No new additions so just copying my card over:

Finished (5): A Year of Springs, Final Fantasy III, a new life., Storyteller, Blossom Tales 2

Still playing (3): Final Fantasy IV, Super Robot Wars 30, Slay the Princess

Shelved until later (4): Stray Gods, Death Must Die, Hades II, Cuphead

Dropped (3): Frostpunk, 2064: Read Only Memories, LoveChoice

I've played a handful of games in the past year (more than in the past several years before that) but this was still the most in a while. Only a few I'm completely done with but I'm fine going at a more relaxed pace for a while.

Most Time: Hades II (25 hours) — In early access but already with more combat content than all of the first game, I could keep picking away at it now to start unlocking/upgrading some aspects but I think I'm happy waiting for the full release now that I've gotten a taste and have some other things to keep me occupied and I'll probably start again from the beginning then since I find it just plain fun to play.

Most Surprising: Slay the Princess — I'm not really a fan of horror as a genre in any medium so I wasn't that sure if I'd like this in the first place, but this is more to my taste with an eerie psychological bent rather than something that gets the adrenaline going. I returned for another full round in the past couple of days and was delightfully surprised by some of the outcomes while continuing to love the writing and visuals all along the way. I'm still shy of halfway through all 97 achievements but this is one where I want to keep diving in until I find all the nooks and crannies.

Overall I think it was a great success for me and I played a lot of things I definitely wouldn't have gotten to any time soon. I really enjoyed the bingo card format since that made me take a look at my library in ways I haven't before (never sorted by score, for example) and pick at things that I never gave much consideration to prior to this. Still have hundreds of other games that I haven't touched/finished yet so hopefully I'll be back for the next time now that I've participated once.

This was a great Backlog Burner. I already mentioned it, but the full game list, both by week and overall, was one of the top features for me. I really liked getting that breakdown right off the top. The other stellar thing was the new Bingo card generator, which was just chefs kiss brilliant, both from a technical and content perspective. I don't have any real suggestions for how to improve it in a meaningful way for either the interface or the categories, which is a pretty big compliment as I am opinionated about both interfaces and content. Overall, it was a really wonderful event.

I already posted a summary of my Bingo card games and I don't have a lot of further thoughts about those games yet. I did uninstall the Warhammer and Okami games, and I will keep playing Brothers and plan to return to Bendy. I did do some "bonus lap" games.

Monster Train is a rogue-like deckbuilding tower defense game. I don't think it is as good as Slay the Spire, but it is still very good, and I will likely get a lot of mileage out of it. I like the replayability, and I have been enjoying the card design and concept as a whole. Overall a solid 4/5.

Rollerdrome is one I'm just getting into after seeing it pop up on @kfwyre's list. It's got a similar control scheme to the OlliOlli games, and it adds in guns; I haven't gotten to the "badass" feel yet as kfwyre did but I can see getting there, and I will likely keep this installed as I have OlliOlli2, and revisit it with some frequency.

Wandersong I reinstalled and played a few minutes of again to reacquaint myself with. I think I'll give this one another shot, because I didn't get very far into it the first time I tried it before turning it off and trying something else. It's another based on experiences from people in the TBLB (Tildes Back Log Burner), so I'm excited to give it another shot with fresh eyes.

Another World - I grabbed a ROM of this, not the 20th anniversary edition, and I almost experienced a nostalgia overload.

Sunless Skies - I reinstalled this and played about 30 minutes of it. I got relatively close, I think, to finishing it before and then just petered out, so I'm excited to try to pick it back up and close it out.

• It wasn’t until I compiled the final game list that I realized the game is called (the) Gnorp Apologue instead of Analogue

That one is on me, sorry! I've never seen the word "apologue" before (and my phone just tried to correct it to "apologie" so it's definitely a rare one), so I guess my brain just automatically substituted an actual word. Oddly I'd even looked up the name to double-check which spelling of Analog/Analogue it was, so I really should have noticed.

That aside, this was fun! I got to knock off a few games. I do think next time I'll be more picky with the bingo card though, or go for a golf car. I think I limited myself on what I'd play because I wanted to get at least one bingo. There's a couple games I wanted to play, but I was focused on clearing the column I'd started. Though that also meant I got to play some games I don't think I would have otherwise, namely Another World.

