving one character a gun in the first panel, making them shoot someone in the second, then having the other character return as a ghost in the third. It's a fun mechanic and a few of the scenarios made me chuckle (one is titled "Godot" with a very straightforward goal).

I got to the main credits at 66% complete in just over two hours so it's quite short, and while I enjoyed what I did I don't have much of an urge to go for 100% right now.