I shared my thoughts on the games as I played them, so I won't mention them again. However, on the last day I ended my final update by saying I'd boot up Wizard of Legend because why not? If you remember, I got this one basically as an accident during the giveaways, so I went in mostly blind. So, I'll share my thoughts.

I am... Not good at rogue likes. The most similar game I've played is Moonlighter, which is definitely a roguelite in comparison. With this one I had I think four or five tries, and I never got through the first floor of the dungeon. Clearly I have to make a more strategic build than the default starting arcana, and I'm wary of spending the currency given my funds are limited by my struggles. Already reset the game once after spending half the starting funds on an arcana I instantly didn't like.
I may try it again later, but for now I'm putting that one to the side. That said, the tutorial was actually really fun and cool. I loved the museum aspect, it's a creative way to introduce all the concepts to the player without being overly annoying or hand-holdy. It made me think "Oh hey, this game might be surprisingly up my alley after all!" Heh. So, I'm glad I got to check it out just for that!

Thanks for hosting! I'll definitely be joining the next one!

Last month was when I had my first ever Backlog Burner, and it was a success at getting myself a good excuse for discovering games I would've overlooked otherwise. Due to a combination of my randomizer’s stingy RNG and my own procrastinating tendencies, I wasn’t able to get a single winning line despite going through 14 games.

My games rule operated in Standard Game Mode similar to a typical physical bingo card, with the win condition bring filling either a row, column or diagonal of 5 tiles. I then let the randomizer deciding the exact game order to play, and had a few possible wins with one or more tiles away.

If I pushed myself further through like what the RNG wants me to, that would be 3 more to fill a winning diagonal line. Those games are Stardew Valley, Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition and Pocket Card Jockey in that order.

The star tile located in the middle acts as a wildcard reserved for any game of my choice without any specific category. This is the only spot I get to decide when I’ll play, so it functionally acts as a free tile.

I spent some time thinking of possible games before allowing certain categories to be generated on my bingo card. No duplicate and similar ones are allowed on my bingo card, given the sheer amount of my backlog that hasn’t been cleared.

Before starting my bingo card for real, I came up with a well-balanced variety of genres as far as my backlog goes to expand my gaming tastes beyond platforming and Animal Crossing. That way, I ended up discovering plenty of games that appealed to me, helping reinforce my love for my gaming and finding some duds to further appreciate the better games. Here's what I got:

Standout games (2): Bastion, Portal
Good enough to continue (6): Radical Dreamers - Le Trésor Interdit, Baiten Kaitos, Jak II, The Longest Journey, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Asura’s Wrath
Still good, but shelved (4): Enduro Racer (finished with save states), Retro City Rampage DX, Animal Crossing: New Leaf (finished), Choplifter
Dropped (2): Neutopia II, Alien 3 – Sega Genesis
Planned, but didn’t reach (11): Stardew Valley, Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition, Pocket Card Jockey, ARMS, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, Wave Race: Blue Storm, Chrono Trigger, Okami HD, Dead Cells, ‘Splosion Man, LIMBO

And that pretty much concludes my last month's Backlog Burner run. I'll check out the remaining games in the coming days and then finish the ones I deem worthy of my time, alongside dropping my writeups on a certain weekly gaming thread. Maybe I'll also generate another bingo card with the same rulesets, but this time over the course of 3 months and with the requirement of beating a game to fill out a space.

See you guys on the November Backlog Burner event!

Unfortunately I haven't had time to update you all as the month went by, and didn't have much time to game either. I did however get to playing all the games along one bingo line, and finished one. Here they are:

Finished game:

Mýrdalssandur, Iceland [Game created by a solo dev]

This was one of those 'how the hell did this get into my Steam library' moments. After looking into it, I would have picked it up for free, and it is no longer on the Steam store. It's a photography simulator based on the southern plains of Iceland. The landscape is rugged, a little misty and you don't have a map. Designed in Unreal Engine 4, the visual style is realism.

The aim of the game is to visit the sites of photos that are laid out on the guide-board to the area. You have to orientate your way around and look for the visual signatures that are in the photos. Being in the rough area and taking an image makes a little satisfying bell sound.

You can walk around paths that curve their way through the natural features, but you can't just run across the landscape as you'll run into invisible walls. There are plenty of occluded sights when you find little pathways and deviations from the main area. I did get lost but it was satisfying roaming around. Once I got my snaps a gate opened, and I could enter the next area - this time in gorgeous sunset. I won't spoil the ending, but it was an impressive still shot. It took around an hour and twenty minutes to finish the game, so it was a bit easy perhaps, but it really was a tranquil experience, especially with the subtle soundtrack featuring soft piano. It now looks like it was a test project, as the developer is releasing a new game called 'Lushfoil Photography Sim' which covers 10 landscape areas. I've wishlisted it!

Partially finished games:

Outer Wilds [Game you purchased at full price]

I'm in the late stages of the game but I gave up because I got too scared. Yes, that might sound a bit funny but this game gave me the existential horrors. I hate it and love it at the same time, and I do highly recommend and rate it. It's been sitting unplayed for over a year now, so I think it qualifies as being on the backlog. This one was a bit of a fail, as I've been using a different mouse, and it turns out that the game forces hardware acceleration, and so I couldn't move the camera very fast. I did persist a bit but this resulted in some avoidable deaths and I will have to search out a new mouse before I get back to this one.

Hellion [Abandonware]

Hellion is the only game on my bingo sheet that qualifies as abandonware. I picked it up on Steam when it was released by the developers for free after they canned the project. It's subsequently been removed from Steam but survives in a very passionate mod community under the banner of the Hellion Rescue Project. It's a first-person Space survival game where you pilot a ship to visit stations and gather resources.

I tried the base game even though I knew it would have its quirks and bugs. You start by having to navigate a dysfunctioning space installation and you have to make an escape. This includes periods of anti-gravity where it's not easy to get around, but coming from an X4 spacesuit context, it wasn't so bad. I made it out of the base and got into a ship before making my way to another nearby station, and trawling through it. Rinse repeat, and I was starting to get the gist of the game, but didn't get deep into it.

Hellion is held up as being somewhat of a unique entity and a lost gem in Space games, which is why it had piqued my interest. It looks aesthetically like a low-budget Starfield, and reminds me of Elite Dangerous Odyssey and Empyrion. I didn't get far enough into the game to really understand why it has such a cult following. Who knows, maybe that's a task for November ;)

X3 Albion Prelude [Game with time manipulation]

This game qualifies because it involves a tool called SETA that allows you to speed up time. X4 was my introduction to the series, and I arrived pretty late in the piece after the Split DLC had dropped. So I missed a lot of that teething period and honestly haven't encountered that many bugs - and so it's pretty much my favourite contemporary space game. I'm currently waiting for the new DLC and update to drop, so it was the perfect time to look at the X3 series, which is highly regarded. After sifting through some recommendations I landed on Albion Prelude. It is an add-on to the base game Terran Conflict, but you start a new save.

As to be expected, I was thrown into the deep end and found myself grasping at controls and the intricate and confusing menu system. Not too far into the game, an AI ship crashed into a station - classic Egosoft. As a sandbox, the game is what you make of it. I'm only in the very beginning, but am really enjoying it so far. I don't know yet whether I'll get much playtime, but it's gone from backburner to frontburner!

Sekiro [A game you find challenging]

Like others who discovered Fromsoftware through Elden Ring, I found Sekiro. I think the difficulty of Sekiro is part of its attraction and why it is held out by Fromsoftware geeks as being in its own league. I honestly doubt I will finish this game. I am just not good at fast-paced melee co-ordination with a sword and board, let alone parrying which this entire game is built around. So, during this month, I started the game and then got stuck, and then persisted, focusing on two early game mini boss fights: the Chained Ogre and General Naomori Kawarada.

I managed to down both of them, using different tactics, dodging for the ogre and parrying in close range with Kawarada. I failed miserably on many attempts but it was satisfying to get a bit better. Then, I somehow got into the rhythm and dance of the fight and finished them. It was a bit of a rush, getting into that groove and balancing restraint with aggression. I'm pretty happy with that, and I'll keep plodding on.

So, that's my bingo sheet! Some of these games ticked off other categories too: Set in a real-world location; ; from a different culture/country; from a different country (Mýrdalssandur, Iceland), Long-running series (X3 Albion Prelude).

Thank you for having me along - it's been a bit of a stressful month and I really appreciate being able to still dip into this event. Big thank you to @kfwyre and I look forward to future events!

I phased out for the last week, in part due to life stuff getting me down, in part because I didn't really play a backlog game. I would like to summarize my experience because it has been a positive one.

The event got me to play a bunch of different games where I may have only played a couple this month. I have a bad habit of feeling the need to stick through media, this event helped free me both from that and a certain associated anxiety with starting a game, if that makes any sense. I had several games I decided not to finish, but still appreciated my time with them. Maybe they just didn't vibe with me at the time, maybe I'll return, but who cares? I could probably play a new, quality game every week for the rest of my life and still miss out on tons. Steam has had some good sales lately, I don't think my actual backlog shrunk lol.

In summary, out of my backlog, I played: Umurangi Generation, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, BattleBit Remastered, GNOG, DAEMON X MACHINA, Chill Corner, Ghost of Tsushima, and Dominion.

But I also played a bunch of other new games in the last week, like Hexcells, Hexcells Plus, Hexcells Infinite, Square Cells, Cross Cells, Sokobond, and No Anglerfish (the puzzle sale got me good). I don't think I would've picked up or played all these without the event.

As for logistics, thanks for running the event @kfwyre. I often appreciate what you bring to the community in terms of topics and engagement. No notes, the weekly posts and reminder tags were great.

I didn't really engage with the bingo aspect, didn't incidentally complete one even between my phone and PC cards. It's a neat site deserving of praise @Wes. Despite not completing a card, I don't think any categories need removing since you can toggle them.

I managed to get one more entry on the board without ever making a post about it before the end of the month, so I'll copy my card over with the new addition:

I've had a bit of a hellish time at work as of late; nothing too bad, just very busy, and all is good now, but I unfortunately fell off of Bingo (and all of Tildes) for the last three-ish weeks. Though it's partially my own undoing that the back half of week 3 going into 4 wasn't more productive, as I could NOT stop playing Returnal. I would guess that I'm maybe 75-80% of the way to a platinum, and I've really enjoyed the journey. Combine that with my continued efforts to perfect my DLC build for Elden Ring, and getting any farther in my card was a losing battle.

That said, immense "thank you"s to both @kfwyre and @Wes for your time and effort to put this all on! I had a ton of fun, both in forcing myself to dig into my own backlog, and chatting with others about theirs. I think this experience also helped me view some of my backlog items in a new light. I have several games that have been sitting out there forever, and I keep telling myself, "I really should play that game. It's a game I should enjoy because of its (status in the zeitgeist/Metacritic score/subject matter), so I'm going to buckle down and it enjoy it, dammit." Forcing myself to pull some of those games out and dive into them has made me realize that it's okay for me to bounce off a game, even if others like it, and even if it really is something of which I enjoy bits and pieces, if it's not something into which I want to invest the time needed for that given game. In a strange way, it actually makes me a lot more excited to keep grabbing more entries out of my backlog (maybe I'll just keep working towards blackout on my own time), content with the knowledge that if (and when) I run into a game that doesn't grab me, I can set it down and move on with my life. Looking forward to the next one in November!!

I only played one game for this backlog burner because I don't have a ton of time to play games at this time in my life, but I did go for something I have been putting off for 14 years and I finally played and finished StarCraft 2. I wrote down my thoughts in my backlog spreadsheet:

Fantastic all around. Story was amazing and a great continuation of SC1. Wrapped up everything nicely with a surprisingly happy ending. Gameplay was phenomenal and really had an interesting twist on the RTS genre by adding the RPG elements in between missions by completing the bonus objectives. Everything about it was just great. Only downside was a few too many "holdout" missions for my taste, but overall I can't complain. Love this game. Sad at myself that I waited so long to finally play it, but so glad I finally did. I expect this will be the end of the series because they wrapped up the story pretty damn well and not sure where they could take it next, especially with no Raynor or Kerrigan. You can't have Starcraft without them. All in all a great ending to a great story and franchise. Beautiful. Masterpiece.

I fell off the burner pretty early, but per the rules I have no regrets. 🙂

My nephews asked me to set up a Minecraft server for them, so I spent a lot of this month thoroughly enjoying my time adventuring with them and finding cool and interesting mods and datapacks to install.

Additionally, there were updates for a couple of my other favorite games (No Man's Sky and Planet Crafter), so I was understandably distracted. I will still 100% attempt to participate in the next event, as it was a lot of fun while I was engaged.